夜の蘭香にかくれてや花白し yoru no ran ka ni kakurete ya hana shiroshi Buson - An evening orchid, Hidden in its scent, The flower's whiteness
This is a philological study of the haiku 夜の蘭香にかくれてや花白し (yoru no ran ka ni kakurete ya hana shiroshi), given to Buson. It spans from its earliest known witness, the poet's own late selection printed in 1784, and examines whether a neighboring headnote belongs to this verse and how it came into English.
Abstract
夜の蘭香にかくれてや花白し, the orchid at night, hidden in its scent, the flower is white, is Buson's, standing in his own late selection, the 蕪村句集 of 1784. Every later edition agrees on the text, and settles a question the manuscript record alone could not: a two-character headnote, 蘭夕, printed beside the verse in three editions, belongs not to it but to the verse that follows. Blyth gave the verse's earliest known English rendering in 1952, and Sawa and Shiffert in 2007 and Addiss in 2009 gave two more.
Overview
The text. The scroll carries 夜の蘭香にかくれてや花白し, and so does the poet's own book. The 蕪村句集 of 1784 prints 夜の蘭香にかくれてや花白し in its autumn section, after the morning-glory verses and before a column that opens with the two-character headnote 蘭夕 over a different verse, 狐のくれし奇楠を炷む [1]. Every later edition agrees: the 1896 句文集 [2], the 1906 annotated edition [3], the 1935 edition of the 句集 [4]. Shiki's manuscript compilation of 1889 writes 隠れ for かくれ at one of its two entries, a kanji for a kana and one word [5]. No witness varies a word. Whether 蘭夕 is this verse's headnote, the 1784 leaf settles: it stands at the head of the next column, in the position every headnote in the book takes, over the incense verse, and this verse has none. The meter is five, seven, five, with 香 read ka: よ・る・の・ら・ん, か・に・か・く・れ・て・や, は・な・し・ろ・し.
The sense. One reading, and it is Blyth's paraphrase [6]. The orchid's scent grows as its body disappears into the dark, until the flower seems to have hidden inside its own perfume, and what the eye keeps of it is its whiteness. There is no argument in the record; the verse has never needed one.
The words. 夜の蘭 is the orchid at night; 蘭 is an autumn season word, and Blyth files the verse under ORCHIDS in his autumn volume [6]. 香にかくれてや is hidden in its scent, with や an exclamation at the hiding; Blyth's note has the physics of it, as it grew darker, nothing could be seen of the stem and the leaves, but the fragrance was stronger than ever, and the orchid hid in its own perfume [6]. 花白し is a predicate, the flower is white: the one thing that stays visible, palely gleaming through the darkness. 香 is read ka, the reading the meter needs. As words the line says: The orchid at night, hidden in its scent: the flower is white.
The verse in English. Blyth's 1952 rendering is the earliest known [6]; Sawa and Shiffert in 2007 [7], Addiss in 2009 [8] and Kern in 2018 [9] gave three more, all keeping 花白し as a fact rather than a description.
The historical record
1784. 蕪村句集, 前編 巻之下, 秋之部, edited by Kitō 几董, the poet's own late selection. The verse in the autumn run after the morning-glory verses; the next column opens with the headnote 蘭夕 over 狐のくれし奇楠を炷む [1].
1889. 正岡子規, 発句類題全集, a manuscript compilation of verses by topic. Under 蘭, 夜の蘭香に隠れてや花白し 蕪村 [5]; and in a second volume, 夜の蘭香にかくれてや花白し with the poet and the source, 蕪村句集 [10].
1896. Mimori Mikio 三森幹雄, 蕪村句文集, an edition with the editor's marks. The verse in the autumn run, 朝顏や手拭のはしの藍をかこつ before it and 蘭夕 狐のくれし after [2].
1906. 岩本梓石, 蕪村俳句全集 標註, an annotated edition. The same run, 夜の蘭香にかくれてや花白し, then 蘭タ狐のくれし奇楠を炷ん; the edition annotates the verse's neighbors and not this verse [3].
1935. 藤井紫影, 名家俳句集, the 蕪翁句集 巻之下. The verse in place, with 朝貌や手拭のはしの藍をかこつ immediately before it and 蘭夕 狐のくれし奇楠を炷かむ 辨慶讃 after [4].
The dictionaries today. The Nipponica entry on kotobank, 蕪村, gives the poet's dates 1716–1783; Shimizu Takayuki 清水孝之's judgment that the 句集 was the poet's own late selection is at the attribution below [11].
