鐘消えて花の香は撞く夕べ哉 kane kiete hana no ka wa tsuku yūbe kana Bashō - As the temple bell fades, The ringing lingers in the blossom scent, Evening
This is a philological study of the haiku 鐘消えて花の香は撞く夕べ哉 (kane kiete hana no ka wa tsuku yūbe kana), Bashō's. It spans from its first printing in 1690, in an anthology of his lifetime, and examines Akutagawa's reading of its inverted verbs, the Chinese figure behind it, the readers who heard a pun in it, and how it came into English.
Abstract
鐘消えて花の香は撞く夕べ哉, the bell dies away, and the scent of the blossoms strikes the evening, is Bashō's on every witness that names a poet, and it was in print in his lifetime: the anthology 都曲, compiled by Ikenishi Gonsui 池西言水 and printed in Kyoto in 1690, carries it under his name. The first critic to read it, in 1904, confessed he could not fully understand its syntax; a reading circle in 1911 heard the scent strike the nose, and its leader judged the verse a lapse into the punning manner of the Teitoku school; Akutagawa in 1927 explained it as a verse built on the same inversion Du Fu worked on nouns, its verbs exchanged so that the bell fades and the scent strikes, and Kubo Tadao in 1956 found the exchange of predicates itself in Chinese prose. Blyth, Henderson, Ueda, Reichhold and Fitzsimons carried it into English across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.
Overview
The text. The scroll carries 鐘消えて花の香は撞く夕べ哉, and the witnesses write one text in three spellings: 消えて in the 1903 全集, the two critics of 1926, the 1927 全集 and Akutagawa in both printings; 消て in the 都曲 of 1690 and as its editors print it, in the 1927 全集's kigo run and in 高安; きえて in the 1827 一葉集, 沼波's two editions and 半田's; 夕べ哉, 夕べかな, 夕哉 and 夕かな for the last phrase, and the 都曲 has 夕哉 [1]. One witness reads a different word. 服部耕雨's 1909 particle grammar prints 鐘さえて花の香は撞く夕べ哉, the bell clear, under the heading for は as the particle of contrast, paired with 唐崎の松は花よりおぼろにて and both marked 翁 and 同. Against every edition's 消えて it is the grammarian's misquotation, a real one and not the scanner's, and it makes a lesser verse: a bell that is merely clear has not died away, and the scent has nothing to take over from. The meter is five, seven, five: か・ね・き・え・て, は・な・の・か・は・つ・く, ゆ・う・べ・か・な.
The sense. The readers divide on what the scent does. For a reading circle in 1911 it strikes the nose as the bell dies, 花の香は鼻を衝くの略言, short for "the scent strikes the nose" [2]; for 服部畊石 in 1932 it goes on striking the bell after the bell has stopped, 花の香は猶それを撞いて餘韻をつゞけしめてゐる, the scent still strikes it and keeps its echo going [3], and that is Blyth's sentence too: the reverberations are continued in the scent of the flowers [4]. They disagree as well on whether the verse should do it. Meisetsu 鳴雪 in 1904 finds the syntax hard to join, reads it in two steps, and admits he does not fully understand the verse [5]; that honesty is the first word on record and it is worth keeping for a verse everyone since has explained. Ōta 太田 in 1926 calls the exchange a marvel of living resonance [6]; Takayasu 高安 the same year calls it near to Western poetry [7]. Akutagawa in 1927 gives the mechanism: it is 倒装法, the inversion of Chinese verse, verbs exchanged as Du Fu exchanged nouns, learned from the Chinese poets Bashō was adapting in his twenties [8]. Kubo Tadao 久保忠夫 in 1956 finds the closer model in Chinese prose, where what two things do is exchanged rather than the things themselves [9]. Blyth in 1950 hears in it this interchange of the senses is one of the marks of a Buddha [4]. Between Meisetsu's I do not understand it and Akutagawa's it is Du Fu lies most of the verse's Japanese history, and Akutagawa's answer is the one that explains Meisetsu's difficulty: the syntax is hard to join because it was built to be.
