(no subject)

[which_chick]

Today, we look at a haiku by Basho.

夏草や
兵どもが
夢の跡

Natsugusa ya
tsuwamonodomo ga
yume no ato

What does it mean? (This reminds me of tracing a drawing, over and over. The lines overlap and blur details until the essential shape is all that we can see. Refining is, by its very nature, a lossy process...)

What does it mean? (You might enjoy further reading on nifty haiku stuff, or perhaps it will be enough for you to know that A PAN string is a joint presentation of phrases which lacks a verb phrase.)

What does it mean?

Blunt tools only mash
the delicate butterfly.
Clueless frustration.

Natsugusa is summer grass, according to my dictionary. And, y'know, the first kanji there is summer, and the second one is grass, so yeah, I'm buying summer grass. Okay by me. I don't know what plant this might be in Japan, so I've mentally replaced it with high timothy, past due for cutting, which makes a lovely field.

や is a particle and I don't have my grammar with me so I've no idea what it does.

Moving onward. 兵 is warrior, ども is a pluralizing suffix, though the dictionary says it's not particularly enthusiastic or respectful. Not sure if that's important or not. が usually marks the grammatic subject of a sentence and I imagine that's what it's doing here.

夢 is dream, の shows possessive or 's, and 跡 is leftover, tracks, trace when used as a noun (like in 夢の跡). There does not appear to be a verb, here.

Summer grasses
Ya'll warriors (subject)
dream's traces

As someone in the group always says when we discuss haiku...

blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah summer.

Now that's paring it down to essentials. :)

Stolen from Language Hat, who frequently has interesting things to share.

Want to take a stab at some more haiku in Japanese?

I particularly liked
三千の
俳句を閲し
柿二つ

Here are some in Portugese and Japanese, sorted as to season. As I can't read shit for Portugese, these are handy for practicing translation skillz (no cheating, see). Look for "Versão com kanji" in the upper left of the season page -- that'll give you the kanjified page.

Comments

I'm no Basho

[electroweak.livejournal.com]

Ah, young Grasshopper. You're misquoting me. The haiku is:

blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah autumn.

This is the degenerate form of haiku.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

Yes, but we're doing a SUMMER haiku right now. Summer. SUMMER. *sigh* Right. I forgot which season it was. I suck. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

[ex-oki86.livejournal.com]

isn't ato mean "after"?
Summer grasses and
warrior types are
after dreams

I dunno.. that's my direct translation, though I'm tired.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

Ato can mean after, as in the phrase 'ato de', but when it's used in a nominal position (noun-like), as in yume no ato, it means traces, remains, that sort of thing.

Contextually, it might help to know that our poet was visiting the site of a long-ago battle, the way that I'd go see Gettysburg or Antietam or something. (Been to both of those. Antietam is more intimate and has better, more interesting geography.) I imagine some of the point of the poem is that there is only this greenery leftover from where men fought and died, presumably for something important enough to fight and die over.

It's got sort of an Ozymandias feel to it, where the persimmon one (that's the second haiku, the one that goes "Three thousand haiku, to examine two persimmons") strikes me as a lot less desolate and rather more chagrined.