Chapter Three

i

ii

Lecturer of English Literature, Majmaah University, Saudia Arabia

iii

To My Beloved Father, the Reason Behind What I'm and

What I Would Ever Be....

To My Life Partners, My Husband Ahmad and My Daughter

Habiba

And on the Honor of My Departed Friend Marwa Gamal,

May She Rest in Peace

Contents

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Page No

Forward …...................................................................................... V

Preface …………………................................................................. 1

Chapter One:

Orientalism: History and Theory in Practice ............................... 4

I. Orientalism: The Concept …………….……………..………... 5

a. Saidian Critique ……………………….…………….…….. 6

b. Far Orientalism …………………………………................. 8

II. Gary Snyder: An Orientalist in Practice ………………..……. 11

a. His Way of Translation ……………………....................... 12

b. Writing His Own Poetry…………………………………… 21

Chapter Two:

Translating Oriental Poetry ………………………………...……. 28

I. China As Represented in the Translation of Han Shan's

Cold Mountain Poems ………………….……………….… 29

II. The Image of Japan in Miyazawa Kenji's Eighteen

Translated Poems ………………………………………... 46

Chapter Three:

The Occidental Appreciation of Oriental Art .…….............…… 65

I. The Chinese Landscape Scroll and the Making of

Mountains and Rivers Without End ……………………...... 65

a. The Title of the Long Poem ……………………………..... 65

b. The Genesis and Structure of the Long Poem………….…. 66

II. The Japanese No Play Within the Dramatic Structure of

Mountains and Rivers Without End …............................. 96

a. The Jo of Mountains and Rivers Without End …………... 97

b. The Double Ha of the Long Poem ………........................ 102

c. The Kyu of Mountains and Rivers Without End .………... 107

Chapter Four:

The Adoption of Oriental Religion............................................ 116

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I. Han Shan's and Miyazawa Kenji's Buddhism Through

Gary Snyder's Translations ………...…................……… 116

a. Han Shan's Cold Mountain Poems ………………….…. 116

b. Miyazawa Kenji's Eighteen Poems …….…………......... 120

II. The Account for Zen Buddhism in Mountains and Rivers

Without End …………………….……………….....……. 125

Conclusion ………………………………………………………. 148

Works Cited ………………………………………….……...….. 151

Forward

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Comment for Enas Fawzy:

By virtue of relentless scholarship and reading, even though at a

distance from the subject, Enas Fawzy has produced a remarkably

insightful and detailed study of most of the main ideas in my work. I was

a trifle skeptical at first but over several years of exchanging ideas and

questions, I came to appreciate the strength of Fawzy’s intellect and her

determination to get the project right. I commend and salute this

dissertation!

Gary Snyder

1

Preface

To call a poet, like Gary Snyder, an orientalist is to relate him to the area studies of

Orientalism and the Orient. In so many words, Snyder as an orientalist is working in

the field study of Orientalism, which is essentially based upon the study of the Orient.

The "Orient", mainly the Eastern part of the world especially Japan, China and the

Islamic countries, would – in Edward Said's perspective – only introduce another

naming of "They", "Other" or of that "effeminate", "uncivilized", "irrational" part of

the world called the East. According to Said, It is the source of Western oldest and

greatest colonies, richest experiences, and its deepest and essential image of the Other

(Said, 1995: 3-7).

However, an application of oriental discourse of a modern orientalist's work – like

Snyder's poetry – would probably not follow Said's Orientalism of colonial times.

Almost, all critics – like Anthony Hunt, Eric Hayot and Nick Clifford –agree that the

case of China and Japan or the Far Orient is far different from the Middle East and

Said's thesis. For one thing, the days of colonial expansion are over and not to forget

that China and Japan were never militarily colonized in the first place. Recently, there

is a direct contact between the orientalist and the different culture under research, and

with the presence of media and net services, a world culture is no longer considered

"exotic" but "global". But if to learn something from Said's critique, it is simply to

question and examine all representations of cultural difference.

This study book with the oriental discourse in Snyder's poetry. The main concern

is to show how Gary Snyder as an orientalist represents the Orient – mainly China

and Japan – in his poetry to occidental culture. The book analyzes Snyder's

translation of Chinese and Japanese poetry, his representation of Chinese painting

and Japanese drama, and his account for oriental religion or Zen Buddhism.

Consequently, this book is divided into four chapters followed by a conclusion.

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The first chapter "Orientalism: History and Theory in Practice" deals with the

theory of Orientalism. It examines how far Edward Said's Orientalism applies to the

Far Orient and Gary Snyder's representation. It does not focus on Edward Said's

thesis as much as it focuses on Far Orientalism. China and Japan mainly are the

Orient under research in this thesis. The chapter also deals with the life and works of

Gary Snyder as an American orientalist in practice.

The second chapter is entitled "Translating Oriental Poetry". The chapter deals

with Snyder's translation of Chinese and Japanese poems. From Chinese poetry

Snyder translates some of the poems of Han Shan, "Cold Mountain Poems", and from

Japanese poetry, Snyder translates eighteen poems of Miyazawa Kenji. Those poems

are analyzed and discussed in this chapter and the aspects of oriental culture are

detected to illustrate how far Gary Snyder as an orientalist succeeds in representing

an image of China and Japan in his translation.

The third chapter "The Occidental Appreciation of Oriental Art" analyzes one of

Snyder's own works. In writing his own poetry, the poet still considers the Orient and

oriental culture. His masterpiece Mountains and Rivers Without End represents his

appreciation for two different forms of oriental art. The long poem is both

constructed and inspired from Chinese landscape painting and Japanese No drama

which are the two aspects under focus in this chapter. This chapter is divided into two

sections. The first section examines the effect of the Chinese landscape scroll on the

genesis and making of Mountains and Rivers Without End. The second section

discusses Japanese No drama within the dramatic structure of the long poem.

