うらやまし美しう成て散る紅葉 urayamashi utsukushū natte chiru momiji Shikō - How enviable, Turning beautiful then falling, maple leaves
This is a philological study of the haiku うらやまし美しう成て散る紅葉 (urayamashi utsukushū natte chiru momiji), given to Bashō's disciple Shikō. It spans more than a century, from its earliest known printing in 1909, and examines where the verse is first printed with his name, how its envy has been read, and how it came into English.
Abstract
うらやまし美しう成て散る紅葉, enviable: to turn beautiful, and then to fall, the maple leaves, is a hokku given to 各務支考 (1665–1731), one of Bashō's ten disciples. Its earliest known witnesses are two books of 1909 from one publisher, each with 支考 beside the verse in its name column; no known witness dates it or names the book it comes from. The line opens on its feeling and gives its object last, and Miyamori, whose 1932 anthology holds the earliest known English rendering, read in it the samurai's admiration for what falls at its height. The attribution is uncontested and rests on 1909, not on the poet's own century.
Overview
The text. The scroll carries うらやまし美しう成て散る紅葉, and no known witness varies a word of it: one 1909 book writes 成て [1], the other なつて [2], one word in two spellings, and Miyamori [3] and Yasuda [4] print the same verse. The meter is five, eight, five: う・ら・や・ま・し, う・つ・く・し・う・な・つ・て, ち・る・も・み・じ, the middle line one over its count. Miyamori also prints what he calls another reading, opening 花よりも美しくなりて, more beautiful than the flowers it turns, which he renders The maple leafage turns more beautiful / Than cherry-flowers, then falls readily [3]. It shares only its close with the verse, no other witness carries it, and he gives it no source: it is a different verse on the same thought.
The sense. One sense, given in order: the feeling first, how enviable, and its object last, the maple leaves that turn beautiful and then fall. Miyamori set it in a tradition, the 山桜 that scatters at the height of its beauty, the samurai's flower, and the maxim 玉砕瓦全, better a jewel broken than a tile whole, and read the poet as envying the maple for going the same way [3]. Yasuda made the envy everyone's, Envied by us all [4]. Blyth wrote of the poet, not of this verse, His haiku show his strong and stubborn character; they are practically senryu [5], which fits a verse that opens on its own opinion.
The words. うらやまし is enviable; how I envy. 美しう成て is having become beautiful, 美しう the classical adverbial of 美しく, read utsukushū. 散る紅葉 is the maple leaves that fall, 紅葉 an autumn season word. As words the line says: Enviable: having turned beautiful, to fall; the maple leaves.
The verse in English. The verse entered English in Miyamori's anthology of 1932, How I envy maple leafage / Which turns beautiful and then falls! [3], the earliest known rendering. Yasuda rhymed it in 1947 [4]. Both name 支考, and both keep the envy first.
The historical record
1909. 沼波瓊音, 『俳句の作り方』, a manual of haiku composition. Pages 86–87 list verses by their closing forms, and under 「し」 the verse stands second, with the poets' names in a column at the foot that sets 支考 beneath it [1]:
山里は萬歲遲し梅の花 芭蕉 · うらやまし美しう成て散る紅葉 支考 · 老淋し若葉の花をさかす枝 杉風 · 酒涼し百首に洩れて西の宮 野坡
The verse is the second of the four, enviable: to turn beautiful, and then to fall, the maple leaves, given as an example of its form among verses by 芭蕉, 杉風 and 野坡, with no comment.
1909. 高木武 (ed.), 『文学錦嚢』, a literary anthology. Page 10, in its 名吟之部, the section of famous verses, under 俳句, prints the verse with the verb in kana, うらやまし美しうなつて散る紅葉, with 支考 beneath it, between verses marked 同, the same, for 去來 above and for 支考 below [2]. The same verse and the same poet, in a second book from the same publisher in the same year.