The words. 鐘消えて is the bell dies away, 消ゆ of a sound fading. 花の香は撞く is the scent of the blossoms strikes, and 撞く is the verb for striking a temple bell; here the scent does it. That transfer is the poem, and every reader is reading it. 夕べ哉 is the evening, with the cutting word. Akutagawa lays the verse out in its plain order to show what has been done to it: 鐘搗いて花の香消ゆる夕べかな, the bell is struck and the scent of the blossoms fades: an evening, and says the verse inverts its verbs as Du Fu inverts his nouns. As words the line says: The bell dies away; the scent of the blossoms strikes; evening.
The verse in English. Blyth translated the verse in 1950 [4]; Henderson followed in 1958 [10], Ueda in 1982 [11], Barnhill in 2004 [12], Reichhold in 2008 [13], and Fitzsimons in 2022 [14]; Reichhold and Fitzsimons keep the Japanese verb, strikes, rather than explaining it.
The historical record
1690. Gonsui, 都曲. Ikenishi Gonsui compiled the anthology 都曲, miyakoburi, in two volumes, printed in Kyoto by 井筒屋庄兵衛 with an afterword dated 1690 [15][16][1]. In the first volume the verse stands without a headnote, 鐘消て花の香は撞夕哉, the 撞 glossed ツク, tsuku, and signed 芭蕉 under the place-mark 京, Kyoto, that the book sets before each poet's name [1]. It is the earliest printing of the verse, four years before the poet's death. 服部畊石 in 1932 prints it with the tag (都曲) as 鐘消て花の香は撞夕かな and dates it from the book: 元祿三年出版の「都曲」にあるから、同年又は其前の作と見る, since it is in the 都曲, published in Genroku 3, I take it for a work of that year or before [3]. Ebara Taizō 潁原退蔵 in 1947 prints 鐘消て花の香は撞夕哉 with the single tag (都曲), in the part of his edition whose introduction admits only verses 芭蕉の俳句として確實と認められる, recognized as certainly Bashō's, each in the form of the source it cites [17]. On the last word the print bears Ebara out: it reads 哉. The same volume's 結ぶより早歯にひゞく泉かな, also signed 芭蕉, which Ebara prints from this book with かな, closes in a different carving [17][1]; 服部畊石's かな is his own.
1827. 俳諧一葉集, the first collected Bashō. A posthumous compilation: Okano Kochū 岡野湖中's dictionary entry reads 文政10年芭蕉の最初の全集「俳諧一葉集」を刊行した, in Bunsei 10 he published the first complete Bashō, the 俳諧一葉集 [18]. The Waseda copy prints the verse as 鐘きえて花の香は撞ゆふへかな, after 聲よくばうたはんものを櫻ちる and before 鶴の巣に嵐の外のさくら哉 under the headnote 山家, with no source given [19]; the 1925 typeset prints the same [20]. It is the book Numanami 沼波's tag of 1921 names [21].
1903. Ōtsuka Kōzan 大塚甲山, 芭蕉俳句全集. The verse in the spring run, 鐘消えて花の香は撞く夕哉, between 蝙蝠も出でようき世の花に鳥 and 花の時爺は目出度なりにけり. The earliest print on the desk [22].
1904. Meisetsu, 芭蕉俳句評釈. The first reading in print, and a confession. 花のさく頃の夕ぐれに入相の鐘を聞いた、同時に花の香が鼻をうつた、そこを櫻の花のかほりは此の遠近の靜かで入相の鐘を撞く夕部に勝つた時はない, at dusk in the season of blossom he heard the evening bell, and at the same moment the scent of the blossoms struck his nose; so the cherry's scent never wins so completely as on an evening when the evening bell is struck in this far-and-near stillness. Then the syntax: 此句の句法は少し變つて居て上五字から下五字迄何となく續き難い言葉である, the verse's construction is a little odd, and from the first five to the last five the words are somehow hard to join; read it in two steps, 入相の鐘をきいた、と切り更らに下十二字で其感を叙して花の香は撞く夕部に限ると言つたので, the evening bell heard, a stop, and then the twelve syllables that tell the feeling: the scent of the blossoms is at its height in the dusk when the bell is struck. And the close: 或ひは古歌でもあるのか。十分に解し得ぬ句ぢや。 [5]
1909. 服部耕雨, 天爾遠波俚言解 適例応用, a grammar of particles with examples. Under 第二編 起詞, 第一例 は, with the gloss カレトコレトヲ反對スル意, the sense of setting this against that: 唐崎の松は花よりおぼろまて 翁, a misprint for にて, then 鐘さえて花の香は撞く夕へ哉 同, the へ without its dakuten. The one witness with さえて, printed so [23].
