Please note that the poems and essays on this site are copyright and may not be reproduced without the author's permission.


Tuesday 5 June 2012

Issa: Forty nine years / Hiroshige: Fourteen views of the full moon


.
File:Hiroshige, Chrysanthemums.jpg

Chrysanthemums and Moon: Hiroshige Andō (1797-1858) (Irving H. Olds Collection, Japanese Prints and Drawings, Library of Congress)





......The moon and flowers:

Forty nine years

......Walking about and wasting time.






 
Forty nine years: Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827): translated by R. H. Blyth in Haiku, Volume I: Eastern Culture, 1947

Views of the full moon by Hiroshige Andō (Utagawa Hiroshige) (1797-1858)




Gekka momo ni tsubakura

Gekka momo ni tsubakura: Moon, swallows and peach blossoms: Hiroshige Andō (1797-1858) (Irving H. Olds Collection, Japanese Prints and Drawings, Library of Congress)

File:Brooklyn Museum - Wind Blown Grass Across the Moon - Utagawa Hiroshige (Ando).jpg

Wind Blown Grass Across the Moon, 19th c. (Asian Art Collection, Brooklyn Museum)


File:Hiroshige-Moon-behind-leaves.jpg

Moon behind leaves, from Twenty-Eight Moonlight Views, early 1830s

File:Hiroshige, The moon over a waterfall.jpg 

The moon over a waterfall (another version of the above), from Twenty-Eight Moonlight Views, early 1830s

File:Hiroshige Full moon over a mountain landscape.jpg

Full moon over a mountain landscape
, from Eight Views of the Province Omi (Omi Hakkei), between 1831 and 1837


File:Kisokaido36 Miyanokoshi.jpg

Miyanokoshi
on the Kisokaido, from The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso-kaidō, 1834-1842

File:Kisokaido27 Nagakubo.jpg

Nagakobu on the Kisokaido, from The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso-kaidō, 1834-1842

File:Hiroshige Men poling boats past a bank with willows.jpg 

Men poling boats past a bank with willows, from The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso-kaidō, 1834-1842 

File:Hiroshige, A family in a misty landscape.jpg

A family in a misty landscape, from The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso-kaidō, 1834-1842

File:Hiroshige Travellers in the Moonlight.jpg

Travellers in the Moonlight
, from The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso-kaidō, 1834-1842

File:100 views edo 076.jpg
 

Bamboo Yards, Kyōbashi Bridge (Tokyo), from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, between 1756 and 1758 (Asian Art Collection, Brooklyn Museum)

File:Brooklyn Museum - Full Moon at Takanawa from Celebrated Places in the Eastern Capital - Utagawa Hiroshige (Ando).jpg

Full Moon at Takanawa (Takanawa no Meigetsu), from Celebrated Places in the Eastern Capital (Toto Meisho), between 1828 and 1834 (Frank L. Babbott Fund, Asian Art Collection, Brooklyn Museum)


File:Kanazawa Shugetsu.jpg

Kanazawa Shugetsu (Autumn moon) from Eight Views of Kanazawa, c. 1820

20 comments:

ACravan said...

I'm assuming that assembling and arranging this made you as happy as it has made me viewing it. Thank you. Just splendid. Curtis

ACravan said...

I think Hiroshige would be pleased with your work. Regarding the memory issue and our feelings about work completed, I'm reminded of something Ian Fleming wrote in one of the James Bond novels about the body not being able to remember physical pain. I think Fleming was mistaken there; we remember all sorts of pain. Viewing this terrific pocket museum makes me recall our visit last weekend to the new home of the Barnes Collection on the Parkway in Philadelphia. The Barnes used to be a sort of pocket museum in Merion, a close suburb, and was a lovely, unique place, but now the city grafters have turned the collection into just an "another painting, another wall" experience. (Of course the art is still wonderful.) 84 as the new 49 is an uplifting thought. Curtis

TC said...

Curtis,

I did enjoy the fun with numerology, especially in concocting the idea of a Hiroshige series which never existed save here and now... and what with 84 being the new 49, as I have read somewhere (but of course forget where).

Ed Baker said...

"84"
"49"
same full moon

but
who is counting

the "full moon"
some Stone, eh

maybe y'all can un
cover about 1,427
more of
Hiroshige's wood-block
prints to ride-along w my
"full moon" 'shorties'

full moon
I think I'm in love
with a rock

(y'all mademyday TC
thanks)

TC said...

Curtis,

Forgive the lacuna there. (You see I am meant to be forgetting that I keep not remembering things.)

TC said...

Ed,

Sorry I missed that one (hid under a google moon rock).

Nin Andrews said...

Beautiful! If walking about the moon and the flowers is wasting time, I'm all for it.

Susan Kay Anderson said...

So busy under that moon. Nature is bigger than busy humans and larger, still nature is side by side and the moon another part but not a part. Moon's empire is night and darkness. Try ignoring that different light. Working there is slower, distracting, crisp.

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom,

"walking about and wasting time"

Just beautiful -- I wonder how many full moons there have been since Hiroshige's "moonlit views"?

6.5

light coming into sky above still black
ridge, white circle of moon by branches
in foreground, sound of wave in channel

added an inscription, after
that “blue and yellow”

here and there, before this
somewhere else, think

grey rain cloud against plane of ridge,
silver of drops splashing into channel

TC said...

Making a poem that so perfectly projects purposelessness must have taken a lifetime of resolve.

But the moon's in no hurry.

And the sun has actually just come out. And someone says, "See my purple geraniums". Must be the transit of Venus. Here and then gone.

The cats are fighting over the spot of sun.

Hazen said...

Every one of these is my favorite! Even the repeats where the inking is different.

Last night the moon got rained out. Hoping for clear weather here tonight.

TC said...

Hazen,

You've caught me making twelve equal fourteen. Should have known I'd never sneak that past the closest looker.

I too like the variations in tone in the different versions of the prints.

Different moods.

vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras) said...

Reflecting and commenting
On what Nin says—

C’mon, Tom, keep
Wasting our time!

TC said...

It's the specialty of the house.

barkstry said...

so beautiful/ thank you.

Anonymous said...

Four of these prints adorn one of the walls of my bedroom -- a Christmas gift to my wife several years ago -- and I've never tired of any of them. My wife has infinitely better taste than I re: visual arts. On this I'm sure and glad.

TC said...

Thanks, barkstry and Brad.

My wife too has the better interior decorating instincts.

(Though a raucous three-cat trainwreck in her gallery but a moment ago seems to have temporarily rearranged her permanent collection.)

Issa's Untidy Hut said...

Wonderful Blyth translation, stunning assemblage ...

and, of course, it took Issa's lifetime to write such a "simple" poem, as you say.

Beautiful.

TC said...

Don, I believe Issa had it right (as always). It takes an entire wasted life to "achieve" the slightest iota of Anything. But it's probably all down to the quality of the wasting. The more complete, the more perfect.

Easier said than done of course!

Ed Baker said...

I too broached this wasted-life method
-ology
a cpl years ago. Now that I am passed
71 I can tell y'all
from x perience (as in a 'shortie' that I wrote:

so
much
time
spent
getting
ready

well... now back out into the back yard to
watch the weeds grow :