Departing Spring

As I have noted on previous occasions, the turning of the seasons is, for me at least (and I suspect for some of you as well), a matter of emotion, not of solstices and equinoxes, or of dates on a calendar.  Thus, out walking this past week, I concluded that spring has departed and that summer has arrived.  This conclusion had something to do with the "fullgrown thickness" of the trees (to borrow from Philip Larkin), and with their deepening greens, greens which stretched in every direction.

"Departing spring" ("yuku haru" in Japanese: yuku is a form of the verb "to go"; haru is "spring") is a traditional seasonal subject of haiku.  Perhaps the best-known "departing spring" haiku appears near the beginning of Matsuo Basho's travel journal Oku no Hosomichi.  (The title has been variously translated as "Narrow Road to the Interior," "The Narrow Road to the Deep North," and "Narrow Road to a Far Province."  Oku means "interior," "deep," "within," or "inner"; hoso means "narrow"; michi means "road"; no is a prepositional particle.  Hence, "Narrow Road to the Interior" is probably the most accurate translation:  it is literal, but it also captures the symbolic implications of the phrase.)    

"Very early on the twenty-seventh morning of the third moon, under a predawn haze, transparent moon barely visible, Mount Fuji just a shadow, I set out under the cherry blossoms of Ueno and Yanaka.  When would I see them again?  A few old friends had gathered in the night and followed along far enough to see me off from the boat.  Getting off at Senju, I felt three thousand miles rushing through my heart, the whole world only a dream.  I saw it through farewell tears.

Spring passes
and the birds cry out -- tears
in the eyes of fishes

With these first words from my brush, I started.  Those who remain behind watch the shadow of a traveler's back disappear."

Basho (1644-1694) (translated by Sam Hamill), in Sam Hamill, The Essential Basho (Shambhala 1999), page 4.

Here is another translation of the haiku:

     Spring going --
birds weeping, tears
     in the eyes of fish.

Basho (translated by Robert Hass), in Robert Hass, The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Isssa (The Ecco Press 1994), page 38.

Alexander Fraser (1827-1899), "Dundarave Castle, Loch Fyne"

The haiku may perhaps be better understood -- and felt -- if one reads the first few sentences of Basho's brief introduction to Oku no Hosomichi.  The introduction appears immediately prior to the departure scene.

"The moon and sun are eternal travelers.  Even the years wander on.  A lifetime adrift in a boat, or in old age leading a tired horse into the years, every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.  From the earliest times there have always been some who perished along the road.  Still I have always been drawn by wind-blown clouds into dreams of a lifetime of wandering.  Coming home from a year's walking tour of the coast last autumn, I swept the cobwebs from my hut on the banks of the Sumida just in time for New Year, but by the time spring mists began to rise from the fields, I longed to cross the Shirakawa Barrier into the Northern Interior."

Basho (translated by Sam Hamill), in The Essential Basho, page 3.

This passage illuminates not only the haiku quoted above, but also Basho's life as a whole:  at some point he came to the realization that it was his destiny to be a constant traveler, and to record his travels.  This dovetails with the notion of life as a journey, a notion that came naturally to Basho by virtue of his immersion in Chinese and Japanese poetry, Taoism, and Buddhism.

Alexander Fraser, "Cadzow Forest and White Cattle"

When it comes to the changing of seasons, departures are accompanied by arrivals.  Losses are bittersweet, but there are always compensations.

     Cherry blossoms
Fall and float on the water
     Of the rice seedlings.

Kyoroku (1656-1715) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 2: Spring (Hokuseido Press 1950), page 360.

We grieve over the snow showers of cherry blossoms, but -- ah! -- the blossoms fall amid the bright green rice seedlings, aligned in long rows across the water.  (An aside:  my first visit to Japan was during the rice-planting season; as we made our landing approach, we passed over a countryside dotted with rice paddies; I had never seen a green of that hue before.) 

A lovely image, but what of the sky?  Do the cherry blossoms (pink, white) fall into sky-blue water?  In the following haiku, Buson takes Kyoroku's image one beautiful step further.

     A night of stars;
The cherry blossoms are falling
     On the water of the rice seedlings.

Buson (1716-1783) (translated by R. H. Blyth), Ibid, page 170.

"The way up and the way down are one and the same," to paraphrase Heraclitus violently out of context.  Cherry blossoms departing.  Rice seedlings arriving.  High above both of them -- and floating in the dark indigo water with them -- the stars.  Ama no gawa:  River of Heaven.

Alexander Fraser, "East Coast Harbour Scene"

"Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home."  Ironic moderns have decided that this is a cliché, a risible bit of pop psychology.  They haven't read Basho.  (Or Cavafy, for that matter.)