The fourth chapter is entitled "The Adoption of Oriental Religion". It discusses

Zen Buddhism and its effect upon the poetry of Gary Snyder. The poet is a Zen

Buddhist and the teachings of this oriental religion affect his writings deeply. This

chapter detects the application of Buddhist teachings and practices in Snyder's

translation of the poems of the Chinese monk Han Shan, his translation of the poetry

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of the Buddhist Miyazawa Kenji, and Snyder's own poetry. It is an all-encompassing

chapter of all the previous analyzed poems. After this final chapter is the conclusion

which sums up some of the most important points, arguments and goals of the book.

4

Chapter One

Orientalism: History and Theory in Practice

When reading texts from a different culture raises some inquiries, it is quite

adequate, then, to acknowledge the difficulty of representing other cultures in

literary texts. Nevertheless, an "Other" culture was and still introducing a desirable

field of study. Whether it is cultural diversity or cultural difference, scholars in spite

of the feeling of estrangement, the difficulty of interpretation, and the danger of

misconception, are always attracted to an "Other" to research and explore. Such plea

to research and explore the culture of the "Other" has always been reflected in the

Western or occidental interest in the Orient.

Originally, the terms Occident and Orient, as Sokichi Tsuda explains, come from

China about the time of the end of the Yuan dynasty (1279-1367 A.D.) to the Ming

dynasty (1368-1661 A.D.). The names were used to define "the regions in the South

Seas that kept traffic with China by sea routs were specified according to their

localities; the regions on the East as the Orient (or the Eastern Sea) and those on the

West the Occident (or the Western Sea)," (Tsuda, 1955: 6). Eventually, the names

Occident and Orient came to describe not only the seas, but also the regions on and

in the same directions of those seas. These names of "Occident" and "Orient" are

only introducing another naming of Us/They, Self/Other, or the most recognizable,

West and East.

But when there is a possibility to recognize the Occident both geographically and

culturally, alluding to the Orient is less obvious. The Occident "is already thoroughly

familiar with 'Europe' and 'the West' as virtually synonymous terms for the same

society – a relatively unified community linked by common religious and intellectual

traditions, similar linguistic patterns, and considerably racial homogeneity"

(Steadman, 1970: 23). There are, of course, some differences in the political and

economic ideologies, still "it possesses a common intellectual and spiritual

5

background in the Judeo-Christian tradition, on the one hand, and secular

rationalism, on the other," (Steadman, 1970: 23).

The Orient, on opposition, refers to several societies and cultures which are

mostly "characterized by profound differences in language and race and in religious

and intellectual traditions," (Steadman, 1970: 23). Such indefinite term, as Steadman

indicates, contains the Far East; including China Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, the

society of India, and the Islamic community: extending eastward across Asia from

Turkey and Jordan as far as Malaya, Indonesia and the Philippines, and westward

across North Africa from Egypt to Morocco.

Unlike the Occident, the Orient contains different and distinguished cultures that it

would be outrageous to define all of them as the oriental culture. As a matter of fact,

"such Oriental culture does not exist as one culture" (Tsuda, 1955: 96). Additionally,

it is not quite possible that any area may culturally exist as one world. Still, in the

word of common use there is what is called the oriental culture in opposition to the

occidental culture. To Europeans and Americans, "there is one, East or Orient,

indicating the direction of East (or the word equivalent to that in the languages of

different countries)," (Tsuda, 1955: 13). This Orient contains all the regions about

the East of the Mediterranean Sea, and it has always been represented as one entity.

Whether it is the Middle East or the Far East, the Orient existed as one constructed

entity through occidental representations or the field study of Orientalism.

I. Orientalism: The Concept

Nearly in the sixteenth century, oriental literature was introduced to European and

American culture on the hands of the Christian missionaries. The missionaries went

to the Orient to research and explore an "Other" culture, a different one from their

own. In this sense, many of the oriental texts were translated into the English

language. This act of translation was far pushed, in the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries, along with the colonial enterprise and the approach was more encouraged

6

by the notion of "Know Your Enemy". In other words, "Western cultures 'translated'

(and 'translate') non-Western cultures into Western categories to be able to come to

an understanding of them and, therefore, to come to terms with them" (Lefevere,

1999: 77). The translations were one way of managing the "exotic" East to the

Western mind, or in more specific words, of orientalizing the Orient. This process

proved to be of a certain ideological entity after the publication of Edward Said's

Orientalism in 1987.

a. Saidian Critique

According to Said Orientalism is essentially the study of the Orient by orientalists.

In Said's perspective, the "Orient" which is mainly the Eastern part of the world

especially Japan, China and the Islamic countries, would only introduce another

naming of "They", "Other" or of that "effeminate", "uncivilized", "irrational" part of

the world called the East. It is the source of Western oldest and greatest colonies,

richest experiences, and its deepest and essential image of the "Other".

Consequently, the Orient is that integral part of Western material civilization and

culture (Said, 1995: 3-7).

Therefore, Orientalism – as the field study of the Orient – could be materially

defined as "the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient –dealing with it by

making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it,

settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating,

restructuring, and having authority over the Orient" (Said, 1995: 3). This definition

of Orientalism is related to the Occident historical involvement with the Orient. And

this Occident – the Western part of the world especially Europe and America – is to

represent the opposite image of the Orient, and another naming of "We", "Self" or of

that "masculine", "civilized", "rational" part of the world called the West. Still, for

Said it is the same Occident that always has specific colonial and imperial interests

in the Orient; interests which are represented throughout occidental literature by

orientalists.

7

The indication of an orientalist is "Anyone who teaches, writes about, or

researches the Orient – and this applies whether the person is anthropologist,

sociologist, historian, or philologist – either in its specific or its general aspects"

(Said, 1995: 3). Thus, the orientalist is the researcher, the scholar, the critic, the

author, who through his writings represents the Orient. So, what the orientalist

simply does is exploring and researching the Orient through his own interpretation:

the occidental representation of the Orient. In doing so, the orientalist’s Western

identity may be involved in the process of representation, causing major cultural

problems.