1911. Tsunoda Chikurei 角田竹冷, 芭蕉句集講義. A reading circle's commentary, each member's word signed. One takes 鐘きへて for 鐘きえて and the verse for an ideal image, the evening scent of the blossoms striking the bell; another hears the bell die in the ear, 同時に花の香が鼻を衝く如く匂ふて來た, and at the same moment the scent of the blossoms came as if striking the nose; a third makes that the point of the verb, 中七の花の香は撞くは、花の香は鼻を衝くの略言, the middle phrase, the scent strikes, is short for the scent strikes the nose, a conceit, he says, common in Chinese verse and prose. Chikurei closes: 其想に於ては左程難じる所はないが、其想を文學的に述べこなさずに所謂貞德流の俤に陷つた句になつて了つたのである、殘念な事だ, there is little to fault in the idea, but it was not made into literature, and the verse has fallen into the likeness of the so-called Teitoku manner; a pity [2].
1921. Numanami, 芭蕉全集, Iwanami; and his 1928 edition. 鐘きえて花の香は撞く夕べかな, in the 發句集 among the blossom verses, between 聲よくばうたはむものを櫻ちる and, under the headnote 須磨寺, 風なきに散るやわかきの花櫻; its source tag in the tag column reads (同), the same, carrying down the (一葉集) printed against 聲よくば [21]. The 1928 printing carries the same text, with a tag reading (前川, unexplained [24].
1925. Handa Ryōhei 半田良平, 芭蕉俳句全集 季題別・年代附. The verse with the era tag (元三), Genroku 3 [25].
1926. Ōta, 芭蕉俳諧の根本問題; Takayasu, 東西文学比較評論. Ōta lists the verse among the verses he offers as 禪意のゆたかなるもの, rich in Zen sense, with 春の夜はさくらに明けてしまひけり and the frog, on the leaf after his 生命感應の妙, the marvel of living resonance [6]; Takayasu sets it among the verses of Bashō's that are deeper than his predecessors' and near to Western poetry [7].
1927. 芥川龍之介, 芭蕉雑記, in the 新潮社 selected works. しかし下に擧げる一句もやはり暗合に外ならないであらうか？ 鐘消えて花の香は撞く夕べかな 僕の信ずる所によれば、これは明らかに朱飮山の所謂倒裝法を俳諧に用ひたものである, but is the verse below also nothing more than coincidence? "The bell dies away; the scent of the blossoms strikes; evening." As I believe, this is plainly the so-called inversion of Zhu Yinshan brought into haikai. Then Du Fu's couplet, 紅稻啄殘鸚鵡粒 碧梧棲老鳳凰枝, and its plain order, 鸚鵡啄殘紅稻粒 鳳凰棲老碧梧枝, the parrots have pecked the red rice grains, the phoenix has grown old roosting in the green paulownia, with the nouns exchanged; and Bashō's plain order, 鐘搗いて花の香消ゆる夕べかな. One inverts nouns and the other verbs, he says, but the method is the same; and then the aside that, since everyone knows how much Buson learned from Chinese poetry, it is strange that nobody thought to look at Bashō the same way, for if one person had, この「鐘消えて」の句のことなどはとうの昔に氣づいてゐた筈である, they would have noticed this "kane kiete" verse long ago, given how much of the Chinese poets the young Bashō of the 延寶 and 天和 years had adapted [8]. Reprinted in the 1928 岩波 collected works [26].
