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- aware 哀れ, あわれ、あはれ touching, pityful,
to feel compassion -
melancholy, deep feeling, sorrow, lonely
a sight so moving
The word aware used in the hokku by Basho is difficult to translate and has a slightly different nuance in each poem.
Please add your comments about the translations to this entry.
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猿を聞人捨子に秋の風いかに
saru o kiku hito sutego ni aki no kaze ika ni
those who listen for the monkeys:
what of this child
in the autumn wind?
Tr. Barnhill
Basho contrasted his genuine pity for the deserted child with the imaginary grief that Japanese poets put into their poems about the monkey's cry. I
MORE
. WKD : Human Misery and Pity .
mono no aware ものの哀れ the pity of things
the pathos of things
"sensitivity to things"
- Reference -
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quote
An Interview with Michael F. Marra
by Robert D. Wilson
. . . about Motoori Norinaga
RW:
Norinaga is well known for his conceptualization of the term
mono no aware.
Would you describe this conceptualization and, perhaps, include an example or two?
MM:
Mono-no-aware simply means to be moved by exteriority.
It is the appeal that external things have on people perceiving them. "
Aware" conveys the idea of the moving power of "things" (
mono).
For example, let's say that a brush fire destroys an entire mountain, and that in the fire ten people die and a thousand people lose their homes and everything that took them a lifetime to accumulate.
Mono no aware refers to the reaction that people who never experienced a devastating fire should have (and the key word here is the categorical imperative "should"): they should feel the pain of those who have lost everything, including their lives.
One might say, this is only natural, but that's not the case. It would be sufficient to turn on the TV in Los Angeles during one of the many Southern California brush fires and to listen to the broadcasters' comments: the fires are consistently "spectacular, breathtaking, sublime (because broadcasting comes from the safety of Hollywood offices), marvelous, sometime even beautiful." Listening to these comments one inevitably feels that the broadcasters are actually the ones responsible for setting the fire in the first place, just to make sure they have the "spectacular" news.
Now, for Norinaga, to be moved by "things" is not the result of a natural process everybody develops from birth (the broadcasters of my example are living proofs that Norinaga was right).
The ability to be "moved" (aware) is the result of arduous study, especially poetry and the classics that help readers realize the meaning of affects. Apparently, in Hollywood poetry and the classics are not very popular. For Norinaga, ethics is actually the result of aesthetics which is the result of poetics: one knows how to behave because he/she has learned how to feel. But one does not know how to feel unless he/she knows how to read poetry.
source : simply haiku 2007
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Motoori Norinaga 本居宣長
21 June 1730 - 5 November 1801
陰暦九月二十九日
Norinaga Ki 宣長忌 Memorial Day for Norinaga
Suzu no Ya Ki 鈴の屋忌 Suzunoya memorial day
observance kigo for late autumn
Suzu no ya 鈴屋（すずのや）was the name of his study room
Home of the bells, which he liked very much. He hung a bell in the tokonoma of his study and used to ring it, when he needed a break from his studies.
quote
... a Japanese scholar of Kokugaku 国学 Japanese studies, active during the Edo period. He is probably the best known and most prominent of all scholars in this tradition.
Hitherto scholars of ancient literature had shown a preference for the grandness and masculinity of Man'yōshū poetry and an aversion to works like the Tale of Genji, which were regarded as unmanly and feminine. Norinaga resurrected the position of the Tale of Genji, which he regarded as an expression of
mono no aware, a particular Japanese sensibility of "sorrow at evanescence" that Norinaga claimed forms the essence of Japanese literature.
In undertaking his textual analysis of ancient Japanese, Norinaga also made vital contributions to establishing a native Japanese grammatical tradition, in particular the analysis of clitic morphems, particles and auxiliary verbs.
© More in the WIKIPEDIA !
. WKD : Memorial Days of Famous People .
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春 はただ花の一重に咲くばかり
物のあはれは秋ぞまされる
haru wa tada hana no hitoe ni saku bakari
mono no aware wa aki zo masareru
Spring
Blooms simply
in one petal of the cherry blossoms -
In autumn mono no aware
is at its highest.
Norinaga Motoori 本居宣長
Shuishu 拾遺集 / 拾遺和歌集
Tr. Michael F. Marra
. WKD : Autumn (aki) 秋 .
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朝顔は下手の書くさへあはれなり
asagao wa heta no kaku sae aware nari
morning glory:
even when painted poorly,
it has pathos
Tr. Barnhill
Written in summer of 1687 貞亨4年夏.
His straight criticism of a painting from his disciple Ransetsu 嵐雪.
This poem shows that there was really no need for
enryoo 遠慮 polite holding back or polite reserve, between him and his student.
even when painted poorly
the morning glory
is touching . . .
paraverse by Elaine Andre
how evocative...
a morning glory even when
poorly painted
paraverse by Dennis Chibi Holmes
. Hattori Ransetsu 服部嵐雪 .
This hokku is in one sentence, with the cut NARI at the end of line 3.
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振売の鴈あはれなり恵比須講
. furi uri no gan aware nari Ebisu koo .
