ものいはず客と亭主と白菊と mono iwazu kyaku to teishu to shiragiku to Ryōta - They spoke no words, The visitor the host, And the white chrysanthemum
ものいはず客と亭主と白菊と (mono iwazu kyaku to teishu to shiragiku to), a guest, a host and a white chrysanthemum sharing one silence, is Ōshima Ryōta's, printed in Edo in 1769 in his own collection. Its history follows the text, the particle と it turns on, and its renderings into English from 1932 to 2009.
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, printed in Edo in 1769, eighteen years before his death, among the chrysanthemum verses in the autumn book of the first part of his own collection, 蓼太句集; Shiki's manuscript compilation of 1889 names that collection as its source. The earliest English rendering cited here is Miyamori Asatarō's of 1932, and Blyth's of 1949 was borrowed uncredited by a 1967 gift anthology. 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. Later English, from Kenneth Rexroth's in 1955 to Stephen Addiss's in 2009, keeps the three parties and moves between the past tense and none.
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 three ways and mean one: ものいはす in the poet's collection as printed in 1769, 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], ものいはす in Miyamori with the voicing mark dropped [5], ものいわず in Blyth in modern kana [6]. 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: host and guest, 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 the essay collected as 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, page 147, and follows it with a short passage on the flower the Buddha held up, which did not preach [6]; in vol. 1, page 192, it stands beside Zhuangzi on the Way that does not speak [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, the verb 言ふ negated with ず, and it is the only verb in the poem; it governs everything after it. 客と亭主と is the guest and the host, joined by と, and the third と after 白菊, the white chrysanthemum, puts the flower in the same list on the same terms: three who say nothing. 白菊 is an autumn season word. 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 verse entered English in Miyamori's anthology of 1932 [5], and Blyth translated it twice more, in 1949 and 1952, and again in the essay collected as Poetry and Zen [8][6][7]. A 1967 gift anthology borrowed Blyth's 1949 lines uncredited [9]; Henderson in 1958 gave the silence a title, Communion, and put it in the present, From them no words come [10]; Bowers in 1996 and Addiss in 2009 dropped the tense altogether, Saying nothing and Without a word [11][12], as Michael Haldane's not speaking a word of 2006 does [13].
The historical record
1769. Ryōta, 蓼太句集, the first part of the poet's own collection, printed 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 [14]. The collection grew to three parts: the second has a preface of 1785 and the third, printed after his death, an afterword of 1793 [15]. The print dates the verse: Ryōta had written it by the autumn of 1769.
1889. 正岡子規, 発句類題全集, a manuscript compilation of hokku by topic, in Shiki's hand. 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, the latter marked 同, the same poet [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 first part typeset whole, with the same neighbors, from a printing that carries a preface by 南畝子 dated 1777 [1].
1934. 小原国芳, 児童百科大辞典, an encyclopedia for children. 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, printed 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 [14]. Shiki's manuscript compilation of hokku by topic, written in 1889, 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 the same book [1]. Miyamori in 1932, Blyth from 1949, and Haldane in 2006 all give it to Ryōta [5][8][13]. 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, who filed it once for its flower and once for its grammar.
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, ものいはす客と亭主と白菊と, 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: They spoke no word, / The visitor, the host, / And the white chrysanthemum [8]. In the fourth, under chrysanthemums, the middle line reordered: 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 [10]. 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 [16]. The past tense, the three kept apart by full stops, and the flowers plural.
1967. Silent Flowers, a Hallmark gift anthology of haiku. Blyth's 1949 lines with the commas changed, and no translator named [9].
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 headnote to 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" [11].
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 [13]. 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 [12].
2022. R. H. Blyth, Poetry and Zen, Shambhala, a posthumous collection of his essays. The 1949 rendering again, with the passage on Buddhist simplicity quoted above [7].
Today. Every rendering cited here keeps the three parties as one list, which is the verse; they differ on tense, from Miyamori's and Blyth's past to Henderson's present and the tenseless participles of Bowers and Haldane, and on number, Blyth's single chrysanthemum 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, as Henderson did when he made its three と his example of that particle [10]. Three nouns are joined by the same particle and governed by the same negative verb, 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.
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. National Diet Library pid 1194197, scan 148. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1194197/1/148
- 小原国芳 編『児童百科大辞典』, 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』, 1889, 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』, 1889, 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, p. 147.
- R. H. Blyth, Poetry and Zen, Shambhala, 2022.
- R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 1, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1949, p. 192.
- Silent Flowers, Hallmark, 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.