Said argues that due to the orientalist’s feeling of superiority, he is to treat oriental

people as mean and inferior if not as mere subjects. Therefore, when he is dealing

with what’s oriental, he is not to overcome his Eurocentric perspective. After all, he

is only approaching the Orient as a Westerner. And approaching the Orient as a

Westerner evolves previous colonial thoughts and perspectives about the Orient

inferiority and effeminacy. It is like building a barrier between him and the orientals,

creating a field of exteriority in representation. All the previous conclusions cause

cultural problems of misconception and misinterpretation (Said, 1995: 7-10). Really,

it is quite odd to acknowledge these cultural difficulties, when speaking about other

people seems to be the easiest task. Still, the involvement of colonial and imperial

interests creates such kind of difficulties in representation.

Said insists that through the process of representation, certain statements and

claims are transferred from previous images of the Orient; images which are taken

from past Orient or past classical literature. This kind of previous images of the

Orient was completely based upon no experiences with the "real" Orient.

Consequently, the transference of those certain images and conceptions to nineteenth

then twentieth century literature results in an involvement of a discourse in

Orientalism. Such discourse involvement tends to "construct" than to describe; it

constructs the Orient’s entity mostly as it is represented in occidental literature.

8

The critic Edward Said in this sense criticizes representation on the ground of

misconception and truth; if the representation is being real or not. Then he goes on in

condemning the orientalists' process of representation arguing that there is a

discourse involvement in Orientalism. The argument is based on the idea that

orientalists, without knowing, are participating in constructing an image of the

Orient, which is most of the time inherited or re-formed from the past. During the

last century till the moment many debates were raised in favor and disfavor of Said's

claims. Regardless of this fact, "Edward Said's Orientalism has been almost

universally acclaimed by Western intellectuals as a brilliant critique of discourse on

the 'Orient'" (Gare, 1995: 309).

b. Far Orientalism

Although Said's thesis is written as a critical discourse of the occidental

representations of the Islamic Middle East, it is also used as a base ground for

examining the occidental representations of the Far East too. In other words, Edward

Said "presents his work not only as an examination of European attitudes to Islam

and the Arabs but also as a model for analysis of all Western 'discourses on the

Other'" (Windschuttle, 1999: 5). So the term "Orient" here would not only include

Arabs and Islam, but also China and Japan. For this thesis, the term would primarily

refer to China and Japan only.

However, some critics like Hayot and Clifford find the theory inapplicable to

China and Japan. Nick Clifford for example stresses, "I'm not at all sure that Said's

version of 'Orientalism' works very well for Western representations of China and

Japan," (1996: 1). Consequently, the case of China and Japan, or the Far Orient, is

different from the case of the Middle East. For one point, "Zhaoming Qian and

Xiaomei Chen stress the inapplicability of Orientalism to China because China was

never geographically colonized by the West" (Hayot, 1999: 21). In the same way,

there is "the question of how the thesis of 'Orientalism' might hold in the absence of

political domination; in other words, the question of Japan" (Pham, 1999: 163). The

9

argument is raised due to Said's insistence on the involvement of a colonial discourse

in Orientalism and on the importance of understanding Orientalism in relation to the

occidental colonial expansion in the Orient.

Attaching Orientalism with colonialism does not mean that the representations of

neither China nor Japan are free from Said's Orientalism. For this Orient, there is an

act of stereotyping that is involved in the occidental representations of the Chinese

and Japanese cultures. On the one hand, Pennycook demonstrates the point by

examining the fixity of representation of China:

Just as Said (1987) identified a range of stereotypes dealing with

the Arab world- the eternal and unchanging East, the sexually

insatiable Arab, the "feminine" exotic, the teaming marketplace,

mystical religiosity, corrupt despotism, and so forth- it is possible

to outline a similar series of stereotypes in writing on China: the

exotic and eternal kingdom, the underdeveloped and backward,

the paradoxically juxtaposed old and new, the crowded, dirty and

poverty-stricken life, the smiling or inscrutable exterior hiding

either bad intentions or misery, the passive Oriental and despotic

leader, the dullness of life under socialism, the uncaring nature of

the Communist government, and so on. Such constructions occur

across a broad range of writing, from textbooks to encyclopedias,

(2001: 171-72).

On the other hand, there is the argument that the process of representation has

always involved the orientalist's invention and construction of oriental entity.

Mainly, according to Sanehide Kodama, there are three different types of

approaches to Chinese and Japanese cultures. The first approach is a conservative

one. It involves the orientalist, "who, having confidence in the traditional Western

values, is still liberal enough to be attracted by … [the Orient] 'exotic' beauty"

(Kodama, 1984: 205). The orientalists of this category cannot read or write Chinese

or Japanese but were fascinated by everything Chinese and Japanese like art

paintings and poetry. The oriental knowledge of this category was transferred from

10

works of translations and those texts written in English about the Orient. The works

of Longfellow, Amy Lowell and William Carlos Williams belong to this category.

The second approach contains those orientalists who, "believe that to be an

American is to be a world citizen, and that the world civilization is in a sense an

extension of American culture" (Kodama, 1984: 206). The orientalists of this

category consider Chinese and Japanese values as a pluralistic and relativistic, and

an essential part for their literary themes. Their knowledge of China and Japan is

somehow sketchy, but they are eager to learn than those of the first category. This

category includes the works of the modernists especially Whitman and Ezra Pound.

During the twentieth century, the orientalists of the second category, mainly Pound

and the Modernists, introduced more and more of Chinese and Japanese translations

to the Occident. The Modernists were in fascination of all what's Chinese and

Japanese. Their approach tends more to "construct" than to describe the Orient.

Indeed, Eliot's calling Pound the "inventor of Chinese poetry" (Fass, 1978: 22) shows

the act of "constructing" images and not describing. This leads to the belief that some

American characters were imposed on his translation. Eric Hayot agrees with Eliot on

this point since he too believes that "Pound's translations in Cathay were an attempt

to communicate the aesthetic strategies of modernism (as well as something

Chinese)" (E-mail, May 24, 2005).