The journey takes place in the here-and-now of today -- which may be the final day of spring, or (you never know) the final day of your life.

     Today only
Walking in the spring,
     And no more.

Buson (translated by R. H. Blyth), Ibid, page 66.

Alexander Fraser, "Barncluith"

The Dream Of The Butterfly

The older one gets, the more life begins to take on a dreamlike aspect. Why is this?  First, one's awareness of the transience of all things (including oneself) assumes a more concrete presence.  Mind you, this awareness needn't be accompanied by fear or anxiety.  In fact, one's reaction might well be:  "Ah, yes, so that's how it is.  I suspected as much."  Second, decades of exposure to the follies and capers (evil or absurd) of one's fellow human beings (again, including oneself) cannot help but make you wonder if you are living in a dream world (or a nightmare world).

I claim no originality in making these observations.  The ancient Greek philosophers (Heraclitus, for instance) and the ancient Chinese Taoist philosophers explained these things around 500 B.C. (or earlier).   So much for our Modern God of Progress.  If anything, we have gone backwards since those times.

Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu were the two greatest Taoist philosophers.  Lao Tzu is known for the Tao Te Ching, and Chuang Tzu is known for the eponymous Chuang Tzu.  ("Chuang" was his surname; "Tzu" means "Master;" his given name was "Chou.")  Arguments have been made that neither man ever existed, and that the books are the products of various philosophers of the time whose names are unknown to us.

Chuang Tzu often wrote in allegories, the best-known of which is this:

"Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased.  He didn't know he was Chuang Chou.  Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Chuang Chou.  But he didn't know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou.  Between Chuang Chou and a butterfly there must be some distinction!"

Burton Watson (translator), Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings (Columbia University Press 1964), page 45.

Stanley Spencer, "The Roundabout" (1923)

Li Po (701-762) was one of the five great T'ang Dynasty poets (the other four are Wang Wei, Tu Fu,  Po Chu-i, and Han Shan).  The poetry of all five is suffused with Taoism (together with greater and lesser degrees of Buddhism), but Li Po's poetry in particular reflects the riddling (and antic) qualities of Taoism.  Hence, it is not surprising that he would have written a poem about Chuang Tzu's dream of the butterfly.

       Chuang Tzu and the Butterfly

Dreaming, Chuang Tzu became a butterfly;
waking, the butterfly became the man.

Who knows which is real?
Who knows where endless changes end?

The waters of the deepest sea
return to the smallest stream.

The melon-grower outside the city gate
was once the King of the Hill.

Even rank and riches eventually disappear.
You know.  And still you toil.

Li Po, in Sam Hamill  (translator), Banished Immortal: Visions of Li T'ai-po (White Pine Press 1987).

Stanley Spencer, "The Boatbuilder's Yard, Cookham" (1936)

For purposes of comparison, here is another translation of the same poem:

          Chuang Tzu and the Butterfly

Chuang Chou in dream became a butterfly,
And the butterfly became Chuang Chou at waking.
Which was the real -- the butterfly or the man?
Who can tell the end of the endless changes of things?
The water that flows into the depth of the distant sea
Returns anon to the shallows of a transparent stream.
The man, raising melons outside the green gate of the city,
Was once the Prince of the East Hill.
So must rank and riches vanish.
You know it, still you toil and toil, -- what for?

Li Po, in Shigeyoshi Obata (translator), The Works of Li-Po (J. M. Dent 1923).

What, then, are we to do with this wisdom?  After all, we have to wake up each day and go about our business, butterfly dream or not.  But it can't hurt to have a little perspective.  A histrionic false world -- loud and vulgar and disingenuous -- clamors for our attention.  That world is nothing but a chimera.

Stanley Spencer, "Mending Cowls, Cookham" (1915)

"This Solitude Of Cataracts"

William Wordsworth's meditation on the soothing qualities of moving water leads me to one of my favorite poems by Wallace Stevens.  (Come to think of it, it is one of my favorite poems period.)  It begins with two lovely variations on Heraclitus's well-known dictum:  "You cannot step into the same river twice."  Stevens then heads off in his own beautiful direction.


                    This Solitude of Cataracts

He never felt twice the same about the flecked river,
Which kept flowing and never the same way twice, flowing

Through many places, as if it stood still in one,
Fixed like a lake on which the wild ducks fluttered,

Ruffling its common reflections, thought-like Monadnocks.
There seemed to be an apostrophe that was not spoken.

There was so much that was real that was not real at all.
He wanted to feel the same way over and over.

