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
鉈あげてきらんとすれば木の芽かな (nata agete kiran to sureba konome kana) is Shiki's verse of a hatchet raised to cut a tree that is in bud. It stands among his verses of 1893 in his manuscript 寒山落木, and the earliest printing known is of 1924. This study follows the handbooks that dated and read it, and Blyth's English of 1952, its only one known.
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 by Shiki. It stands among the verses of 1893 in his manuscript collection 寒山落木 and was first printed in 1924, in the first volume of his collected works. The selections printed before then leave it out: the 獺祭書屋俳句帖抄 of 1902, published in his lifetime, the 子規句集 of 1909 and the 寒山落木 selection of 1915. Japanese handbooks of haiku appreciation have dated it to 1893 and read it since 1950, and Blyth, who gave its only known English rendering in 1952, saw in it a tenderness shown almost too distinctly.
Overview
The text. The 1924 全集 prints 鉈あげてきらんとすれば木の芽哉, ending in 哉 [1], and the collected edition of 1975 writes 木芽 for 木の芽: 鉈あげてきらんとすれば木芽哉 [2]. 吉田冬葉 in 1933, the handbook of 1950 and Blyth in 1952 end it in kana, 木の芽かな [3][4][5]. 哉 and かな are one word, and so are 木芽 and 木の芽, both read konome; no witness varies a word. The scroll's designs carry both endings, 哉 on three and かな on one, and the cursive writes きらん with its character, 切らん. 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. The readers who have written on the verse agree on what happens in it. 俳句学会's 俳句の解釈と鑑賞, a handbook of 1950 printed again in 1955, sets it down as 明治二十六年の作, a verse of 1893 [4]. The journal 国文学 解釈と鑑賞 in May 1957 paraphrases it: 鉈をふりあげて木を伐りたおそうとした。すると、その木にはすでに芽が見られたので、鉈をおろすことをためらつたという気持である, the hatchet raised to fell the tree, the buds already on it, and the hesitation to bring the blade down [6]. 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 [5]. 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 a 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 [7].
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 new growth breaking from a tree, a spring season word in the dictionary's own words, 木に萌え出た新芽。このめ。《季語・春》 [8], and the heading, written 木芽, that 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 [5], the only known rendering; he printed it again in 1994 [7]. 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, in the volume for 明治二十六年, as the 1924 print arranges it [1]. The collection is his own: kotobank's 日本国語大辞典 describes 寒山落木 as the manuscript into which he sorted some 12,700 verses of 1885 to 1896 [9].
1902, 1909, 1915. The selections leave it out. Shiki's 獺祭書屋俳句帖抄, the first volume published in 1902 while he lived, gives the spring of 1893 on pages 12 to 14 without it [10]. He chose its verses himself, at 虚子's suggestion, 自分の幽靈が昔の自分の句を選んでをるやうな心持で, like his own ghost choosing among his old verses, and his preface says of the year: 明治二十六年は最多く俳句を作つた年で其數は四千以上にもなつた, 1893 was the year he wrote the most, more than four thousand, and in it 濫作の極に達したやうである, he seems to have reached the height of overproduction [10]. The 子規句集 of 1909, which 高浜虚子 and 河東碧梧桐 selected as the fifth part of the 子規遺稿, gives three other verses under 木の芽 [11]. 寒川鼠骨's 寒山落木より of 1915 gives two, from 1894 and 1895, under 木芽 [12].
1924. 正岡子規, 子規全集 第1巻, 俳句全集 1, アルス, first printed 25 June 1924. Under the heading 木芽, 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 second printing of 1926 sets the page the same.
1933. 吉田冬葉, 子規の俳句と其一生. The verse, ending in かな, among others of Shiki's [3].
1950. 俳句学会 編, 俳句の解釈と鑑賞. The verse, ending in かな, dated 明治二十六年の作; the same in the edition of 1955 [4].