Differently, the third and final approach categorizes those orientalists "who have

become genuinely skeptical of traditional values and in seeking new anchorage have

attempted to absorb … [oriental] values" (Kodama, 1984: 206). This group of young

American orientalists tends to learn Chinese and Japanese languages to appreciate

the oriental culture. They felt unsatisfied with American norms and learned to know,

gain and grasp Chinese and Japanese classical literature, religion, and philosophy.

This category includes the Beat Generation especially Kenneth Rexroth, Philip

Whalen, Cid Corman and Gary Snyder.

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This third category of orientalists tends to explore and learn in order to substitute

their unsatisfaction of American norms and values by more creditable ones. Gary

Snyder belongs and leads this category. With his translation of Chinese and Japanese

poetry;

What Snyder proposes instead is a complete break with

civilization in its present form. To him, civilization is "ultimately

the enemy. The very order of the society that we have lived in for

the last 4000 years has outlived its usefulness"… "Judo-

Capitalist-Christian-Marxist" civilization in particular, our

"whole Western Tradition, of which Marxism is but a (Millennial

Protestant) part, is off the track". (Fass, 1978: 91)

As he became unsatisfied with American values, Snyder learned Chinese and

Japanese languages in order to absorb oriental norms and values.

II. Gary Snyder: An Orientalist in Practice

Gary Snyder (1930- ) is considered one of the few figures who have made an

indelible mark on late-twentieth century American thought. He is a winner of so

many literary prizes including; Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1975, a finalist for the

National Book Award in 1992, Bollingen Poetry Prize in 1997 and the Robert

Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award. In this sense the poet joins a very outstanding

group of poets who are considered landmarks in modern American poetry. He wrote

about sixteen collections of prose and poetry. His poetic writings are worldly

widespread and were translated into more than twenty different languages. One

reason of this prominence is Snyder’s distinguished approach to his poetic subjects.

Through his poetry Gary Snyder approaches the themes of American life and

culture from his own perspective, a perspective which is not only American, but also

oriental. This oriental element is to reveal Snyder’s literary works, thought and

philosophy to a degree that makes his career an indication of a perceptive orientalist

enterprise. On a general scale, Snyder's oriental thought "pervades his poetry in ways

12

ranging from the obvious to the subtle, from the conscious to the unconscious" (Yu,

1983: 220). Starting from his very first work Riprap (1959) to his very last collection

Danger on Peaks (2004), Snyder is an indication of an American orientalist in

practice.

Starting with learning oriental Languages at Berkeley (1953-56), Snyder’s interest

in the Orient, – especially China and Japan – stamps his beginnings with American

Orientalism. Literally, through the 1960s Snyder lived in Japan for twelve years,

traveled around Asia, and resided in India; exploring oriental cultures, translating

oriental poetry and representing oriental art. Moreover, while he was in Japan he

retired into a Zen monkery to study Zen Buddhism which is implicitly and explicitly

inverted in his poetry. Thus, his Orientalism is embodied in his translation of oriental

poetry, representation of oriental art and adoption of oriental religion which is

inverted in both his translations and his own writings.

a. His Way of Translation

For Snyder’s poetry, the outset of his literary career as an orientalist began with

following the steps of Ezra Pound by translating classical Chinese and Japanese

poetry. Of all Chinese poetry, Snyder translated twenty-four Chinese poems of Han

Shan's Cold Mountain Poems. Of Japanese classical poetry, he translated eighteen

Japanese poems of Miyazawa Kenji. No doubt, translating, speaking, or writing about

a different or another culture is always difficult and sometimes it is accompanied by a

misconception so a misrepresentation; though most of the times it is not intended.

The dilemma is in Snyder's encounter of "Otherness" with his awareness of

difference. This means, what to do with all this difference? Should he represent it as

it is, or as it should be?

Gary Snyder in his handling of a different culture is consciously aware of the

cultural otherness to deal with. He, in his translation of a culturally different text, is

sure to choose between representing the text as it is – with all its problematic factors

13

– or as it should be, by making out of it or re-forming it in the most suitable form for

the occidental reader. In other words, he is sure to draw a defining line between

"bringing the audience to the text" and "bringing the text to the audience"

(Tymoczko, 1999: 29). This kind of distinction explains the difference between the

approach of the Modernists and that of the Beat Generation, between Pound's Cathay

and Snyder's Cold Mountain Poems.

To bring the audience to the text requires a complete honesty of the translator and

this means not to drop or neglect, in any way, what is odd or culturally unacceptable

in the source text. The translator, in this case, renders the text in hand as it is,

regardless to its unfamiliarity. In so many words, it is a way to "skip the leap we

often call 'of the imagination' but which could be much more aptly called 'of

imperialism'" as Lefevere puts it (1999: 78).

To bring the text to the audience, on the other hand, means to authorize it in the

translated language. The source text, here, becomes at the service of the translator's

capacity to make it available to his audience. It is one way of orientalizing the Orient

or giving it another occidental entity. The Orient introduced, in such a way, is only a

mirror of the orientalist's own culture so "what is supposed to be a window looking

onto another culture, …, turns out to be something more like a mirror giving us back

ourselves" (Kern, 1996: 175). The translation of oriental literary texts, thus, would

turn to be only a reflection of the Occident.

Whether Gary Snyder brings the audience to the text or the text to the audience, it

is totally bound with his approach and way of translation. His way of translation

would prove how far Snyder succeeds as an orientalist in representing the Orient.

This process is to be revealed by an intensive analysis of his Cold Mountain Poems

and his translation of the eighteen poems of Miyazawa Kenji. His way of translation

of the Chinese poems of Han Shan would stand as a sufficient demonstrative example

for that matter.

14

Some critics; like Robert Kern, argue that what Gary Snyder really does in Cold

Mountain Poems is managing and directing his translation to the American readers,

or "bringing the text to his audience". It is claimed that Snyder's approach to the

source language involves a process of "visualizing". Seemingly, Gary Snyder

reproduces the experience of the Chinese text in his American mind. Through this

method of translation the poet declares that he has; "by an effort of concentration to

project the 'picture' of the poem inside my mind, like a movie – to see what's

happening … [Then] to write down, in my own language, what I see happening,"

(Leed, 1986: 178). But, does this mean that he is to impose his own American

perspectives on the translated text while projecting "the 'picture' of the poem" inside

his mind?