(New Year) Ebisu festival. peddler. geese. pathos
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古巣ただあはれなるべき隣かな
furusu tada aware naru beki tonari kana
the old nest
will be so very lonely without
my neighbour
Tr. Gabi Greve
Written in the third lunar month of 1686 貞亨3年閏3月.
This hokku has the cut marker KANA at the end of line 3.
His friendly neighbour, the priest Sooha 宗波
Soha of the Obaku Zen school, had gone off for a religious trip to Kyoto. This is the good-by present for him.
Soha had accompanied him to see Zen priest Butcho in Kashima.
Basho feels like a mother bird, when a well-loved baby bird has left its nest and taken off to its own life.
. Kashima Kiko, Kashima Mode 鹿島詣 .
Dates about the life of Soha 宗波 are not well known.
He had been priest at temple Joorinji 定林寺 Jorin-Ji in Honjo, Edo and been good friends with Basho.
When he left for Western Japan, Basho wrote him a letter of introduction to his disciple Shimosato Chisoku 下里知足 (1640 - 1704) in Narumi.
When Basho visited Iga Ueno, Soha came visiting him in 1688 貞亨5年2月19日.
But Soha had been very ill already.
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koen 古庭
A desolate Garden
花みな枯れてあはれをこぼす草の種
hana mina karete aware o kobosu kusa no tane
flowers all withered
spilling their sadness:
seeds for grass
Tr. Barnhill
All the flowers withered,
A pity it is, to see falling
The seeds of weeds.
Tr. Oseko
Autumn of 1686 貞亨３年秋 or 貞亨2年
The season is winter.
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東西あはれさひとつ秋の風
. higashi nishi aware sa hitotsu aki no kaze .
on the death of Mukai Chine 向井千子, poet and sister of his disciple Mukai Kyorai 向井去来 .
higashi is Basho in the East --
nishi is Kyorai in the West
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昼顔に米搗き涼むあはれなり
hirugao ni kometsuki suzumu aware nari
by the noonflower
a rice-pounder cools himself:
a sight so moving
Tr. Barnhill
The rice-pounder,
Cooling himself by the convolvulus flowers,—
A sight of pathos.
Tr. Blyth
Comment by Blyth:
The rice-pounder is exhausted, and sits in the shade mopping his brow. Along the fence the convolvulus flowers are blooming because of and in spite of the heat. The half-obliviousness of the flowers on the part of the man, and the complete obliviousness on the part of the flowers, gives Bashō a feeling which, like God, is nameless.
Summer 1681
Maybe in the years of Tenwa (1681 - 1683) 天和年間
In the Edo period, there were special workers to pound the rice grains from brown genmai into white rice, especially farmers from Echigo and Etchu.
. WKD : Rice Reis, meshi gohan .
. WKD : Bindweed (hirugao) 昼顔 .
Fa. Concolvulus
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古法眼出どころあはれ年の暮
. Kohoogen dedokoro aware toshi no kure .
about a painting by Kano Motonobu Kohōgen (1476―1559）
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当帰よりあはれは塚の菫草
tooki yori aware wa tsuka no sumiregusa / sumire-gusa
more pitiful
than the parsley is this violet
by his grave mound
Tr. Gabi Greve
Written on the second day of the second lunar month, Genroku 6
元禄6年2月2日
For his disciple Kondoo Romaru 近藤呂丸 / 露丸,
who had shown him around at the mountains of Dewa (Oku no Hosomichi) and they had seen this flower together. Romaru's work was to dye the robes of the
yamabushi monks of this mountain monastery. He had been to Kyoto and suddenly died on this trip in the home of Kyorai. His grave is in Kyoto.
Tooki is the name of this flower of his home region, the mountains of Dewa.
Sadder than this parsley is
A violet
At the mound.
Tr. Saito/Nelson
tooki 当帰, トウキ Angelica acutiloba
Angelica acutiloba
is a perennial herb from the family Apiaceae or Umbelliferous (carrot or parsley family). It is predominately in Japan and is used to prepare traditional Chinese medicine (kanpo 漢方).
The Japanese name, tōki has a literally meaning like “recovering good health”.
© More in the WIKIPEDIA !
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梅が香に昔の一字あはれなり
. ume ga ka ni mukashi no ichiji aware nari .
(spring) fragrance of plum blossoms. the character for "past". pathos
for Baigan 梅丸, who had lost his son
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In the Christian Bible, the words "Kyrie eleison"
are translated as
shu yo, aware mi tamae 主よ憐れみ給え
哀れみ
Herr, Erbarme Dich unser!
© More in the WIKIPEDIA !
translating Basho -
even when worded poorly,
it has pathos
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『もののあはれ』と日本の美」Mono no Aware to Nihon no Bi
Art Exhibition about "mono no aware"
Exhibition at the Suntory Museum サントリー美術館
source : www.suntory.co.jp
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. WKD : Human Misery and Pity .
Mono no aware: subtleties of understanding
C.B. Liddell
. . . . .
the appreciation of things in the shadow of their future absence.
. Mono no aware: subtleties of understanding - essay .
Cultural Keywords used by
. Matsuo Basho 松尾芭蕉 - Archives of the WKD .
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