He wanted the river to go on flowing the same way,
To keep on flowing.  He wanted to walk beside it,

Under the buttonwoods, beneath a moon nailed fast.
He wanted his heart to stop beating and his mind to rest

In a permanent realization, without any wild ducks
Or mountains that were not mountains, just to know how it would be,

Just to know how it would feel, released from destruction,
To be a bronze man breathing under archaic lapis,

Without the oscillations of planetary pass-pass,
Breathing his bronzen breath at the azury center of time.

Wallace Stevens, The Auroras of Autumn (1950).

With regard to "thought-like Monadnocks," Stevens writes:

The expression "thought-like Monadnocks" can best be explained by changing it into "Monadnock-like thoughts."  The image of a mountain deep in the surface of a lake acquires a secondary character.  From the sheen of the surface it becomes slightly unreal:  thought-like.  Mt. Monadnock is a New England mountain.    It is in New Hampshire.

Wallace Stevens, Letter to Renato Poggioli (March 4, 1954), Holly Stevens (editor), Letters of Wallace Stevens (1966), page 823.  Poggioli was a publisher who was preparing a translation of Stevens's poems into Italian. Stevens normally avoided such direct explications of his poems.

Stevens also writes:

In this same poem there is the following phrase which may not be perfectly clear to your translator:  "the oscillations of planetary pass-pass."  It means the seeming-to-go-round of the planets by day and night.

Ibid.

For Stevens, a river usually stands for the world in which we live:

Call it, once more, a river, an unnamed flowing,

Space-filled, reflecting the seasons, the folk-lore
Of each of the senses; call it, again and again,
The river that flows nowhere, like a sea.

Wallace Stevens, "The River of Rivers in Connecticut" (the final four lines).

              John Aldridge, "The River Pant Near Sculpin's Bridge" (1961)

Louis MacNeice On Heraclitus

The phrase "everything flows" is often attributed to Heraclitus.  However, it is open to question whether Heraclitus actually said those words.  More likely, the phrase was attributed to him by a later ancient commentator.  Be that as it may, "flowing" is the theme of the following poem by Louis MacNeice.  (An aside:  Derek Mahon, who we heard from in my previous post, has written a fine elegy to MacNeice titled "In Carrowdore Churchyard.")

                 Variation on Heraclitus

Even the walls are flowing, even the ceiling,
Nor only in terms of physics; the pictures
Bob on each picture rail like floats on a line
While the books on the shelves keep reeling
Their titles out into space and the carpet
Keeps flying away to Arabia nor can this be where I stood --
Where I shot the rapids I mean -- when I signed
On a line that rippled away with a pen that melted
Nor can this now be the chair -- the chairoplane of a chair --
That I sat in the day that I thought I had made up my mind
And as for that standard lamp it too keeps waltzing away
Down an unbridgeable Ganges where nothing is standard
And lights are but lit to be drowned in honour and spite of some dark
And vanishing goddess.  No, whatever you say,
Reappearance presumes disappearance, it may not be nice
Or proper or easily analysed not to be static
But none of your slide snide rules can catch what is sliding so fast
And, all you advisers on this by the time it is that,
I just do not want your advice
Nor need you be troubled to pin me down in my room
Since the room and I will escape for I tell you flat:
One cannot live in the same room twice.

Louis MacNeice, Solstices (1961).

               John Singer Sargent, "A Mountain Stream, Tyrol" (1914)

Derek Mahon On Heraclitus

I confess that I cannot make head or tail out of Heraclitus.  The best that I can come up with is that his pronouncements -- "you cannot step into the same river twice," "the way up is the way down," etc. (these are paraphrases of the numerous translations out there) -- remind me of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching.  However, whatever the fragments mean, they certainly sound good.

Two of my favorite poets have written poems inspired by those fragments, and the poems provide me with a better clue as to what Heraclitus is up to than my own bumbling attempts to figure him out.  First, Derek Mahon:

               Heraclitus on Rivers

Nobody steps into the same river twice.
The same river is never the same
Because that is the nature of water.
Similarly your changing metabolism
Means that you are no longer you.
The cells die, and the precise
Configuration of the heavenly bodies
When she told you she loved you
Will not come again in this lifetime.

You will tell me that you have executed
A monument more lasting than bronze;
But even bronze is perishable.
Your best poem, you know the one I mean,
The very language in which the poem
Was written, and the idea of language,
All these things will pass away in time.

Derek Mahon, Collected Poems (The Gallery Press 1999).

In my next post, we will see what Louis MacNeice has to say about the ever-flowing world of Heraclitus.

              John Singer Sargent, "Stream in the Val d'Aosta" (c. 1909)