In one sense, Snyder in his way to "project the 'picture'", recaptures the scene and

experience of Cold Mountain in the Sierra Nevada in Northern California. In doing

so, Kern believes, Western characters involve in the process of representation. Such

process, as Kern calls it, is "the Chinese poem in a state of Western captivity," (1996:

175), as if the Chinese text is commanded, guided and then redirected to be more

appropriate to Western audience.

For demonstration, in the second poem of Cold Mountain Poems, Snyder's

translation becomes so free, easy spoken and much conversational that "the reader

wonders whether the scenes are in T'ang period China or in modern America"

(Kodama, 1984: 184-185). The lines easily flow like follows:

In a tangle of cliffs I chose a place –

Bird-baths, but no trails for men. (Snyder, 2004: 40)

The two lines simply flow to represent an American landscape and not a Chinese one

of the Cold Mountain. These two lines credit Kern's insistence that Snyder manages

the Chinese poems of Han Shan to the Occident.

15

Another example is Snyder's translation of poem number nine which Chung

believes it to interpret not Han Shan's experience, but Snyder's own adventure. Since,

the mountain in the poem "must be located somewhere in the Sierras, the Cascades or

the Olympics in the West of the United States" (1977: 102), and not in China. The

lines describe the mountain as:

Rough and dark – the Cold Mountain trail,

Sharp cobbles – the icy creek bank.

Yammering, chirping – always birds

Bleak, alone, not even a lone hiker.

Whip, whip – the wind slaps my face

Whirled and tumbled – snow piles on my back.

Morning after morning I don't see the sun

Year after year, not a sign of spring. (Snyder, 2004: 47)

More likely, the lines describe Snyder's experience in the Sierras, and not Han Shan's

in Cold Mountain. Cold Mountain Poems, in this respect, reflect Snyder's

management of a culturally different text upon his own American interests.

Kern still insists that the twenty-four poems represent Snyder while approaching

Han Shan in a way that brings his own perspective into focus and reflects his own

experience. In other words, Snyder is;

appropriating his Chinese texts for purposes other than those of

the texts themselves. For one thing, the twenty-four poems in his

selection present, perhaps unavoidably (given Han-shan's more

than three hundred poems), a somewhat partial view of Han-

shan, one which foregrounds his commitment to his spiritual

quest and his indifference toward and sometimes scorn for the

ordinary world, at the expense of the more ordinary or worldly

aspects of his own character, (Kern, 1996: 234-35).

Insofar, Snyder is orientalizing the Chinese text. The selection of the specific twenty-

four poems neglects some aspects of Han Shan's life; aspects probably that reflect his

life as a family member with a wife and children. This is to mean that "In a sense,

Han-shan was Snyder's invention," (Kern, 1996: 232).

16

The word "invention" at this level echoes Eliot's calling Pound "the inventor of

Chinese poetry". According to Fass, "If Eliot called Pound 'the inventor of Chinese

poetry' for his time …, there is a reason to pay similar tribute to Snyder in our own,"

(1978: 22). This word, essentially, involves an act of constructing images, and not

describing ones. The previous conclusion leads to the belief that sometimes American

characters were imposed through Snyder's process of translation. It also categorizes

Gary Snyder under the second category of approach to the Orient and not the third

category.

Robert Kern also argues that the personality of Snyder is to overall Han Shan. On

this point Ling Chung agrees with Kern as she too believes that "we sometimes hear

the translator's voice over and above that of the ancient Chinese hermit" (1977: 102).

Snyder's voice, in this respect, presents his persona as a poet while questioning

Western values from a Chinese point of view through the character of Han Shan:

"What's the use of all that noise and money?" (P: 40)

The line of the original poem literally means, "Vacant fame must be useless,"

(Kodama, 1984: 185). Snyder, thus, changes "fame" to "noise and money" then

reforms the whole line as a rhetorical question to show his personal attitude towards

the life of the rich, and of material life in general.

The rather little changes that Snyder makes in the line of Han Shan's Chinese poem

reflect his own perspective as an American orientalist. The poet "probably thought

that the criticism of American civilization from the Zen point of view might be more

poignant," (Kodama, 1984: 185). The changes, effectively, are made to emphasize

that the toil for material success can cause nothing but noise and chaos. In kern's

perspective these changes are one way of managing the Chinese text to occidental

readers or reproducing it in occidental terms. However, Snyder declares that,

"(thinking of Kern) I have to insist that in most cases I hewed as exactly to the

17

Chinese text as possible" (E-mail, October 8, 2006). Such statement refers to the

opposite critical approach of his representation.

In spite of all the disadvantages, Snyder still succeeds in bringing the audience to

the Chinese text, to Cold Mountain Poems, and not the opposite. Snyder's translation

of Han Shan's texts, by all means, proves to be "completely accurate line-for-line

translations," (Leed, 1986: 177), or as Snyder himself declares, "As close to word by

word as is feasible" (E-mail, May 14, 2005). His version with its structural unity and

universal relevance is considered the best of the three translations ever made of Cold

Mountain Poems; his, Watson's and the one of Waley, (Chung, 1977: 93).

Snyder's success lays in his way of handling the difficulties and indifferences

which probably face all translators of different cultural texts. With mostly no

imposing of cultural perspectives on the translated poems, Gary Snyder's version

deserves to be called essentially "'more akin to the great elegiac poets of Sung

China'", and he is to be compared to "the T'ang poet Wang Wei in philosophy, tone,

and style" (Yu, 1983: 220). One reason of comparing Snyder to the T'ang poet Wang

Wei is that he preserves the Chinese text in its original form after translating it to a

culturally different language and introducing it to an audience of a far and different

culture. As a matter of fact, Gary Snyder is aware to translate not only the semantic

meaning, but even the Chinese grammatical quality and length of lines.

