Of the four seasons, it is autumn alone which can be felt before it arrives. After a windless, blisteringly hot summer, toward the end of August, the arrival of autumn can be felt as surely as the warmth of the sun.
How does it arrive?
Autumn arrives first by the sound of the wind (says the ancient poets). It is ever so slight, something heard more than felt-- the stirring in the wind of the leaves in the trees.
"Autumn is coming," it's all people talk about.
秋来ぬと目にはさやかに見えぬども風の音にぞおどろかれぬる
--藤原敏行あそん
Nothing meets the eye
to demonstrate beyond a doubt
that autumn has come--
yet suddenly we are struck
just by the sound of the wind
--- Fujiwara Toshiyuki no Ason
And, our Lady of the Seasons, Sei Shonagon, tells us
秋は、夕暮。夕日のさして、山の端（は）いと近うなりたるに、烏の寝どころへ行くとて、三つ四つ、二つ三つなど、飛び急ぐさへあはれなり。まいて雁などの列ねたるがいと小さく見ゆるは、いとをかし。日入り果てて、風の音、虫の音など、はたいふべきにあらず。
“In autumn the evenings, when the glittering sun sinks close to the edge of the hills and the crows fly back to their nests in threes and fours and twos; more charming still is a file of wild geese, like specks in the distant sky. When the sun has set, one’s heart is moved by the sound of the wind and the hum of the insects”
**
For a long time, I was puzzled. "Why," I wondered, "was the Ninth Month traditionally known as the 'Long Month' (nagatsuki)?" Afterall, August always felt so long that September in comparison flew by. Well, the Long Month is "long" because of lengthening nights. As the Lady said, Autumn is all about the evenings. And it ain't pretty. Everything conspires against a person during those lonely nights: early darkness, dewdrops like tears, the crickets crying and crying outside your window-- everything reminding you of your lover's absense; the death of passion and romance, fading as quickly as the colors of the grasses in the field.
Autumn is the season of Waiting, Longing, Pining, Omou.
秋萩も
色づきぬれば
きりぎりす我が寝ぬことや
夜はかなしき
As autumn deepens
and the bush clover also change color
there cries the crickets
like me despairing the sadness
of these sleepless autumn nights
-Anon (KKS)
君しのぶ
草にやつるる
古里は
松虫の音ぞ
悲しかりけり
Back home in the house
pitifully covered in lonely grass
I wait, listening
to the crying pine crickets
and sadly long for you to come
-Anon (KKS)
In Japan, its always love. Next door, though, while poets do once in awhile speak of romance, more it is friendship that the poets sing about. So, in China, when one thinks of "Autumn Thoughts" (秋思, Qiu Si), it is of friends faraway... drinking alone with the moon, maybe? Melancholic meditations, absolutely. Romance and love, though, don't make much of an appearance-- perhaps as Spring is a better time in China for thinking of romance?
Jane Hirshfield is one of my favorite translators of classical japanese poetry into English. An amazing feat for someone who doesn't speak Japanese! She also captured one aspect of Chinese poetry that I love so much here-- in this poem (which is not a translation but rather her own poem). It reminds me so much of Inoue's portrayal of the monk Chao's fate that I wrote about here. What is it about this aspect of being swallowed up in insignificance as something strangely comforting? And why does this seem all the more vivid in autumn...
The Heart's Counting Knows Only One
In Sung China,
two monks, friends for sixty years
watched the geese pass
Where are they going?
one tested the other, who couldn't say.
The moment's silence continues.
No one will study their friendship
in the koan books of insight.
No one will remember their names.
Almost swallowed by the vastness of the mountains
but not yet.
As the barely audible
geese are not yet swallowed;
as even we, my love, will not entirely be lost.
--Jane Hirshfield
Print at top: Munakata Shiko
このひるの わがあるままの すがしさよ いつかに似たる 風たちにけり
Posted by: Peony | September 12, 2009 at 06:59 PM