They spoke no words.
The visitor, the host,
And the white chrysanthemum.
mono iwazu
kyaku to teishu to
shiragiku to
ものいはず
客と亭主と
白菊と
ryōta
蓼太
Abstract
ものいはず客と亭主と白菊と, saying nothing, the guest, the host, and the white chrysanthemum, is Ōshima Ryōta 大島蓼太's, and stands among the chrysanthemum verses in the autumn book of the first part of his own collection, 蓼太句集, published in Edo with an afterword dated the autumn of 1769, eighteen years before his death; Shiki's manuscript compilation, which the library dates about 1889–1890, names that collection as its source. The earliest English rendering cited here is Miyamori Asatarō's of 1932; Blyth's of 1949 was reprinted in a 1967 Hallmark collection of haiku with no translator named at the poem, the copyright page naming his Haiku as the source. Harold Henderson in 1958 put the verse in the present tense and made its three と his example of the particle setting things on an absolute equality. The other English cited here, from Kenneth Rexroth's in 1955 to Stephen Addiss's in 2009, keeps the three parties, in the past tense or with no tense at all.
Overview
The text. The scroll carries ものいはず客と亭主と白菊と. Its designs write the same words in several ways: some write もの言はず, with 言 in kanji; some write 白菊 in kana, しらぎく, and one of those writes 客 in kana too, きやく; and the designs that write しらぎく write the last と with a kana made from 登, where the two と before it are made from 止. The witnesses write the first word in several ways and mean one: ものいはす in the poet's collection with the 1769 afterword, with no voicing mark written, and ものいはず in its 1927 typeset [1] and in the 1934 encyclopedia [2]; 物いはず and 物言はず in Shiki's manuscript at its two places [3][4]; ものいはず again in Miyamori [5] and in Blyth's Haiku vol. 4 [6]; and ものいわず, in modern kana, in Poetry and Zen [7], where Blyth's vol. 1 has ものいはず [8]. No witness varies a word. The meter is five, seven, five, with the last と falling on the seventeenth syllable: も・の・い・わ・ず, きゃ・く・と・て・い・しゅ・と, し・ら・ぎ・く・と.
The sense. One reading, and it belongs to the translators. Miyamori in 1932 supplies a scene: Both the host and the guest who is invited to view the white chrysanthemums are smitten by their beauty and gazing at them speechless, and the flowers silent with them [5]. Blyth, in a piece collected in Poetry and Zen, makes the verse an illustration of a tendency in Buddhism towards simplicity and non-intellectuality, as against the philosophical one [7]. In Haiku vol. 4 he prints it under chrysanthemums, pages 146–147, and follows it with a passage saying the white flower was whiter and more beautiful than the flower Buddha held up before the congregation of monks, or that which Christ pointed out to his disciples,—because it was silent; it did not preach Christianity or Buddhism or Zen, and Host and guest found that they too had nothing to say [6]. In vol. 1, page 192, it follows his question What kind of speech is this?, after the line The Great Way does not express itself; Perfect Eloquence does not speak, which a footnote gives to Sōshi, Zhuangzi, and Matthew Arnold's poetry as the most perfect speech of man [8]. Both readings are of the same grammar: three parties, one silence, and the flower admitted to the company as an equal.
The words. ものいはず is saying nothing: ものいふ, to put words into speech, to talk, negated with ず; the dictionary's first example of the phrase is the Man'yōshū's 毛乃伊波ず, the same negated form [9]. It is the only verb in the poem, and it governs everything after it. 客と亭主と is the guest and the host, joined by と: 客 is one who calls at a house or is invited to it [10], and 亭主 the master of the house, and in the tea ceremony the one who gives the gathering [11]; the verse does not say which. The third と after 白菊, the white chrysanthemum, puts the flower in the same list on the same terms: three who say nothing. That と is the old full form of a list: デジタル大辞泉 notes that と after every word listed is the original use, and that the modern language usually drops the last one, and 日本国語大辞典 quotes 伊勢物語's 行く水と過ぐるよはひと散る花と, three nouns each with its と [12]. 白菊 is an autumn season word [13]. Miyamori's note has the grammar exactly: "white chrysanthemums" are imagined to be silent as well as "host and guest" [5]. The verse is a list with no verb but the first, and that verb is a negative. As words the line says: Saying nothing: the guest, and the host, and the white chrysanthemum.