For the grammatical aspect, a problem that faces almost all translators of Chinese

poetry is "'the matched couplet' or the 'parallel sentences'" (Chung, 1977: 97). This

kind of couplet needs more than a word-for-word translation since "each word in the

first line should match the corresponding word in the second line not only in its part

of speech, but also in its semantic content" (Chung, 1977: 97). Snyder succeeds in

interpreting this Chinese grammatical quality in his translation of poem number four;

High, low, old parapets-walls

18

Big, small, the aging tombs. (P: 42)

The adjectives "High", "low" and "old" match the adjectives "Big", "small" and

"aging" of the second line in their part of speech and semantic meaning; the same is

for the noun "parapets" with its corresponding match "tombs" in the second line.

Snyder's excellence in handling this special grammatical problem is also no less when

it comes to the length of the Chinese poetic lines.

By all means, Snyder's version "moves closer to the Chinese in its attempt to

approximate Han-shan's short, five-character line – sometimes even managing five

words per line" (Kern, 1996: 234). In poem number nine, for example, Snyder is

making a word by word translation of Han Shan's five Chinese characters:

Rough and dark – the Cold Mountain trail,

Sharp cobbles – the icy creek bank. (P: 47)

In each of the two lines Snyder introduces the Chinese poetry in its original form.

The two lines copy exactly the same words order of the original text; they consist of

five words each with no subject, no tense and no gender which, according to Kern, is

the case in Chinese poetry.

The first line of poem number eight sets the same example since it "copies exactly

the word order of the original, that is, the verb in the form of present participle

followed by its object without using the subject 'I' or 'one'," (Chung, 1977: 96). The

poem starts as:

Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,

The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on: (P: 46)

This kind of technique is adopted thoroughly in the rest of the twenty-four translated

poems. In only few exceptions, the poet uses prepositions and articles.

19

Snyder's need to add "Western prepositions and articles and such" is to make the

poems fully adequate as poetry. Such use of prepositions and articles "seems

especially out of character for a translation from Chinese" (Kern, 1996: 234). Though

not to reflect his commitment as a translator, it is to reflect his commitment as a poet.

It also legitimizes Snyder's own statement: "I approach Han Shan as a poet, that is,

my own kind of being a poet" (E-mail, May 14, 2005). In this sense, Snyder credits

Eric Hayot, "that the most interesting translations are ones that are also 'poetry' - -

that is, that also openly express the translator's own dislocating desire to change and

shape language" (E-mail, May 24, 2005). Gary Snyder applies this approach to all his

translated poems. Consequently, Cold Mountain Poems would reflect not only

translation, but also poetry in itself.

Mainly Han Shan's poems are written in the colloquial style, they deal with range

of subjects almost represented in the conflict of the character of Han Shan. This

conflict is between a retired previous life and his choice to live in Cold Mountain. So

to speak, some of the poems are:

fairly conventional laments on the shortness of life; others are

complaints of poverty or biting satires on avarice and pride.

There are accounts of the hardships of official life under the

Chinese bureaucratic system, attacks on the worldly Buddhist

clergy, and ridicule of the fatuous attempts of the Taoist

alchemists and devotees to achieve immortal life. And finally

there are the incomparable descriptions of Han-shan's mountain

retreat and his life there, (Watson, 1970: 10).

Indeed, the description of Han Shan's character and his retreat to Cold Mountain are

the dominant themes of the poems. The character of Han Shan is described as an

integral part of the place, the same as his mood and mentality. It is worth mentioning

here that Han Shan "takes his name from where he lived…. When he talks of Cold

Mountain he means himself, his home, his state of mind" (Snyder, 2004: 35).

Literally, Han Shan's name itself is to mean Cold Cliff or Cold Mountain.

20

This small collection of twenty-four poems – out of more than three hundred

poems of Han Shan – is included in Snyder's Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems

which was first published in 1969 by the Four Season Foundation. The translation

was performed by Snyder as a work of a seminar for his instructor Chen Shih-hsiang

while he was studying Chinese language at the University of California at Berkeley.

Later on, he worked them in his visit to Japan with the help of a Japanese scholar of

Chinese literature (Kodama, 1984: 184). Snyder's specific choice of Han Shan's

poems reflects his own personality and attitudes. His choice of Han Shan out of all

Chinese T'ang poets has many reasons. One of these reasons, Snyder considers him a

mentor and a model to aspire, both as a man and a poet.

Sanehide Kodama also goes far to prove that Snyder's life is so similar to Han

Shan's (1984: 184). For a period of his life, nearly in 1950s, Snyder, the same as Han

Shan was wandering and "Taking whatever comes". Even when he was back to the

States to settle in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in Northern California, Snyder

too, is likely to;

Go ahead and let the world change –

I'm happy to sit among these cliffs. (P: 55)

The cliffs for Han Shan are those in Cold Mountain, while for Gary Snyder they are

the ones of the Sierra Nevada. The resemblance of the two poets' thinking is another

reason behind Snyder's choice of Han Shan. It is also one of the reasons behind

Snyder's success in representing Han Shan's Cold Mountain Poems from his

orientalist perspective.

Snyder's translation of Miyazawa Kenji's eighteen Japanese poems similarly

proves his success as an orientalist. However, Kenji's poems are at many levels

difficult to translate or read even for Japanese readers. His poetry is very complicated

regardless to the fact that it is written in the colloquial style. No wonder then that

21

Snyder faced some difficulties through his process of translation. Due to Kenji's

excessive use of scientific and religious terms, the interpretation of the poems was

not that easy. For that reason the translator admits that, "You must sometimes simply

translate what the words say whether you quite understand them or not. That's what I

did" (E-mail, February 20, 2006). In spite of the difficulties, Snyder's translation of

Kenji's Japanese poems, too, proves his success as an American orientalist.

The translation of Miyazawa Kenji's eighteen poems is included in Snyder's The

Back Country, which was first published in 1957. Under a special section called

"Miyazawa Kenji" Snyder adds his representation of oriental culture through the

translation of the Japanese poems of Miyazawa Kenji. Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933)

was born and lived most his life in Iwate Prefecture in the north of Japan. This place,

according to Snyder, "is known for poverty, cold, and heavy winter snows" (1971:

130). It is a place of a simple lifestyle and his poems are a representation of this

place. They mainly introduce the simple life of the farmers in addition to Kenji's

dedication to science and Buddhism.