The attribution. 支考's, on Japanese and English witnesses alike. Both 1909 books set his name beside the verse [1][2]; Miyamori [3] and Yasuda [4] name him. No known witness dates the verse or names the book it comes from, and none is older than 1909; no other attribution is known. 各務支考 (1665–1731), of 美濃, one of the ten disciples of Bashō, founded the 美濃派 after his teacher's death and wrote 笈日記 and 葛の松原 [6]; Miyamori calls him first a Buddhist priest, later a physician [3], and Blyth first a Zen monk of Daichiji Temple who afterwards became a doctor [5].
What is not a source. The 山桜 and the maxim 玉砕瓦全 that Miyamori sets beside the verse are his frame for it, set there in 1932 [3]; the verse names neither, and the 1909 books print it without comment. Miyamori's another reading is a second verse, not a variant of this one.
The verse in English
1932. Asatarō Miyamori, An Anthology of Haiku Ancient and Modern, no. 229, pages 308–309, under 紅葉, The Maple Leaves. The verse, the translation, a biography of the poet, a note, and a second text. The translation [3]:
How I envy maple leafage Which turns beautiful and then falls!
The note:
The yamazakura or wild cherry, which scatters its flowers soon after they attain the zenith of their beauty, is considered a symbol of the spirit of the samurai … Better be a jewel broken into pieces than a tile kept whole … These traditional ideas led the writer of this verse to admire the maple leaves.
The rendering keeps the verse's order, the envy first and the leaves last. The note is a reading of the verse, not a gloss on its words: the verse names neither the cherry nor the samurai.
1947. Kenneth Yasuda, A Pepper-Pod, under MAPLE LEAVES. A rhymed three-line version, with the romaji Urayamashi / Utsukushū natte / Chiru momiji and the name Shikō (1664-1731) [4]:
Envied by us all, The leaves of maple turn so Beautiful — then fall!
It adds a subject the Japanese does not name, us all; うらやまし says only enviable. Its romaji writes the long vowel the reading needs.
Today. The house title, How enviable, Turning beautiful then falling, maple leaves, is Timothy L. Jackowski's, for Takase Studios, and it keeps Miyamori's sense and his order. A rendering of this line has one thing to keep: the envy comes first and the leaves last.
A reading
I read the verse as Miyamori did: a verse of the tradition that admires the thing that falls at its best, said by a poet who liked to say what he thought. The envy is the point, and it is the poet's own; the maple is envied because it ends well. The attribution is sound as far as it goes, two Japanese books of 1909 and two translators who agree with them and no rival, and it goes no further back than 1909. Until the verse is found in a collection of his own, it is 支考's on the word of those books.
Notes
- The poet's birth year. The Japanese dictionaries and Blyth give 1665 [6][5]; Miyamori and Yasuda give 1664 [3][4]. 日本人名大辞典 dates his birth to 寛文5年, which is 1665 [6].
References
- 沼波瓊音『俳句の作り方』, 文成社, 1909, pp. 86–87. National Diet Library pid 994608, scan 48. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/994608/1/48
- 高木武 編『文学錦嚢』, 文成社, 1909, p. 10. National Diet Library pid 872638, scan 15. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/872638/1/15
- Asatarō Miyamori, An Anthology of Haiku Ancient and Modern, Maruzen, Tokyo, 1932, no. 229, pp. 308–309. Internet Archive anthologyofhaiku0000asat. https://archive.org/details/anthologyofhaiku0000asat
- Kenneth Yasuda, A Pepper-Pod, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1947; Charles E. Tuttle, 1976, MAPLE LEAVES.
- R. H. Blyth, A History of Haiku, vol. 1, Hokuseido, Tokyo, 1963, p. 162. Internet Archive historyofhaikuin0001unse. https://archive.org/details/historyofhaikuin0001unse
- 「各務支考」, デジタル大辞泉 · 日本人名大辞典 · 旺文社日本史事典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/各務支考-15776
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