The attribution. Buson's, and never anyone else's. The 句集 that carries it was published under Kitō's name with a postscript dated 天明四甲辰之冬十二月, the twelfth month of 1784, which falls in January–February 1785 by the Western calendar [1]; the encyclopedia entry on kotobank, following Shimizu Takayuki, holds on the evidence of Buson's own late verse-books in the 本間美術館 that the selection was the poet's own and that Kitō copied it faithfully to print [11]. Shiki's 1889 manuscript enters the verse twice and names the 蕪村句集 as its source at the second entry [10]. The 1896, 1906 and 1935 editions are editions of Buson [2][3][4]. Blyth in 1952 carries it and does not doubt it; Sawa and Shiffert in 2007 and Addiss in 2009 carry it too [6][7][8]. No witness dates the composition.
What is not a source. The headnote 蘭夕, an orchid evening, printed beside this verse in three editions, belongs to the next verse, 狐のくれし奇楠を炷む, burning the incense-wood the fox gave; the leaf places it at the head of that verse's column, as every headnote in the book is placed. It is not this verse's. The morning-glory verses before it in every edition are its neighbors in Buson's ordering, not its kin.
The verse in English
1952. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, volume 4, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, under ORCHIDS, pages 125–126. An evening orchid,— / It hid in its scent, / The flower white, with the note on the darkening and the perfume quoted above [6].
2007. Yuki Sawa and Edith Marcombe Shiffert, Haiku Master Buson, White Pine Press. An orchid at night— / hidden by its own fragrance, / the white flower, with the romaji [7].
2009. Stephen Addiss, Haiku: An Anthology of Japanese Poems, Shambhala. In the introduction, as the example of a verse whose word-for-word English needs freeing: a close rendering, Evening orchid— / is it hidden in its scent? / the white of its flower, and a freer one, Evening orchid— / the white of its flower / hidden in its scent [8].
2018. Adam L. Kern, The Penguin Book of Haiku, Penguin Classics. orchids by night — / within their fragrance looms / their blossoms' white!, romanized yoru no ran / ka ni kakurete ya / hana shiroshi, with his note: Apart from its synaesthetic mix of scent and colour, this verse may intimate that, in spite of the orchid's prototypical association with mid autumn, there lurks in the dark of late-autumn nights a whiff of the coming white stuff. [9]
Today. The house English, An evening orchid / Hidden in its scent / The flower's whiteness, is Blyth's first line to the word, his second with It hid made Hidden, and his third with The flower white made The flower's whiteness, under the poet's name alone. A rendering of this line has to keep 花白し as a statement, since that is what the Japanese is and what the poem ends on; Blyth's The flower white does, and whiteness turns the poem's last fact into a description of it.
A reading
This is a poem about one sense giving way to another, and I read it as Blyth does, without the sermon he sometimes adds and does not add here. In daylight an orchid is a shape; at night it is a smell, and the smell grows as the shape goes, so that the flower seems to have withdrawn into what it gives off. Then the last phrase, 花白し, gives back the one visible thing, and gives it back as a plain statement, the flower is white, which is why the verse ends rather than trails. Whiteness softens that ending into a quality; Blyth's the flower white keeps it a fact. Text, attribution and romaji stand, and the 句集 leaf settles that the verse carries no headnote.
References
- 几董 編『蕪村句集』前編, 1784, 巻之下 秋之部. National Institute of Japanese Literature, 国書データベース, biblio 300106341, canvas 45. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/300106341/45
- 三森幹雄 評点『蕪村句文集』, 1896. National Diet Library pid 875710, scan 32. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/875710/1/32
- 岩本梓石 編『蕪村俳句全集 標註』, 1906. National Diet Library pid 875714, scan 92. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/875714/1/92
- 藤井紫影 校『名家俳句集』, 有朋堂, 1935, 蕪翁句集 巻之下. National Diet Library pid 1259717, scan 233. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1259717/1/233
- 正岡子規 写『発句類題全集』, 1889. National Diet Library pid 2586429, scan 31. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2586429/1/31
- R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 4, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1952, under ORCHIDS, pp. 125–126.
- Yuki Sawa and Edith Marcombe Shiffert, Haiku Master Buson, White Pine Press, 2007, p. 138.
- Stephen Addiss, Haiku: An Anthology of Japanese Poems, Shambhala, 2009.
- Adam L. Kern (tr. and ed.), The Penguin Book of Haiku, Penguin Classics, London, 2018, the verse and its commentary note.
- 正岡子規 写『発句類題全集』, 1889, second volume. National Diet Library pid 2586452, scan 256. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2586452/1/256
- 「蕪村」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/蕪村-124888