Snyder's two translations of oriental poetry – Chinese and Japanese – represent the

beginnings of the poet's American Orientalism. They both work as representatives of

oriental themes and culture in addition to their embodiment of the oriental religion of

Buddhism. Both poets, Han Shan and Miyazawa Kenji, are Buddhists and their

Buddhist thinking is to overwhelm their poems. In this sense, the analysis of these

two translations in the second chapter of the thesis, proves Snyder's Orientalism in

two different ways; a representation of oriental themes, and of oriental religion.

b. Writing His Own Poetry

The translation of Chinese and Japanese poems is not the only work that entitles

Gary Snyder as an American orientalist. His own writings too prove the same

attachment to the Orient. In writing his own poetry Snyder still considers oriental

culture. His Mountains and Rivers Without End is indeed the best of Snyder’s – not

22

translated – works to attach to American Orientalism. The choice is made not only

because it is estimated by many distinctive prizes; the Bollingen Poetry Prize (1997),

the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Times, the

Orion Society's John Hay Award, the 1997 Award for Poetry from the Mountains &

Plains Booksellers Association and the Freedom of Expression Award from Focus

magazine, but also considered one of the best poems of contemporary time according

to Publishers Weekly (Snyder, 1997). As the poet took 40 years in writing it, from

1956 to 1996, no period of Snyder’s literary career as an orientalist is to be missed

then.

Mainly, the long poem consists of four parts and contains 39 sections. It starts with

a description of an ancient oriental landscape scroll and continues an obvious interest

in oriental drama and religion. From the beginning sections, the long poem draws

special focus on Chinese landscape paintings and Japanese No drama – a kind of a

music-dance play. These two aspects have the greatest influence on Snyder's

Mountains and Rivers Without End. The embracement of these two different forms of

East Asian art in the long poem is Snyder's way to travel beyond American culture in

order to encompass oriental perspectives. The thirty-nine sections of Mountains and

Rivers Without End, then, are not a random gathering of poems, but they are carefully

constructed to interweave with Snyder's oriental perspective.

Furthermore, it is believed that, "The formal constraints of both the East Asian

landscape scroll and the Japanese No play have profoundly affected the arrangement

of sections within the four parts of the larger poem, the linear order of the thirty-nine

sections, and even the composition of lines within individual sections" (Hunt, 2004:

6). For that reason, these two aspects – the Chinese landscape scroll and the Japanese

No drama – are to be carefully analyzed in the third chapter in order to illustrate the

poet's appreciation for oriental art. This analysis would demonstrate how Gary

Snyder's close study of the Chinese landscape scroll and the Japanese No play affects

the making and structure of Mountains and Rivers Without End.

23

As a first impression, Mountains and Rivers Without End is wholly inspired of a

well-known Chinese horizontal hand scroll Ch'i-shan wu-chin by the Yuan Dynasty

painter, Hsu-pen. On the one hand, the term "Ch'i-shan wu-chin" means (Streams

and Mountains Without End) or (Without Limit). This term apparently, can be

replaced by (Water) or as Snyder prefers, (Rivers). On the other hand, the

combination of "mountains and rivers" – in Chinese language "Shan-shui" – literally

indicates landscapes. In other words, what the Chinese artists exactly mean by

referring to "mountains and streams" is landscapes. These Chinese landscapes

embody nature in its totality of the visible or the invisible, the tangible or the

intangible, the known or the unknown, including human beings.

By all means, the long poem is "quite literally, a verbal landscape painting. To read

its pages poem by poem – either front to back or back to front – is to travel through

thirty-nine sections with distinct settings and a strong sense of space" (Hunt, 2004:

27-28). Indeed, it is Snyder's passion for Chinese landscapes and art that inspired him

to write this long poem as he expresses how he:

learned to hold the brush as well as the pen …. Though

I lacked talent, my practice with soot-black ink and

brush tuned my eye for looking more closely at

paintings. In museums and through books I became

aware of how the energies of mist, white water, rock

formations, air swirls-a chaotic universe where

everything is in place- are so much a part of the East

Asian painter's world. In one book I came upon a

reference to a hand scroll (shou-chuan) called

Mountains and Rivers Without End. The name stuck in

my mind. (1997: 153)

Snyder's interest in East Asian art gave him the idea of writing one long poem that

can be read as a verbal Chinese landscape painting.

24

Basically, the Chinese landscape paintings are distinguished for their perceptive

overview of nature. In every sense, these paintings attempt "to capture the essence of

life, in all its complementary nature" (Hunt, 2000: 8). The paintings involve many

details that they rather better be observed each section at a time. Viewers of these

paintings should:

observe the scenes sequentially: noting the foreground and

background, stopping to check the smallest of details, finding

paths in the wilderness, following tiny travelers who wind their

way along the trails. There are stopping places: a temple in the

woods, a log to sit on, a small group of village huts. Boats float

silently on foregrounded lakes. Mysterious rivers fall over the

rocks, flow among trees. Mountain peaks vanish into the haze of

distant clouds, which in turn fade into the white unpainted space

(Hunt, 2004: 9-10).

The Chinese landscape scroll is full of different details for that it is preferred to be

examined section by section to capture the essence of the scroll.

Like the Chinese landscape painting Snyder's Mountains and Rivers Without End

should be examined section by section in order to capture its essence too. The long

poem is divided into four parts and contains thirty-nine sections full of natural details

and landscapes of mountains, rivers, desert, sky, clouds, plants, animals and of

course there are the "tiny travelers" who journey on across the landscape scroll of

Mountains and Rivers Without End.

The long poem is also an embodiment of the dramatic strategies of Japanese No

drama. The Japanese No drama, "is a gritty but totally refined high-culture art that is

in the lineage of shamanistic performance, a drama that by means of voice and dance

calls forth the spirit realms" (Snyder, 1997: 155). Snyder was already familiar with

this oriental art from the works of Arthur Waley and Ezra Pound. But when he

arrived in Japan, he attended actual No performances which left a deep impression

25

on him, especially the Japanese play Yamamba. At that time Snyder started to

envision Mountains and Rivers Without End in the form of a Japanese No play.

