Yet, among the commentators in the Ueda book, one seems to disagree from the others and offer an interpretation closer to Robbins’. Hamill emphasizes this reading of the dual Kyotos by inserting the adjective “old” in the second line. This third interpretation is also presented in a translation in The Essential Bashô, translated by Sam Hamill: It could also refer to the differences between the actual city of Kyoto, with all the real world problems associated with cities as compared to, as Shûson writes, the Kyoto that is described in legend and poetry, a more beautiful, mystic place. This third reading highlights that the city itself has changed, whether from development, population growth, technological advances or other forces that alter the city, Bashô does not say. That is, in the words of Yamamoto, “the past in the old capital.” He continues, “With the cry, today’s Kyoto is instantly transformed into the Kyoto of the past.” While similar to the Robbin’s reading that the poet is expressing the sentiment “you can’t go home again,” this reading is slightly different in that instead of focusing on the speaker, it focuses on the city. In the commentary that followed, two commentators, Shûson and Yamamoto, wrote that the Kyoto Bashô refers to in the first line is the present day city and the Kyoto in the second line is a reference to “the city that lives yet in ancient poetry and fiction” (Shûson). Udea included the Japanese and I was able to compare this with the Japanese from a correspondence with Hass to confirm that it was, as it appeared, the same poem (hototogisu is the Japanese word for cuckoo). In a book by Makoto Ueda entitled Bashô and his Interpreters, Selected Hokku with Commentary, I found a third translation and a third meaning. My first finding as I searched for more explanations of the poem’s meaning was yet another possible interpretation the poem. The surprise I felt in learning that the meaning to which I had been drawn could quite possibly not be the intent of the poet at all, sent me on a quest to delve into this haiku and learn all I could about it.īashô wrote the haiku in 1690, near the end of his life, presumably on one of his two visits to Kyoto that year. For Robbins, the poem highlights change and the impossibility of returning to one’s past people change, circumstances change, and returning to the home one remembers is an impossibility, as it has become the past. In his novel, Robbins writes of this poem that it “is a more exquisite, penetrating, and poignant way of saying, ‘You can’t go home again.’” Upon reading this I was surprised to learn that the same poem could be interpreted in an entirely different manner (by both reader and translator). I believe this to be a different translation of the same poem I heard in Berkeley. In it he references a Bashô poem that he writes as: I realized this while reading Tom Robbins book Villa Incognito. My excitement at finding such a simple, beautiful expression of this sentiment faded when I recently learned that my reading of the poem is not a common reading, nor probably what Bashô himself intended. After hearing Hass read this poem, I began to call these instances “Even in Kyoto Moments.” I imagined Bashô in a city he had a powerful aesthetic connection to, hearing the cuckoo’s cry and experiencing this feeling that is both a recognition of a coming departure and also, in this anticipation of leaving, a feeling of longing for the precise moment in which the poet finds himself. I was drawn to this haiku so deeply precisely because I thought Bashô had articulated this human sentiment I had experienced but had never seen discussed before. It is the feeling of longing for something while still near it. Namely, the feeling of being in the presence of something tremendously beautiful or awe-inspiring and being so overwhelmed or amazed by it, that one begins longing for its presence in anticipation of having to leave, but before doing so. I immediately, whether at the suggestion of something Hass said in his reading or not, I cannot remember, took this poem to be an expression of an emotion I had felt before, but for which I had no word. Robert Hass’s translation of the poem is as follows: A particular haiku of Bashô’s implanted itself in my mind, and began to occupy my thoughts occasionally over the next few years. Poet Laureate, read some of his translations of the haiku of Bashô, Buson and Issa from his book, The Essential Haiku. On an early September day a few years ago, I sat in the grass of a Berkeley park and listened to Robert Hass, former U.S.
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