The Essential Haiku, End Notes
… a sense of the impossibility of translating Japanese haiku is given in these two paragraphs…
Winter Sun: This is Ueda’s translation, from Basho and His Interpreters, p. 170. The alliteration and assonance in this poem are particularly admired: fuyu no hi ya bajo ni koru kageboshi.1
… and…
A Petal Shower: The phrase used to describe the falling petals is onomatopoeic: horohoro. Some connection between that sound and the sound of the river.2
… in the note to the poem How Admirable!, some sound information on enlightenment, which is…
to see nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is.3
- squid seller/summer
- cuckoo/summer
- peach blossoms/late spring
- foxes/mischievous, supernatural powers
… the commentary on Hailstones…
Hard things hitting hard things in a hard place. Mountain passes were mysterious places in old Japanese culture, inhabited by boundary gods and placatory shrines, sometimes with the carved figure of a man and a woman coupling.4