HAIKU _ WATCH THOSE SUFFIXES
#Haiku #japanese #translations #suffixes #Basho
I was looking for seasonal haiku for November. Momiji was a kigo.
This haiku by Basho that takes a common phrase and gives it a new resonance.
Tootogaru
Namida ya somete
Chiru momiji
literally revering as a feeling not a honorific note that garu suffix
tear(s) emphasis marker color stain dyeing somete from someru
scattering falling maple and other red autumn leaves late in the season
Seems simple right yet two other translations I saw of this haiku ignore tootogaru being a verb and the translators seem to have thought he was revering to the Buddhist priest he was visiting.
Tootogaru is a verb!
Referring to an emotion shared about something or some action.
Yes there may be a pun on the stem being an honorific used especially in its Sino-Japanese as part of titles.
But note Basho has used the KUN reading and added a suffix that turns verbs and adjectives into verbs!
So how to turn the first line being one verb into a phrase in English that also expresses the feeling?
With reverence ? Revering? Respect? Add we view ?
And whose tears are coloring the fallen leaves ?
See how those two first lines change a standard phrase used with other haiku and waka !
Our reverent tears are coloring the falling leaves isn't a poem in English but expresses the meaning and context and gets closer but not close enough to the Japanese meaning? Or not ?
One suffix -garu changes the whole haiku!