The verse in English. The earliest English rendering cited here is in Miyamori's anthology of 1932 [5]. Blyth translated it in 1949 and printed it again in 1952 with the middle line changed to The host, the guest [8][6], and Poetry and Zen reprints the 1949 lines [7]. A 1967 Hallmark collection of haiku printed Blyth's 1949 lines signed only with the poet's name, its copyright page naming Blyth's Haiku as the source [14]; Henderson in 1958 gave the silence a title, Communion, and put it in the present, From them no words come [15]; Bowers in 1996 and Addiss in 2009 dropped the tense altogether, Saying nothing and Without a word [16][17], as Michael Haldane's not speaking a word of 2006 does [18].
The historical record
1769. Ryōta, 蓼太句集, the first part of the poet's own collection, published in Edo. In the second volume, the autumn book, under the heading 菊, chrysanthemum, between 荒て露もさだまるや菊の花 and 傾城の枕ふみてや菊つくり: ものいはす客と亭主と白菊と [1]. The afterword closes 明和六丑秋, the autumn of Meiwa 6, 1769, and the colophon names the Edo publishers 西村源六 and 戸倉屋喜兵衛 [1]. The poet, by the kotobank entry: 1718–1787, 雪中庵, born in Shinano, pupil of Sakurai Ritō 桜井吏登, a power in the Edo haikai world who preached a return to Bashō and is said to have had three thousand pupils [19]. The collection grew to three parts: the second has a preface of 1785 and the third, after his death, an afterword dated 1793 [20]. The afterword dates the verse: Ryōta had written it by the autumn of 1769.
About 1889–1890. 正岡子規, 発句類題全集, a manuscript compilation of hokku by topic, in Shiki's hand, which the library dates 1889–1890頃, about 1889–1890. Under 白菊, with the topic's headwords 器物, 衣冠, 神人 beside it: 物いはず客と亭主と白菊と 蓼太（蓼太句集）, between 白菊や美人の開く十の指 by 曽嵐 and 白菊やあるじの花に暮残る, whose cell reads 同, the same, giving it to Ryōta as well [3]. And under と止, verses ending in と: 物言はず客と亭主と白菊と 蓼太（蓼太句集）, between 稲妻や石に入日と出づる日と by 六阿 and 罌粟蒔くや此月の夜にあやかれと by 流水 [4]. Two entries, one source, in the compiler's own hand.
1927. 勝峰晋風, 日本俳書大系, volume 11, 天明名家句選, the 蓼太句集 section. ものいはず客と亭主と白菊と, in the section's 菊 group, with the same neighbors and no headnote [1]. The section opens with a preface in kanbun signed 南畝子 and dated 安永丁酉夏六月, the sixth month of 1777, and a preface in kana signed 吐月 [1].
1934. 小原国芳, 児童百科大辞典, an encyclopedia for children, volume 3, on plants. The verse stands in a list of examples, with Ryōta named after it, as every verse in the list carries its poet [2].
The attribution. Ryōta's, in his own book, published in his lifetime. The first part of 蓼太句集, its afterword dated 1769, prints the verse in its autumn book [1], and the kotobank entry for the poet names 蓼太句集 among his works [19]. Shiki's manuscript compilation of hokku by topic, written about 1889–1890, enters the verse twice, once under 白菊 and once under the grammatical topic と止, verses ending in と, and both times writes the poet and his source in the cell after the verse: 蓼太（蓼太句集） [3][4]. The 1927 日本俳書大系 typesets 蓼太句集 and carries the verse under 菊 with the same neighbors [1]. Miyamori in 1932, Blyth from 1949, and Haldane in 2006 all give it to Ryōta [5][8][18]. No witness cited here gives it to anyone else.
