遅き日のつもりて遠き昔かな osoki hi no tsumorite tōki mukashi kana Buson - The long slow days of spring, piling up, so far away the past
This is a philological study of the haiku 遅き日のつもりて遠き昔かな (osoki hi no tsumorite tōki mukashi kana), given to Buson under the headnote 懐旧, longing for the past. It examines the two waka the tradition names as the verse's parents, and its long English lineage from Blyth's bitterness to Shirane's dating.
Abstract
遅き日のつもりて遠き昔かな, the long slow days piling up, and how far away the past, is Buson's, carried in his own 句集 of 1784 under the headnote 懐旧, longing for the past. Its earliest print is an undated Edo almanac, and Shiki copied it into his manuscript anthology in 1889; the tradition names two waka as its parents, one about days piling into age and one about snow piling on a peak. Blyth read bitterness in the verse from 1949, and Shirane in 2002 dated its composition to 1775, though no Japanese witness gives a date; the house's English is Shirane's rendering unpunctuated, credited for his note but not for the lines.
Overview
The text. The scroll carries 遅き日のつもりて遠き昔かな, and the witnesses write one text three ways. The last word is 哉 in Shiki's 1889 copy and かな in the printed collections [1]; 昔 is kanji in most and むかし in Fujii 藤井's 1935 edition [2]; the Edo almanac writes とほき in kana and stops the column at むかし, with 蕪村 beneath it and no かな, the almanac's own abbreviation [3]. The meter is five, seven, five: お・そ・き・ひ・の, つ・も・り・て・と・お・き, む・か・し・か・な.
The sense. The headnote has done the reading since the 句集: 懐旧, longing for the past. Hekigotō 碧梧桐 called it subjective and Meisetsu 鳴雪 called it beloved, and the tradition, through 架空's dream-Buson, gave it two waka for parents, so that the piling of days into age and of snow onto a peak stands behind the piling of the long days here [4]. Noguchi 野口 in 1920 heard Landor in it [4]. Blyth in 1950 heard Tennyson, O Death in Life, the days that are no more, quoted without his name, and said the bitterness is in the sounds; in 1963 he came back to the sounds again [5]. Shirane in 2002 read the long day as what reminds the poet of youth, far away, and of the many springs since [6]. Two things stand at the end of that. The verse has never had two meanings, only two temperatures: Blyth's bitterness and the collections' plainer 懐旧. And its date is not settled in English, Shirane saying 1775 and Carter saying unknown [7].
The words. 遅き日, also 遅日, is the long day of late spring, the season word; Shirane: a late-spring day when the sun sets late and the day seems to last forever; the almanac files the verse under 遲日 beside a 万葉集 poem and a 詞 entry on the same theme [3][6]. つもりて is piling up, said of days as of snow, and the tradition gives it two parents: Narihira 業平's 大方は月をもめでじこれぞこの積れば人の老いとなるもの, I will not even praise the moon; it is this that, piling up, becomes a man's age, and 家隆's 高砂の尾上の鹿の啼かぬ日もつもりはてぬる峰の白雪, even on days the deer of 高砂's peak does not cry, the white snow of the summit piles to its end; 木村架空 puts both in Buson's own mouth in 1920 [4]. 遠き昔 is the far past, and かな the exclamation. Blyth hears the sounds: osoki, tsumori, mukashi; no, na, the k and t of the passing of time [5]. As words the line says: The slow days, piling up; how far away, the past.
The verse in English. Blyth read the verse three times between 1949 and 1963, always hearing bitterness in its sounds [5]; Carter [7], Shirane [6], Haldane [8], Keene [9], Katō [10], and Sawa and Shiffert [11] followed. Two of the later renderings read it through Hagiwara Sakutarō's thesis of Buson as a poet of nostalgia, and Shirane alone dates its composition, to 1775.
The historical record
1784. 蕪村句集, the poet's own collection, edited by 几董. The source every editor names, by Handa's 1925 tag and Fujii's 1935 colophon [12][2].
