鉈あげてきらんとすれば木の芽かな nata agete kiran to sureba konome kana Shiki - Lifting up the hatchet, To cut it down, It was budding
This is a philological study of the haiku 鉈あげてきらんとすれば木の芽かな (nata agete kiran to sureba konome kana), given to Shiki. It spans from its earliest known printing in a manuscript volume of 1893, printed in 1925, and examines the one English rendering it has had.
Abstract
鉈あげてきらんとすれば木の芽かな, hatchet raised to cut it, and there, the buds, is a hokku attributed to Shiki, standing in his manuscript collection 寒山落木, 卷二, the volume for 1893, as the 1925 全集 prints it. No witness dates the verse or names an earlier book, and the attribution goes back no further than 1893. Blyth gives its only known English rendering, printed in the Preface to Haiku volume 4 in 1952 and again in 1994, where he read in it a tenderness almost too distinctly shown.
Overview
The text. The scroll carries 鉈あげてきらんとすれば木の芽かな, and the 1925 全集 prints it with 哉 for かな: 鉈あげてきらんとすれば木の芽哉 [1]. 哉 and かな are one word. Blyth prints the verse in kana, 鉈あげてきらんとすれば木の芽かな, above his English [2]. No witness varies a word. The meter is five, seven, five: な・た・あ・げ・て, き・ら・ん・と・す・れ・ば, こ・の・め・か・な.
The sense. One reader has written on the verse, and he wrote twice. Blyth, in the Preface to the last volume of Haiku in 1952, sets it after a verse of Taigi's about passing through a temple and says: The tenderness of mind which is the most prominent characteristic of the writer of haiku is distinctly (almost too distinctly) seen the following verse by Shiki [2]. The almost too distinctly is his reservation: the verse shows its feeling. In The Genius of Haiku, printed after his death, he repeats the verse and adds the pairing: This has been compared to the verse by Meisetsu, composed thirteen years later: Kama o togeba akaza kanashimu keshiki ari — Sharpening the sickle, / The goose-foot / Looks as if grieving [3].
The words. 鉈 is the hatchet, the woodsman's short heavy blade. あげて … きらんとすれば is raised it, and was about to cut, when; the verse turns inside すれば, the conditional that carries a discovery. 木の芽, konome, is the tree's buds, a spring season word, and the heading the 全集 files the verse under; it is the reason a hatchet stops. かな closes on the buds and holds the arrest. As words the line says: Hatchet raised, and about to cut, when: the buds.
The verse in English. The verse entered English in Blyth's Preface to Haiku volume 4 in 1952, Lifting up the hatchet / To cut it down,— / It was budding [2], the only known rendering; he printed it again in 1994 [3]. Both keep the buds last, after the blade is already up.
The historical record
1893. 正岡子規, in 寒山落木 卷二. The verse stands in his manuscript collection, by the year of the volume the 1925 print assigns it to [1].
1925. 正岡子規, 子規全集 第1巻, 俳句全集 1, アルス. Under the heading 木の芽, on printed page 250, three verses stand, this one first: 鉈あげてきらんとすれば木の芽哉 / 枯枝と知れてものうし木の芽時 / 木の芽とは豆腐の上に生ふる者なり; then 接木 and 椿 [1]. The book's contents put this leaf in 寒山落木 卷二, 明治二十六年.
The dictionaries today. kotobank's entry for 正岡子規 gives the poet's dates and names 寒山落木, and does not quote the verse [4].
The attribution. Shiki's, in his own manuscript collection 寒山落木 [1], five volumes in his hand holding most of his verses by kotobank's account [4], as the 1925 全集 typeset it [1]. The book's table of contents puts the leaf in 卷二, the volume for 明治二十六年, 1893; that is a date by inclusion, not a note at the verse, and no witness carries a headnote. No one has given the verse to anyone else. Blyth names Shiki in 1952 and 1994 and adds that the verse has been compared to 鳴雪's sickle verse of thirteen years later; who compared them he does not say [2][3].
What is not a source. The date 1893 is the volume's, not a note at the verse. The Meisetsu pairing is Blyth's report of a comparison he does not attribute.
The verse in English
1952. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, volume 4, Autumn-Winter, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, Preface page vii and Appendix I. Lifting up the hatchet / To cut it down,— / It was budding. The Japanese in kana above it; the romaji, Nata agete kiran to sureba konome kana, in the appendix that transliterates the Preface's verses [2].
1994. R. H. Blyth, The Genius of Haiku, British Haiku Society and Hokuseido Press, pages 93–94. The same three lines with the same dash, and the Meisetsu comparison quoted above [3].
Today. The house page prints Blyth's lines to the word, credited, with his dash after down set as a comma. A rendering of this line has one thing to keep: the buds come last, after the blade is already up.
A reading
I read the verse as Blyth did and would keep his reservation. The hatchet is up and the cut is coming, and the buds, seen only now, stop it; the verse is the stop, and かな holds it. It is a small verse of a young man's spring, filed by his editors under the season word it turns on, and it needs no story. The text, the poet and the romaji stand on one Japanese book and one translator, which is enough for a verse this plain and thin for an account.
Notes
- The Hokuseido reprint's pagination. The verse stands in that volume's Preface, on the page numbered vii, and again in Appendix I as romaji; the volume's own pagination ends at 396. The Hokuseido reprint of the early 1980s numbers the four volumes continuously — its reprint of the Spring volume carries pages 423–434 where the 1950 printing carries 99–103 — so a page 985 may exist in that reprint's fourth volume.
References
- 正岡子規『子規全集』第1巻, 俳句全集1, アルス, 1925, p. 250. National Diet Library pid 978835, scan 137. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/978835/1/137
- R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 4, Autumn-Winter, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1952, Preface p. vii and Appendix I.
- R. H. Blyth, The Genius of Haiku, British Haiku Society and Hokuseido Press, 1994, pp. 93–94.
- 「正岡子規」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/正岡子規