In the Wake of Basho: Bestiary in the Rock Garden

Copyright © 2017 by Yury Lobo.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016916251

   ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-5245-4748-6

      Softcover   978-1-5245-4746-2

      eBook   978-1-5245-4747-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Front cover was done by Yury Lobo

Rev. date: 12/30/2016

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Table of Contents

Dedication

To my beloved parents, grandparents, children and grandchildren

Epigraph

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves. William Shakespeare

Proloque by author

Introduction

Foreword by Dr. Ian Probstein

Associate Professor of English at Touro College

ROCK 1

ROCK 2

ROCK 3

ROCK 4

ROCK 5

ROCK 6

ROCK 7

ROCK 8

ROCK 9

ROCK 10

ROCK 11

ROCK 12

ROCK 13

ROCK 14

ROCK 15

Notes to the Introduction

Bestiary Index

Notes to The Rocks

Notes of the co-translator Mrs. Elena Sheverdinova

Acknowledgement

Dedication

To my beloved parents, grandparents, children and grandchildren

Epigraph

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.

—William Shakespeare

Proloque by author

In the Wake of Basho. Bestiary in the Rock garden.

–––––––––––––––––—

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

This book just happened. After very intense submerging into Japanese culture, history, art and poetry (daily Aikido and Iaido trainings, Zen garden meditations, picking up some basic Japanese, reading the poems written by my beloved Matsuo Basho and other Japanese and Chinese poets) for about 3 years (2008-2010), one early morning the whole idea of the book came to me as one piece: to introduce Shakespeare to Japan at least two centuries before it actually happened. The idea (however crazy it may sound) is not quite too far away from reality: it could truly have happened that a Catholic Japanese with traditional samurai background and upbringing escaped to Christian Macao, where he was introduced to English, which became his second mother tongue und through English was captured by genius of Shakespeare. Of course Haruki Okami’s core was still Japanese with all the bells and whistles. Once a samurai, forever a samurai. The tiger doesn’t change his stripes. His Basho and Shakespeare-influenced existential poetry is a sort of crossover or fusion of both languages, cultural, poetic and religious traditions of both countries. Hokku married with Shakespearean blank verse. Haruki Okami (who is my alter ago) was impressed by Shakespeare-like French artists were impressed by Japanese art in the second half of the 19th century which brought impressionism to life. His (my) poetry is sort of extended minimalism with more attention to transient details. Important is the architecture of Haruki Okami’s verse: 3 lines: long, shorter one and the shortest. It is sort of backward steps or stairway arranged sense wise in ascending order. You are kind of going downstairs but actually you go up. The suspension is growing toward the climatic end and ends up with an ellipsis […] inviting the reader to fill up the omitted words, connotations and meanings (the reader can find all this intended omissions in extensive Notes). The number of the hokku (46) has a certain symbolism: Numerical value of the Hebrew word for number 46 is haia, which according to gematria (Kabbalistic numerology) means the beast. For several decades, some theorists have suggested William Shakespeare placed his mark on the translated text of Psalm 46 that appears in the King James Bible, although many scholars view this as unlikely. The 46th word from the beginning of Psalm 46 is shake and the 46th word from the end (omitting the liturgical mark ‘Selah’) is ‘spear’. Shakespeare was in King James’ service during the preparation of the King James Bible, and was generally considered to be 46 years old in 1611 when the translation was completed. Most likely that the presence of Shakespeare’s name in the King James Bible is merely a coincidence, but so was the number of tercets which I never planned. When the book was finished I just counted them.

Why Shakespeare?