1927. Shimada Seihō 島田青峰, 芭蕉俳句紀行全集. The verse under 花, 鐘消て花の香は撞く夕べかな, between 四方より花吹入れてにほの波 and 花の山二町のぼれば大悲閣 [27].
1956. Kubo Tadao 久保忠夫, 芭蕉の発句と倒装法, in 連歌俳諧研究. A study of the Chinese inversion in Bashō's verse, taking this one from the 都曲, 出典——都曲 年代——元禄三年前, source the 都曲, date before Genroku 3, printed as 鐘消て花の香は撞は夕哉, the second は a misprint. Kubo traces Akutagawa's 朱飲山 to the 詩法纂論, calls the reading 流石に炯眼, truly sharp-eyed, and notes that Katō Shūson 加藤楸邨 had suspected a Chinese model without finding one. Then he names the move: 鐘は元來、撞くべきものであり、香は固より消えるべきものであるが、それをことさらに、鐘消てといひ、香は撞といつてゐる, a bell is by nature a thing to be struck, and a scent a thing that fades; the verse goes out of its way to say the bell fades and the scent strikes. Exchanging the verbs and adjectives of paired phrases, he says, is old in Chinese, and his instances exchange predicates, not nouns: Ouyang Xiu's 醸泉為酒、泉甘(香)而酒冽, whose plain order would be 泉冽而酒甘, and Jiang Yan's 心折骨驚 for 心驚骨折. Whether Bashō came to it from Du Fu, as Akutagawa had it, or from Ouyang Xiu or Jiang Yan, he will not decide: このやうな修辞法が中国にあり、それを俳諧に應用したとだけはいへるであらう, this much can be said, that the figure existed in China and was applied to haikai. He adds that Buson, in 月に聞て蛙ながむる田面かな, hearing the moon and gazing at the frogs over the paddies, probably imitated this verse [9].
The dictionaries today. The Britannica entry on kotobank gives the poet's dates [28].
The attribution. Bashō's at every witness that names a poet, and in every edition of his verse examined; Akutagawa names him twice in one paragraph. The footing is a print of his lifetime, the 都曲 of 1690, which signs it 芭蕉 [1]; 服部畊石, Ebara and Kubo all take it from that book, and Ebara counted the verse among those certainly his [3][17][9]. Handa's dated edition of 1925 tags the verse 元三, Genroku 3, 1690, the 都曲's year [25]. Fitzsimons in 2022 dates it to the Jōkyō years, 1684–1688, year unknown [14], which the 1690 print allows, since 服部畊石 reads the print as the latest the verse can be, that year or before [3]. The 俳諧一葉集 of 1827, the source Numanami's 1921 edition names, is a later carrier [19][21]. Meisetsu in 1904 asked whether the verse might come from somewhere else altogether: 或ひは古歌でもあるのか。十分に解し得ぬ句ぢや, is it perhaps from some old poem? It is a verse I cannot fully understand [5]; no witness answers him with an older poem. The English translators give it to Bashō without comment, and Reichhold dates it to the spring of 1688 [13], which the 1690 print allows.
What is not a source. Du Fu's couplet is Akutagawa's model for the method, not a source Bashō names. The 1909 grammarian's 唐崎の松 is a pairing for a lesson on the particle は. The 一葉集 is a compilation long after the poet and names no source of its own; 1690 is the year the 都曲 was printed, and the verse may be older. Meisetsu's some old poem is a question, not a finding.
The verse in English
1950. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, volume 2, Spring, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, under 櫻. The temple bell dies away. / The scent of flowers in the evening / Is still tolling the bell, with the sentence on the interchange of the senses. Blyth explains the verb rather than translating it: the scent is still tolling [4].
1958. Harold G. Henderson, An Introduction to Haiku, Doubleday Anchor. Under the title Bell Tones: As bell tones fade, / blossom scents take up the ringing— / evening shade!, with his word-for-word gloss beneath [10].
1982. Makoto Ueda, Matsuo Bashō, Kodansha International. After the chimes fade / Cherry fragrance continues: / Evening dusk, with the romaji [11].
2004. David Landis Barnhill, Bashō's Haiku, SUNY Press, page 73, under Spring 1684–87. the bell fades away, / the blossoms’ fragrance ringing: / early evening, romaji kane kiete / hana no ka wa tsuku / yube kana [12].
