An Exercise in Revisitation, Part One: Bashō’s Spring Poems

I have become interested lately in the ways in which a writer, or in this case a translator, can feel moved to revisit her old work over time. Some of the translation exercises I did in undergrad appall me now, although others, I think, hold up. This also seems like a good time to start revisiting some older material because in recent months I have done some (I hope) successful piecework for a Japanese telecommunications conglomerate, not translating but editing translations for a re-release of a certain well-regarded 2000s anime. I have a better idea of what audiences “want from” certain kinds of translated Japanese material now, and I have strong feelings about those audience desires, feelings that are not uniformly positive or negative. So here is a second attempt at the three Bashō springtime poems that I translated first a year ago today.

No particular source for this selection, although the Japanese orthography is that used by Yamanashi Prefectural University.

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春立つや新年古き米五升

haru tatsu ya shinnen furuki kome goshō

Old translation: New year, old rice. Just enough is left.

New translation: We made it through the old year, with just enough rice left to go by.

春立つや haru tatsu ya declares the beginning of spring, i.e., in pre-Meiji Restoration Japan, of the year. 米五升 kome goshō for five shō (a unit of volume) of rice also proverbially is “just the right amount” of something.

New note on the new translation: I decided that the sense that one had to limp to the finish line, with the old year, could stand some more stress here. We are on year thirteen of the polycrisis now, by my count, which differs from other people’s counts in many particulars.

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山は猫ねぶりて行くや雪の隙

yama wa neko neburiteiku ya yuki no hima

Old translation: The cat from Cat Mountain has space, now, to lick out the snow.

New translation: Up on Catamount, there is space, now, to lick out the snow.

隙 “gap” or “crevice” as hima is an old reading; it could also be geki or suki and the meter would hold good. The hima reading, though, is a homophone of a still-current word for free time or unhurriedness, which allowed me to play with “having space” here; the peak Nekomagadake’s eponymous cat monster has room both spatial and temporal to clean up after a hard winter.

New note on the new translation: I cannot believe I missed the potential for “catamount,” both a regional Vermont and Western Massachusetts term for Puma concolor and the name of a ski resort near where I lived, the first time I translated this. Then again, I have had to soften on dynamic translation lately, because of the telecommunications conglomerate’s standards and practices.

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八九間空で雨降る柳かな

hakkuken sora de ame-furu yanagi kana

Old translation: The willow branches spilling all that rain must be—about fifty feet up in the sky?

New translation: The sky is full of rain, the willows spreading it fifty feet or so.

八九間 hakkuken is “eight or nine ken,” an old unit of length.

New note on the new translation: I love Florence and the Machine! The old translation I think is still technically better, though.