I’m pretty sure that few countries if any in the world have embraced Shakespeare with such animal passion as Japan. He is just the extension of Japanese soul and spirit wrapped in English language. Author Damian Flanagan wrote in The Japan Times: From 1868 to the end of the Taisho Era (1912-1926), Shakespeare became so naturalized in Japan that he assumed his own Japanese name, Sao. Japan’s opening up to the West in the late 1800s coincided with the heyday of the British Empire and Shakespeare’s propulsion to the status of a worldwide literary icon. In the postwar era, some of Akira Kurosawa’s greatest films were influenced by Shakespeare, such as Throne of Blood and Ran, which were inspired by Macbeth and King Lear respectively. And Japan’s great theater director Yukio Ninagawa has produced Hamlet eight times. Unfortunately, in English at least, the quality and number of translations — and most particularly the quality of criticism — lags far behind what is available to readers of Shakespeare in Japanese.

There is another rather mysterious connection between the Bard and Japan. The spear which is featured on poet’s coat of arms and is of course a vital part of his last name is somehow connected to the Amenonuhoko (heavenly jeweled spear or naginata) which as the ancient Japanese legend goes was used to create Japan. The two deities went to the bridge between heaven and earth, Ame-no-ukihashi (floating bridge of heaven), and churned the sea below with the spear. When drops of salty water fell from the tip of the spear, they formed into the first Japanese island, Onogoro-shima.

Why bestiary?

Japan is a truly beautiful and ancient country and its variety of symbols including national animals, birds, imaginary creatures and rich iconography reflects its unique religious and cultural aesthetics and sense of the world. Besides the simple but vivid flag and transient cherry blossom, Japanese animal symbols reflect an appreciation for a simple, clean, aesthetic that focuses on the transient more than the permanent. Japanese animal and religious symbolism is rich and deep, incorporating myth and reality, philosophy and beauty, into one unified whole. William Shakespeare has also interwoven throughout his plays and poetry an immense deal of curious folk-lore connected with animals. Not only does he allude with the accuracy of a naturalist to the peculiarities and habits of certain animals, but so true to nature is he in his graphic descriptions of them that it is evident his knowledge was in a great measure acquired from his own observation.

The whole book of Haruki Okami’s poetry is about last circle of life, spiritual journey, last farewell to all living things created by God before departing to the undiscover’d country, from whose bourn no traveller returns. The whole book was written by me within 15 consecutive days. Every morning I woke up with new poetic Rock on my lips. The animals were coming to me one by one in the same order as published as they came to Buddha. It was a kind of spiritual enlightenment which I never experienced before. I just put the poems on the paper with few or no corrections at all. I haven’t changed a thing in the Russian original since. The translation into English with a help of a very professional translator Mrs. Elena Sheverdinova took of course much longer. Than I put the book aside and turned my attention to other projects. Now the time is ripe to publish it.

The year 2016 marked the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and 322nd anniversary of the death of Matsuo Basho(1644- 1694), the greatest dramatist and Bard of the English speaking world and the greatest poet of the Japanese speaking world respectively. Their spirits and poetical gems are pretty much alive and demanded in modern world, still facing eternal themes of war and peace, death and live, hate and love.

God bless you all!

Love

Yury Lobo a.k.a. Haruki Okami

Introduction

Poetry album In the Wake of Basho, Bestiary in the Rock Garden is written on behalf of errant samurai Haruki Okami (1621-1695) (1*), - a great admirer of the poetry of Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)(2*) and William Shakespeare (1564-1616). He goes on a pilgrimage (musha shugyo)(9*) to the places of Japan’s greatest poet’s last journey, and ends his life by committing kanshi (a ritual suicide) (3*) on November 28, 1695 in Osaka, exactly one year after the great poet found his death there.

