梅一輪 一輪ほどの 暖かさ ume ichirin ichirin hodo no atatakasa ransetsu 嵐雪 One plum blossom: one blossom's worth of warmth

梅一輪一輪ほどの暖かさ (ume ichirin ichirin hodo no atatakasa): one plum blossom: one blossom's worth of warmth.

Hattori Ransetsu was one of Bashō's senior pupils. 梅 is the Japanese apricot, called plum in English, and 一輪 is one blossom. ほど after a number gives a rough amount, so the second 一輪 measures the warmth: as much as one blossom.

Sakamoto Shihōda, lecturing at Waseda in 1910, called the spring reading the usual interpretation: the plum opening blossom by blossom, the days growing warmer. A teachers' book of 1913 taught it the same way.

In 1930 the scholar Ebara Taizō called the spring reading a mistake, since the verse says ほど, as much as, and not づゝ, each. In 1981 the linguist Kawamoto Shigeo argued for the old reading from its sound. He asked whether the vowels, opening from i to o to a, do not call up the rising of the temperature.

In 1755 a poet of Kakegawa printed a collection for Ransetsu's fiftieth-year memorial and named it 梅一輪, after the verse.

Basil Hall Chamberlain put the verse into English in 1902 as [Slowly] it mildens, as the plum / [Ventureth forth,] blossom by blossom, the bracketed words not in the Japanese. Harold Henderson in 1934 called the verse almost untranslatable and gave One blossom on the plum tree; / One blossomworth of warmth.

Hattori Ransetsu (1654–1707). The earliest printing found is 『遠のく』, the collection his pupil 百里 made for the first anniversary of his death, printed in 1708, where the verse opens a three-verse set under the heading 寒梅; his collected verse, 『玄峰集』, printed in 1750, files it in spring under 梅 and notes that another collection had put it in winter.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 梅一輪一輪ほどの暖かさ.

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