What is not a source. Nothing has been set beside this verse among the sources here gathered; it travels alone. The only company it keeps is Shiki's, whose compilation enters it at two places, under the flower 白菊 and under と止, verses ending in と.
The verse in English
1932. 宮森麻太郎 Asatarō Miyamori, An Anthology of Haiku Ancient and Modern, Maruzen, Tokyo, entry 502, page 510. The Japanese, ものいはず 客と亭主と 白菊と, a title, White Chrysanthemums, the rendering, They spoke not: host and guest / And white chrysanthemums, and the note quoted above [5]. His chrysanthemums are plural and his silence is past tense.
1949 and 1952. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, volume 1 and volume 4, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo. In the first volume, page 192: They spoke no word. / The visitor, the host, / And the white chrysanthemum. [8]. In the fourth, under chrysanthemums, pages 146–147, the middle line changed to The host, the guest and a comma after the first: They spoke no word, / The host, the guest, / And the white chrysanthemum. [6]. No word, singular, is the absolute the Japanese ず has.
1958. Harold G. Henderson, An Introduction to Haiku, Doubleday Anchor, page 119, in the chapter on Buson's contemporaries. Under a title of his own, Communion: From them no words come: / the guest, the host, the white / chrysanthemum., with his word-for-word gloss beneath, Mono-iwazu | kyaku | to | teishu | to | shira-giku | to, Not-saying-anything for the first word and white-chrysanthemum for the last. In his appendix on grammar, page 189, the line is his example of と: In any obvious series a to may be omitted. But it cannot be omitted if it is desired to emphasize that two or three or more things are on an absolute equality. E.g.: Kyaku to teishu to shira-giku to (host, guest, white chrysanthemum) by Ryōta [15]. The first English rendering cited here in the present tense.
1955. Kenneth Rexroth, One Hundred Poems from the Japanese, New Directions. No one spoke. / The host, the guest. / The white chrysanthemums., under Ryōta's name [21]. The past tense, host and guest sharing a line and the flowers given a sentence of their own, and the flowers plural.
1967. Silent Flowers, a Hallmark Editions collection of haiku, edited by Dorothy Price. Blyth's 1949 lines with the comma after host made a full stop: They spoke no word. / The visitor, the host. / And the white chrysanthemum., signed Ryota. No translator is named at the poem; the copyright page reads Selected from "Haiku," Volumes 1-4, by R.H.Blyth, Hokuseido Press [14].
1996. Faubion Bowers (ed.), The Classic Tradition of Haiku: An Anthology, Dover, page 60. Bowers's own rendering, signed with his initials: mono iwazu / kyaku to teishu to / shiragiku to — Saying nothing: / Guest and host / and white chrysanthemum. His footnote on Ryōta quotes Donald Keene, that Ryōta published 200 books of poems and attained 2,000 disciples but "hardly a single poem has survived the test of time" [16].
2006, collected 2022. Michael Haldane, in Bashō and the Haikuists, Delphi Classics. not speaking a word, / the guest, the host, / and the white chrysanthemum, with the romaji line by line [18]. Like Bowers's Saying nothing, a participle with no tense.
2009. Stephen Addiss, with Fumiko Yamamoto and Akira Yamamoto, Haiku: An Anthology of Japanese Poems, Shambhala. Without a word / the guest, the host, / white chrysanthemums, with no verb at all, and the chrysanthemums plural as Miyamori had them [17].
2022. R. H. Blyth, Poetry and Zen: Letters and Uncollected Writings, Shambhala, a posthumous collection. The 1949 rendering again, with a comma after word where the 1949 page has a full stop, and with the passage on Buddhist simplicity quoted above [7].
Today. Every rendering cited here keeps the three parties, which is the verse, and all but Rexroth's and the 1967 reprint's keep them in one sentence; they differ on tense, from the past of Miyamori, Blyth and Rexroth to Henderson's present, the tenseless participles of Bowers and Haldane and Addiss's line with no verb, and on number, the single chrysanthemum of Blyth, Henderson, Bowers and Haldane against the plural of Miyamori, Rexroth and Addiss. Blyth's no word, singular, keeps the silence absolute, as the Japanese ず does.