1957. 国文学 解釈と鑑賞, volume 22, number 5. The verse, ending in 哉, dated 明治二十六年作, and the paraphrase quoted above [6].
1975. 正岡子規, 子規全集 第1巻, 講談社. The verse as 鉈あげてきらんとすれば木芽哉 [2].
The attribution. Shiki's, in his own manuscript collection 寒山落木 [1][9], five volumes in his hand holding most of his verses by kotobank's account of the poet [13]. The date is the volume's: the 1924 print files the verse in 卷二, the volume for 明治二十六年, 1893, and the handbooks of 1950 and 1957 give the same year; no witness carries a headnote or a note at the verse. 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 [5][7].
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 [5].
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 [7].
A reading
I read the verse as Blyth and the 1957 commentator did, and would keep Blyth's reservation. The hatchet is up and the cut is coming, and the buds, seen only now, stop it; the verse is the stop, and the closing word holds it. It is a small verse of a young man's spring, one of the more than four thousand of the year he wrote the most, filed under the season word it turns on, and it needs no story. Shiki did not choose it when he chose his own, and his friends did not choose it for theirs; it reached print in the complete edition, and it has been read since as an example of the feeling haiku shows, sometimes too plainly.
Notes
- The two printings of 1924 and 1926. The National Diet Library catalogues both of its copies of the アルス volume as 1925. The colophons read 大正十三年六月二十五日發行, 25 June 1924, and, in the second copy, a 二版 of 大正十五年, 1926; the set's later volumes ran into 1925 and 1926 [1][9].
- The Hokuseido reprint's pagination. The verse stands in the 1952 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, first printing 25 June 1924, p. 250 (寒山落木 卷二); colophon at scan 357. National Diet Library pid 978834, scan 138. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/978834/1/138 — the 二版 of 1926, the same page at pid 978835, scan 137, colophon scan 356. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/978835/1/137
- 正岡子規『子規全集』第1巻, 俳句1, 講談社, 1975. National Diet Library pid 12534762, scan 123, read in the NDL Digital full-text snippet only. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12534762/1/123
- 吉田冬葉『子規の俳句と其一生』, 交蘭社, 1933. National Diet Library pid 1210910, scan 57, read in the NDL Digital full-text snippet only. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1210910/1/57
- 俳句学会 編『俳句の解釈と鑑賞』, 第二書房, 1950, scan 27, and the edition of 1955, scan 28. National Diet Library pids 1340878 and 1342453, read in the NDL Digital full-text snippets only. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1340878/1/27
- R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 4, Autumn-Winter, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1952, Preface p. vii and Appendix I.
- 『国文学 解釈と鑑賞』22巻5号（通巻252号）, 至文堂, May 1957. National Diet Library pid 3550203, scan 61, read in the NDL Digital full-text snippet only. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/3550203/1/61
- R. H. Blyth, The Genius of Haiku, British Haiku Society and Hokuseido Press, 1994, pp. 93–94.
- 「木の芽」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/木の芽-475294
- 「寒山落木」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典 and ブリタニカ国際大百科事典 小項目事典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/寒山落木-48811
- 正岡子規『獺祭書屋俳句帖抄』上巻, 高浜虚子 編, 俳書堂, 1902: the preface, dated 明治卅五年一月卅日, pp. 3–15 (scans 3 and 8), and 明治二十六年 pp. 11–14 (scans 23–25). National Diet Library pid 875216. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/875216/1/24
- 高浜虚子・河東碧梧桐 編『子規遺稿』第五編, 子規句集, 俳書堂, 1909, p. 34, 木の芽. National Diet Library pid 871911, scan 29. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/871911/1/29
- 寒川鼠骨 編『寒山落木より 子規句集』, 政教社, 1915, p. 74, 木芽. National Diet Library pid 954209, scan 70. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/954209/1/70
- 「正岡子規」, 日本大百科全書, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/正岡子規