Not much is known of Okami. He was born in a family of an impoverished samurai on Kyushu Island and received the initial education and upbringing in keeping with the spirit of traditional Shintoism and Buddhism, however, at the age of 16 years old he was baptized as a Catholic together with his father and other members of the family, having received a Christian name Jorge. Later on, for his courage and bravery, the Portuguese Jesuit monks gave him the nickname Lobo (this is his Japanese last name Okami translated into Portuguese directly, which means wolf), and Jorge Lobo (or George Lobo) became his new Christian name and also his pen name. He was an agemate and companion-in-arms of Amakusa Shiro (1621- 1638)(4*) – the spiritual leader of the revolt of the Catholic Christians in Shimabara. After suppression of the revolt and deaths of all the rebels, Okami, who had miraculously escaped, managed to reach the Portuguese colony Macao (5*), where he lived over half a century and practiced Oriental medicine. In particular, he was engaged in acupuncture and treatment with herbal infusions, as several generations of his maternal ancestors did before him. In addition to the Portuguese his patients, neighbors, and friends were other Catholics of various origins: Japanese and Chinese, and also English Catholics escaped to Macao because of the religious persecution of the British Crown. The English Catholics introduced Okami to the works of William Shakespeare, who, according to their beliefs, was as much a recusant as they were (6*). In 1645 he married an English woman, Susanne Smith, who was a daughter of a local Roman Catholic priest, and they lived together for over 40 years. They did not have children. During the years of his expatriation Okami learned English, Portuguese, Spanish, Latin, and Chinese languages. He also accumulated an extensive library and collection of European artwork and pursued literary translation from Chinese (Lao Tzu, Confucius, Zhuang Zhou) and English (the sonnets of Shakespeare) into Japanese. He continued mastering his art of kenjutsu (7*) and even opened his own martial art school. Okami also traveled a lot by sea as an interpreter and a physician to the lands of China, India, Philippines, New Spain (Mexico), Portugal, Spain, Ireland, France, and Italy. Supposedly, he met in the Vatican with Pope Innocent XI (1676-1689) on a Portuguese delegation. Though all these years Okami grew very much nostalgic for his native land, and was eager to get any message from Japan, which had closed its boarders tightly as a shell with the firmly-closed valves(8*).

While living in Macao he heard of a poetic gift of Matsuo Basho. He bought several books of the master from the Chinese merchants who traded with Japan, and started translating them into Chinese and English. After his wife died in 1689, Okami, having sensed his own death approaching, secretly returned to his native land at the age of 68 and under the guise of a ronin (9*) began wandering around visiting Buddhist and Shinto temples (10*), dipping himself into the long-forgotten world of the old legends and myths. Out of the blue, he learned about the existence of a secret sect of the Catholic Christians - Kakure Kirishitan (11*), and he got in touch with its leaders. He also succeeded to become accepted to the remote circle of the Basho’s apprentices. He visited as much as he could the famous banana hut (12*) and attended poetic sessions. After Basho’s death in 1694 he decided to follow the trail of the poet’s last journey writing some poetic notes along the way, a kind of a non-traditional hokku (13*). As like as not, he thought and wrote in English as if it had became his native language after all of those years married to an English woman. Then he translated his own writings into Japanese; this gave his poetic style a certain European turn. His poetry is a stream of consciousness with a continuous flow of awareness: it is the chased moment of the sad enchantment of beauty, and at the same time it is an imprint of frailty of the outside world (14*). All 46 (15*) tercets are gathered into 15 traditional rocks of a Japanese garden (16*), three tercets in each rock (17*), with the exception of the last one, which has four (18*). The general subject of his poetry is the animal world of Japan against the background of all four seasons (19*), is akin to to ancient medieval bestiary (20*), which in its turn is dedicated to ancient Chinese tractates of real and fantastic nature (beasts and plants). Okami’s poetry, apart from the pure love, landscape, and philosophical lyrics, is a skillfully encoded Christian Zen (21*), in which Catholic mysticism (22*), anitya and wabi-sabi (23*), contemplation (24*), yugen (25*), and satori (26*) are subtly intertwined. Everything works at the level of the subliminal consciousness of the author, and therefore, it is absolutely seamless from the point of view of perception by any reader, despite his or her nationality and faith. The possibility of such cross-cultural interaction and latitude in religion comes from a special set of mind of the Japanese, ability to absorb all the different and, at first glance, hardly compatible elements by smoothing out the rough edges. Because of Okami’s multiculturalism, multilingualism and polytheism, his poetry is polyphonic and allows contemplating the outside world in its diversity of colors, and has various cultural and theological connotations. Thus, the author does not try to imitate a great poet, that is essentially impossible, but merely attempts to project himself into the poet’s character, namely, to look at the world through the poet’s eyes, without obstructing the view of his own vision.

