The other night, after watching a disturbing film, I had trouble falling asleep, and took out my volume of r.h. blyth’s haiku, and read the section on peonies.
When I was fifteen years old, a sophomore in high school, I had one of those magical experiences commonly associated with youth, but which really may have something more to do with adulthood. I had only recently begun going ‘downtown’ with my friends, and on one such outing, I stepped into a shop, and felt as if I’d entered another world. That world was India. The very plain and undecorated shop was run by Indians (at that time, the mid-nineteen sixties, and before the Maharishi had come on the stage, a true novelty in the USA), and was full of bins of silvery bangles, bundles of incense, stacks of insect-spotted deity pictures, small woven items, incense burners and jingling bells of every conceivable size.
My friends were unimpressed, but I returned there often, just to be in the atmosphere of the shop, which made me feel a way that nothing else did. I felt so comfortable there, so relaxed, so myself. There was a light and a softness I experienced in that shop that I hadn’t previously known I craved. it was an epiphany of an undefined kind, something felt and smelt, but gave me the sense of having come home, having found some integral part of myself.
On that first visit, I bought a couple of bells, and perhaps some incense.
After a few visits, I discovered a small room off to the side of the shop, dedicated to what we used to call ‘the far east’; primarily Japan. On the shelves in that room, I found the 4 volumes of Haiku by R.H. Blyth, nestled in their yellow, illustrated covers. Taking those volumes into my hands for the first time had all the feeling of a sacred moment. As I opened the pages and saw the dainty Japanese script, and read the short verses, it was as if the pages exhaled a delicacy and beauty I had never known. I’d never heard or seen the word ‘haiku’ before, and it was like finding some kind of mythical treasure. There was a sense that perhaps after all, everything could turn out all right, if discoveries like this awaited me in the world.
I saved for months to buy the four volumes. I managed to hang onto two of them all these years, and gave one to a fellow haiku enthusiast a number of years ago. I still have volume 3 Summer-Autumn. Here are a few excerpts from the section on peonies, with commentary by R.H. Blyth:
* * *
The peonies do not allow
The rain-clouds a hundred leagues round
To approach them.
Buson
This is a fancy, but there is so much imagination put into it that it expresses a truth which the fancy disengages from the mere scientific fact. That is to say, the rain-clouds and the peonies are not connected, ‘really,’ as we say. The fancy supposes that the peonies have the power to prevent the rain-clouds from approaching. The imagination, seizing on the colour and size of the peonies with the utmost violence, and regarding with defiant eye the encircling banks of thunder clouds piled up on the horizon, perceives that the peonies and the clouds are connected in some mysterious way; that they stand opposed as enemies.
* * *
The stamens and pistil
Of the peony gush out
Into the sunlight.
Taigi
From the pale red petal of the (herbaceous) peony the golden stamens and pistil burst out into the bright sunlight. In this verse we are made to feel a power and glory of the peony which has no reference to that of man.
* * *
The garden is dark
In the night, and quiet
The peony.
Buson
In the original, ‘night’ is put in the objective case with wo, and this faintly suggests a causal relation of quietness between the peony and the night.
* * *
Dusk on the flower
Of the white peony,
That embraces the moon.
Gyodai
The whiteness of the flower seems to draw to itself all the pallor of the moon.
* * *
To the candle,
The peony
Is as still as death.
Kyoruku
The candle burns motionless; its soul of fire does not quiver. The peony, too, not to be outdone, glows immovable, overpowering the candle with its fervent blooming. They are as quiet as the grave, in their burning life.
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