And this, too, shall pass away

Abraham Lincoln, in his address to Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee, WI on September 30, 1859, finished with these words:

But, according to your programme, the awarding of premiums awaits the closing of this address. Considering the deep interest necessarily pertaining to that performance, it would be no wonder if I am already heard with some impatience. I will detain you but a moment longer. Some of you will be successful, and such will need but little philosophy to take them home in cheerful spirits; others will be disappointed, and will be in a less happy mood. To such, let it be said, “Lay it not too much to heart.” Let them adopt the maxim, “Better luck next time;” and then, by renewed exertion, make that better luck for themselves.

And by the successful, and the unsuccessful, let it be remembered, that while occasions like the present, bring their sober and durable benefits, the exultations and mortifications of them, are but temporary; that the victor shall soon be the vanquished, if he relax in his exertion; and that the vanquished this year, may be victor the next, in spite of all competition.

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: “And this, too, shall pass away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride!--how consoling in the depths of affliction! “And this, too, shall pass away.” And yet let us hope it is not quite true. Let us hope, rather, that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us; and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.

World of Dew

I just set up a blog. Out of pure boredom. But I thought I would kick it off with the haiku that gives rise to the title.

Japanese:
tsuyu no yo wa
tsuyu no yo nagara
sari nagara

Donald Keene's translation:
The world of dew
Is a world of dew, and yet
And yet...

The author is Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828) and he wrote this haiku after his child, a daughter named Sato, died of smallpox. She was just over one year old. His life was a long itinerancy, full of hardship which he both realized and infused with tongue-in-cheek humor. I remember reading his book The Spring of My Life one late night alone in the NYU library when I was supposed to be studying law.

The translator is Donald Keene, a professor at Columbia University and a sensitive and prolific translator of Japanese literature. I've read some of his other translations-- the titles escape my mind at present, although it might have been Mori Ogai's "Vita Sexualis". His translations stand out in my mind as some of the best of Japanese, akin to Arthur Waley's translations of Chinese.

The problem with the Internet is that it gives one a profound sense of insecurity about both one's ability to be comprehensive and to remember anything. No matter how much I remember about Issa (and it's not much), there's some PhD student studying Issa's use of geese imagery that has posted a critical analysis of his life and work that far outshadows anything I could offer.

And no matter how much one can pretend that a blog is a journal, it's not. It's blatantly exhibitionist and at least at the opening stages, it's awkward as hell.

But I will soldier on and offer some other Issa, because one poem in isolation is like a wave without its fellows-- it feels lonely:

Issa:
ware to kite
asobe ya oya no
nai suzume

Keene's translation:
Come with me
Let's play together, swallow
Without a mother

Issa:
ore to shite
niramekura suru
kawazu kana

Locked in a staring contest
me . . . and a frog

Issa:
suzume ko mo
ume ni kuchi aku
nebutsu kana

The little sparrows
They open their mouths at the plum tree—
This too is worship.

Issa:
uguisu ya
doroashi nuguu
ume no hanaa

The nightingale wipes
His muddy feet . . .
Plum blossoms

Issa:
yo no naka wa
jigoku no ue no
hanami kanain

This world
Over hell, viewing
Spring blossoms

Issa:
negaeri wo
suru zo soko noke
kirigirisu

Look out!
I’m going to turn now—
Move over, Cricket!

Issa:
yasegaeru
makeru na
kore ni ari

scrawny frog, fight on!
Issa Issa
to the rescue

For more information on Kobeyashi Issa, see http://www.modernhaiku.org/bookreviews/IssaBooks2004.html