Edo, undated. 鳥飼洞斎, 月令博物筌, an almanac of the seasons by topic. Under 遲日, after a 六百番歌合 poem, a 万葉集 poem, a 詞 entry and 重五's haikai verse 傘張の…, the column 俳 遅き日のつもりてとほきむかし 蕪村: the verse without its かな, the poet beneath it. The earliest known print [3].
1889. Masaoka Shiki 正岡子規, 発句類題全集, his manuscript anthology by topic, two copies. One copy under the small headnote 懐旧, 遅き日のつもりて遠き昔哉, with a parenthesized attribution at the foot of the column that remains unsettled; the other names 蕪村 [1].
1920. 木村架空, 蕪村夢物語; Noguchi Yonejirō, 日本の美術. 架空 stages the verse as a conversation: 碧梧桐氏曰はく、はる〳〵昔を懷ふ情で、主觀的の句である, a feeling of longing for the far-off past; a subjective verse; 鳴雪氏曰はく、私の大好きな句である, a verse I love; and Buson himself in a dream, 蕪村曰はく、この句には生みの親がある, this verse has parents, the two waka quoted above. Noguchi, in the same year, recalls comparing it to Walter Savage Landor in his Oxford lecture on haiku [4].
1925. 蕪村三千句; Handa Ryōhei, 蕪村俳句全集 季題別. The 三千句 prints the spring run under the section heading 遲日: first 山鳥の尾をふむ春の入日かな with the headnote 西山遲日, then 遲き日や雉子の下り居る橋の上 with none, then 懷舊 over 遲き日のつもりて遠き昔かな, then the other long-day verses. Handa prints the same three under 遲日 in the same order and closes them with 右三句、句集, the source tag that says where the verse comes from [12].
1935. Fujii Shiei, 名家俳句集, the 蕪村句集 section. 西山遲日 山鳥の尾をふむ春の入日哉, 遲き日や雉子の下りゐる橋の上, then 懷舊 遲き日のつもりて遠きむかしかな, and next 春の海終日のたり〳〵哉. The section closes with 蕪村句集 on the following leaf [2].
The dictionaries today. kotobank's entry for 与謝蕪村 gives the poet's dates and does not quote the verse [13].
The attribution. Buson's at every witness that names a poet, with no rival: the almanac writes 蕪村 under the column, Shiki's copy names him, and the three collections of 1925 and 1935 print the verse in his 句集 section with the headnote 懷舊 [3][1][12][2]. The source is his own 蕪村句集 of 1784, by Handa Ryōhei's tag, 右三句、句集, which covers this verse and the two 遲日 verses before it, and by the closing colophon of Fujii's 1935 section [12][2]. The date is Shirane's: this poem was composed in 1775, in his 2002 anthology, with no Japanese witness giving one, and Carter's 1991 anthology files the verse under Poems of Unknown Date; the two disagree [6][7].
What is not a source. The two waka are the tradition's parents for the verse, staged by 架空 in 1920 in Buson's voice; they are a reading, not a record of what Buson had in mind [4]. The heading 西山遲日 belongs to the neighboring verse in every collection, and any listing that puts it over this one has read across a column. The 1775 date rests on Shirane alone.
The verse in English
1949, 1950 and 1963. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, volume 1, Eastern Culture, page 368; volume 2, Spring, page 45; A History of Haiku, volume 1, page 261, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo. Slow days passing, accumulating,— / How distant they are, / The things of the past!, in the first two; the 1963 History re-cuts it, Slow days passing, / Accumulating,— / How distant past things!; in the first, under the technique of haiku, the k sounds used to portray the bitterness of the passing of time; in the second, Thinking of long ago, all one spring day—this day, too, now belongs to the old, forgotten, far-off things. It is as remote, as irrevocable, as the most distant ages. O Death in Life, the days that are no more!, Tennyson's line unnamed, and the bitterness of the feeling comes out in the onomatopoeia [5].
1976. Donald Keene, World Within Walls, Grove Press, page 343. Long, slow spring days, / Piling up, take me far away / Into the past., headed Recalling the Past, cited as the verse Hagiwara Sakutarō used to prove his thesis of Buson as a poet of nostalgia, with Keene's note that the mood is strengthened by the repetition of the o sounds [9].