2008. Jane Reichhold, Bashō: The Complete Haiku, Kodansha USA, number 398. fading temple bell / the fragrance of flowers strikes / at evening, keeping the verb; and in her notes the romaji, the Japanese as 鐘消えて花の香は撞く夕哉, a word-for-word literal, temple-bell fades / flower's scent as-for striking / evening, the date 1688, spring, and the reading that it is the fragrance of the flowers that strike the bell [13].
2022. Andrew Fitzsimons, Bashō: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Bashō, University of California Press, number 349. The temple bell fades / The fragrance of flowers strikes / into the evening, dated to the Jōkyō years, year unknown. Fitzsimons keeps the Japanese verb, strikes, as Reichhold had, which is the harder and truer line [14].
Today. The house English, As the temple bell fades / The ringing lingers in the blossom scent / Evening, is Timothy L. Jackowski's, so credited in the store, and takes Blyth's reading, the ringing carried on by the scent, in its own words, verbatim to no one. It gives the reading rather than the verb. A rendering of this line has to decide whether to keep 撞く, the scent striking, as Reichhold and Fitzsimons do and as the Japanese does, or to explain it, as Blyth and the page do; either is honest, and the page's is the gentler.
A reading
I read this verse as Akutagawa did, and I think his finding is the best thing said of it: a poet in his forties, who had spent his twenties translating Du Fu into haikai, exchanging his verbs the way the Chinese master exchanged his nouns, so that the thing that fades is the bell and the thing that strikes is the scent. Kubo made it exact thirty years later: what Bashō exchanged are the predicates, and the Chinese had done that too, so his verbs sit nearer Ouyang Xiu's spring and wine than Du Fu's parrot and phoenix. The page's English understands the result and gives it as a reading, the ringing lingers in the blossom scent; Reichhold and Fitzsimons give it as the verb, the fragrance of flowers strikes; both are true and the second is the poem. The verse was in print by 1690, under Bashō's name, while he was alive, and the editor who sorted his verses most strictly counted it his. What stays open is the verb. The circle of 1911 heard 撞く as 衝く, the scent striking the nose, and called the result a pun of the older school. I hear it as Akutagawa and Blyth did, the scent taking up the bell's own verb; and the pun is not wrong so much as the floor the poem stands on, since 撞く and 衝く are one word, tsuku. The 1909 さえて is a grammarian's slip and not a variant of the poem.
Sources not seen
土谷泰敏 Tsuchiya Yasutoshi, 「『都曲』覚え書き(二) 芭蕉発句、その意味するもの」, 学大国文 29 (大阪教育大学), 1986, pp. 73–88: a study of Bashō's verses in the 都曲, recorded at CiNii (https://cir.nii.ac.jp/crid/2120307889886672896) and in the university's repository as metadata only. It would say what the anthology's choice of this verse meant in 1690.
加藤楸邨 Katō Shūson's study of the verse in the 芭蕉講座, which Kubo cites for its suspicion of a Chinese model [9]; the volume and page are not given there.
A reader with access to any of these is invited to write to Takase Studios at Tim@Takase.com.
References
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- 服部耕雨『天爾遠波俚言解 適例応用』, 1909, p. 9. National Diet Library pid 864017, scan 14. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/864017/1/14
- 沼波瓊音 Numanami Keion 編『芭蕉全集』, 岩波, 1928 printing. National Diet Library pid 1145736, scan 46.
- 半田良平 Handa Ryōhei 編『芭蕉俳句全集 季題別・年代附』, 1925. National Diet Library pid 920858, scan 15. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/920858/1/15
- 芥川龍之介, 芭蕉雑記, in 『芥川竜之介全集』第5巻, 岩波, 1928. National Diet Library pid 1232321, scan 35.
- 島田青峰 Shimada Seihō 編『芭蕉俳句紀行全集』, 1927. National Diet Library pid 1194541, scan 29. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1194541/1/29
- 「松尾芭蕉」, ブリタニカ国際大百科事典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/松尾芭蕉-16739