Foreword

Epiphany in the Japanese Rock Garden

This book of nonconventional hokku or haiku is written on behalf of a fictional Japanese samurai Haruki Okami (1621-1695), a great admirer of the poetry of Matsuo Basho (1644-1694). It is said that Okami was baptized at 16 and became a Roman Catholic. It is further said that Okami later escaped the persecution of Catholics in Japan, and fled to Macao, where he lived for over half a century and practiced Oriental medicine. For his bravery, Portuguese Jesuit monks gave him the name of Jorge Lobo, which means wolf in Portuguese as well as in some other Romance languages, which brings to mind Jorge Luis Borges, who was fond of such historic stylizations or mystifications. Okami’s fictional biography further states that he befriended English Catholics who fled the persecution of the English Crown, married Susan Smith, the daughter of the English priest, and was thus introduced to the English language and Shakespeare. Okami traveled all over Europe, accumulated a huge library, and started translating the Bard’s work into Japanese. He also read the poetry of his famous compatriot, Matsuo Basho, and after his wife’s death in 1689, Okami decided to return to Japan. He founded the famous banana hut of Basho, was accepted by his circle of followers, and in his writing married East and West, Zen with Christianity, Shakespearean pentameter with Japanese haiku. Interestingly, the modernist of the turn of the century, Ezra Pound, who was entrusted with Ernest Fenollosa’s archive by his widow in 1913, was seeking ways to renew the poetic language and to break with pentameter, bridging the East and the West. Based on the juxtaposition of images and lines, his verse was aimed at achieving natural rhythm, not the rhythm of the metronome, and at rendering specific shades of color, not just general colors and images. As the Imagist manifesto said,

1. Direct treatment of the thing", whether subjective or objective.

2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.

3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not these quence of a metronome."

Although there are similar traces, such as juxtaposition of images and ellipsis, this book, arranged in 15 sections, or Rocks, is based on the 15 traditional rocks of a Japanese garden, three rocks in each tercet, with the exception of the last one, which has four tercets:

A banana palm tree wears a heavy hat made of snow. Freezing.

The red cardinal rests on Buddha’s shoulder. Weary.

One more century is gone, is that so?…

The great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin wrote that years force one into a stern prose. The author of this book, Yury Lobo, or Yuri Slobodenuk, moved in the opposite direction: before his sudden illumination, Yuri spent most of his life writing in Russian, German and English TV scripts, poetry, journalism, and short maxims called liliputins in the vein of La Rochefoucauld. Then suddenly in 2008, he was immersed in Japanese culture, history, art and poetry. He even learned the basics of Japanese. The starting point was perhaps the Aikido trainings, Zen garden meditations, and the works of Basho and other poets. He was watching Japanese movies, ate mostly Japanese food, slept on tatami and even started wearing Japanese clothes till once he began writing poems in Russian, or rather he started recording his dreams. Then the entire idea of the book came to him, and he arranged it according to the principle described above, but decided to hide himself behind the mask of the Japanese warrior, scholar, and poet of the 17 th century.

Ian Probstein,

a scholar of modernist poetry,

associate professor of Touro college

ROCK 1

Deadly Premonition

The leaden mirror of the bay at the end of a short grey day. Ripples. Splash.

An insatiable pelican devours a fish. Ready for takeoff anew.

I make up for lost time, breathing deeply before I die ...

Sore

A red rockfish on the wet sand, its viscera ripped out by a razor sharp hook. Violently shaking in death agony, as it were after a painful kanshi.

Tell me why have you not graced me with your love?

New Year’s

A banana palm tree wears a heavy hat made of snow. Freezing.

The red cardinal rests on Buddha’s shoulder. Weary.

One more century is gone, is