1983. Katō Shūichi, A History of Japanese Literature, volume 2, The Years of Isolation, translated by Don Sanderson, Kodansha International and Macmillan, printed page 126 in both editions; again in the 1997 abridged edition. Slow days build up / The distant past., as the example of nostalgia understood as the discovery of the past in the present, paired with the kite in yesterday's sky [10].
1991. Steven D. Carter, Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology, Stanford University Press, page 394, no. 983. Under Poems of Unknown Date, headed SPRING: Days getting longer / and memories building, going / far into the past. [7]
2002. Haruo Shirane, Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900, Columbia University Press, page 545, under Literati Meditations. Longing for the past: / osoki hi no / tsumorite toki / mukashi kana / The long, slow days of spring / piling up—so far away, the past!, and note 16: "Long day" (osoki hi) is a late-spring day when the sun sets late and the day seems to last forever, reminding the poet both of the past, of youth, which seems so far away, and of the many springs and years that have come and gone since that time. This poem was composed in 1775. [6]
2006. Michael Haldane, in Bashō and the Haikuists, Delphi Classics, 2022. lingering days / accumulate the distance / of the past, the romaji misprinted osoko hi no [8].
2007. Yuki Sawa and Edith Marcombe Shiffert, Haiku Master Buson, White Pine Press (first published 1978), page 36. Lengthening days / accummulate—farther off / the days of long ago!, headed Yearning for the Past and tagged (Kaikyu), the 懐旧 of the source; the spelling is the book's [11].
Today. The house page prints The long slow days of spring / piling up, so far away / the past, which is Shirane's line with its dashes and comma removed and broken in two, and credits Shirane and his book for the note beneath it, not for the lines. A rendering of this line has one thing to keep, and everyone from Blyth to Haldane has kept it: the piling comes before the distance.
A reading
I read the verse under its headnote, as every collection prints it: not Blyth's bitterness, which is Tennyson's, but the mild vertigo of a day so long it makes the years visible. The tradition's two parents matter, above all Narihira's 積れば人の老いとなるもの, which is the whole verse in a waka's last line. The date I carry as Shirane's, since Carter declines to give one and no Japanese witness does.
References
- 正岡子規 写『発句類題全集』, 1889. National Diet Library pid 2586392, scan 111, and pid 2586444, scan 208. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2586392/1/111
- 藤井紫影 校『名家俳句集』, 1935, printed pages 396–397. National Diet Library pid 1259717, scan 222. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1259717/1/222
- 鳥飼洞斎『月令博物筌』, undated Edo. National Diet Library pid 2557809, scan 6. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2557809/1/6
- 木村架空『蕪村夢物語』, 1920, National Diet Library pid 947592, komas 9, 93; 野口米次郎『日本の美術』, 大鐙閣, 1920, National Diet Library pid 981161, komas 127–128.
- R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 1, Eastern Culture, p. 368; vol. 2, Spring, p. 45, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1949–1950; A History of Haiku, vol. 1, p. 261, Hokuseido Press, 1963.
- Haruo Shirane, Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900, Columbia University Press, 2002, p. 545, note 16.
- Steven D. Carter, Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology, Stanford University Press, 1991, p. 394, no. 983.
- Michael Haldane, in Bashō and the Haikuists, Delphi Classics, 2022 (rendering first published 2006).
- Donald Keene, World Within Walls, Grove Press, 1976, p. 343.
- Katō Shūichi, A History of Japanese Literature, vol. 2, The Years of Isolation, tr. Don Sanderson, Kodansha International and Macmillan, 1983, p. 126 (both editions); 1997 abridged edition.
- Yuki Sawa and Edith Marcombe Shiffert, Haiku Master Buson, White Pine Press, 2007 (first published 1978), p. 36.
- 『蕪村三千句』, 1925, National Diet Library pid 924926, scan 6, printed page 6; 半田良平 編『蕪村俳句全集 季題別』, 1925, National Diet Library pid 964212, scan 11, printed page 9. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/924926/1/6
- 「与謝蕪村」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/与謝蕪村