A reading
The poem is its grammar, and I read it as a poem about equality; Henderson's grammar note makes its three と his example of an absolute equality [15]. Three nouns are joined by the same particle and governed by the same negative verb; the と after the flower is the list's ordinary old form [12], so it is the company the flower is listed in, not the particle, that raises it, and the effect is that the chrysanthemum is not looked at but sat with; it is one of three who have nothing to say. Miyamori's scene, in which the two people are struck dumb by the flower's beauty, puts the flower back on a pedestal that the grammar has taken away, and Blyth's sermon on non-intellectuality is true but larger than the verse. The verse is smaller and better than either: an autumn afternoon, a visit, and a silence that is comfortable because the third party in it is a flower.
Japanese Scrolls by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase
References
- 雪中庵 (大島蓼太)『蓼太句集』初編, 2 vols., afterword dated 明和6 (1769), Edo, 西村源六 and 戸倉屋喜兵衛; vol. 2, the autumn book, canvas 64, left page; the afterword and colophon canvas 87. National Institute of Japanese Literature, 国書データベース, the 長野県立大学図書館 copy, BID 100149026. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/100149026/64 · Typeset in 勝峰晋風 編『日本俳書大系』第11巻, 天明名家句選, 1927, the section's prefaces at scan 137 and the verse at scan 148. National Diet Library pid 1194197. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1194197/1/137 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1194197/1/148
- 小原国芳 編『児童百科大辞典』3, 植物篇, 児童百科大辞典刊行会, Tokyo, 1934. National Diet Library pid 1740507, scan 21. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1740507/1/21
- 正岡子規 写『発句類題全集』42, 秋の部, manuscript, about 1889–1890, 白菊 topic. National Diet Library pid 2586429, scan 197. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2586429/1/197
- 正岡子規 写『発句類題全集』65, 丙号分類, manuscript, about 1889–1890, と止 topic. National Diet Library pid 2586452, scan 240. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2586452/1/240
- Asatarō Miyamori, An Anthology of Haiku Ancient and Modern, Maruzen, Tokyo, 1932, entry 502, p. 510.
- R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 4, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1952, under CHRYSANTHEMUMS, pp. 146–147; read in the fifteenth printing, 1975.
- R. H. Blyth, Poetry and Zen: Letters and Uncollected Writings, Shambhala, 2022.
- R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 1, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1949, p. 192; read in the twentieth printing, 1971.
- 「物言う」, デジタル大辞泉 and 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/物言う-646196
- 「客」, デジタル大辞泉 and 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/客-459984
- 「亭主」, デジタル大辞泉 and 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/亭主-574268
- 「と」, デジタル大辞泉 (並立助詞 and its 補説) and 精選版 日本国語大辞典 (格助詞 ①), at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/と-579147
- 「白菊」, デジタル大辞泉 and 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/白菊-535405
- Dorothy Price (ed.), Silent Flowers, Hallmark Cards and Hokuseido Press, 1967.
- Harold G. Henderson, An Introduction to Haiku, Doubleday Anchor, Garden City, 1958, pp. 119 and 189.
- Faubion Bowers (ed.), The Classic Tradition of Haiku: An Anthology, Dover Publications, Mineola, 1996, pp. 59–60; the rendering is Bowers's own, signed FB.
- Stephen Addiss, Fumiko Yamamoto and Akira Yamamoto, Haiku: An Anthology of Japanese Poems, Shambhala, Boston, 2009.
- Michael Haldane, in Bashō and the Haikuists, Delphi Classics, collected 2022 (rendering first published 2006).
- 「大島蓼太」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/大島蓼太-17535
- 『蓼太句集』, National Institute of Japanese Literature, 国書データベース, work 533357 (三編六巻六冊: 初編 afterword 明和6, 二編 preface 天明5, 三編 afterword 寛政5). https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/work/533357
- Kenneth Rexroth, One Hundred Poems from the Japanese, New Directions, New York, 1955.