Structurally, the long poem follows the dramatic strategies of No play. It is made

in the form of a two-part No play which includes two appearances of the shite; the

main character in the play. It follows the No rhythm of jo-ha-ha-kyu with an

introduction, two detailed expositions and a swift conclusion. Also, "Serving as a

reminder of the formal 'foot stamp' that opens and concludes a No play, the echoing

sound of '[w]alking on walking' begins and ends the action of Snyder's poem" (Hunt,

2004: 46). The adaptation of this dramatic structure, along with Chinese landscape

scroll, makes Snyder's long poem a representation of the poet's interest in oriental

art.

Not to forget, that this interest of the two oriental art forms also is Snyder's way to

embody Zen Buddhism in his long poem. Buddhism is essentially the essence of

oriental culture. Both China and Japan exist as one entity as far as Buddhism is

involved. This religion:

holds that the universe and all creatures in it are

intrinsically in a state of complete wisdom, love and

compassion; acting in natural response and mutual

interdependence. The personal realization of this from-

the-beginning state cannot be had for and by one-"self"

-because it is not fully realized unless one has given the

self up; and away. (Snyder, 2002: 1)

The religion focuses on enlightenment as an outcome of Buddhist dedication. Only

by recognizing emptiness that the self achieves awareness and compassion for other

beings. These teachings belong to Mahayana Buddhism or the liberal group, in

opposition to Theravada Buddhism or the traditional group.

Like Christianity that depends on the teachings of the Christ, Buddhism is

assumed to depend on the teachings of Sakyamuni, Tathagata, Siddhartha or the

26

awakened name Buddha. He was born in 483 and died in 563 B.C. After Buddha's

death Buddhism was splited to Mahayana (the liberal group) and Theravada (the

traditional group). Zen Buddhism is from the liberal group. In China it was known as

Ch'an in the 5th century and was called Zen in Japan. This sect of Buddhism is

thoroughly represented in Snyder's Mountains and Rivers Without End.

Effectively, Snyder's Zen Buddhism in Mountains and Rivers Without End is to be

represented on many levels. As a start, the poet quotes Dogen Zenji's works. The

first pages of Mountains and Rivers Without End include an epigraph from the work

of the great Zen Buddhist Dogen, "Painting of a Rice Cake". This Buddhist text

discusses the concept of emptiness within the Buddhist terms of appearance and

reality. In this respect, Dogen's epigraph and philosophy are represented in two

major aspects in Snyder's Mountains and Rivers Without End. They are, "one, the

essential truth of Mahayana Buddhism that enlightenment itself is 'empty'; and two,

that a major structural device of this poem will be that of a painting" (Hunt, 2004:

59).

Dogen is also present in Snyder's consideration of his Mountains and Waters

Sutra in Mountains and Rivers Without End. According to Snyder, this work "had

helped him to 'clarify' his thinking about Mountains and Rivers" (Hunt, 2004: 23).

Beside Dogen, The long poem also explains some of the most important Buddhist

sutras, like the Heart Sutra, practices, like meditation, and philosophies like the

Buddhist spiritual philosophy of emptiness.

On a third level, the long poem is written as a celebration of the new Mahayana

system in its adaptation of female Bodhisattvas. Consequently, "It is not unfair to say

that Mountains and Rivers is a compendium of essential Buddhist thinking and that

Snyder's poem is, in part, his contribution to the transmission of this ancient

wisdom" (Hunt, 2004: 59). Once again Gary Snyder proves his success as an

American orientalist in his representation of oriental Religion.

27

On a most profound and general scale, the upcoming chapters would credit

Snyder's success in representing oriental culture. His translation of oriental poems,

his adaptation of the two forms of oriental art and his embracement of oriental

religion are a window to an anti-Orientalism critique. His occidental representation

defies Bhabha, Foucault, Gramsci, Lefevere, Kern and most importantly Edward

Said. In this respect, Gary Snyder deserves respect and appreciation as an orientalist

since he "mastered the languages, civilizations, and philosophies of the far East with

an intimacy few Americans have ever achieved" (Perkins, 1987: 584). His success as

an orientalist makes him take the lead of all the upcoming representations of cultural

difference.

28

Chapter Two

Translating Oriental Poetry

Through Gary Snyder's translation of Chinese and Japanese poetry, images of the

Orient – in this case China and Japan – are introduced to the Occident. While his

translation of Han Shan's poems would stand for a vision of China, his translation of

Miyazawa Kenji's would convey an image of Japan.

The translation of Han Shan's Cold Mountain Poems would, positively, introduce a

glimpse of how China is represented to the occidental culture. For example, the

following lines represent what kind of weather China has:

In the mountains it's cold.

Always been cold, not just this year.

Jagged scarps forever snowed in

Woods in the dark ravines spitting mist.

Grass is still sprouting at the end of June,

Leaves begin to fall in early August. (Snyder, 2004: 41)

These lines represent one of the twenty-four translated poems of Han Shan's Cold

Mountain Poems. They also introduce one of the Chinese aspects that are represented

to occidental culture. They describe the cold weather in the mountains of China with

the difficulty of walking through the "Jagged scarps" because of the heavy snow.

There, in that region, woods are misty and at that time of the year, "the end of June",

the grass begins to grow while the leaves begin to fall in autumn time, or in "early

August". With such a description, the weather in China is represented to the

Occident.

Likely, the translation of Kenji's eighteen poems would reflect some of the

conceptions taken about Japan in the West. One of these translated poems describes

the Japanese weather as "totally untrustworthy":

29

The only thing that can be relied on

is the snow on Kurakake Mountain.

fields and woods

thawing, freezing, and thawing,

totally untrustworthy.

it's true, a great fuzzy windstorm

like yeast up there today, still

the only faint source of hope

is the snow on Kurakake mountain. (Snyder, 1971: 131)

These lines are one of Kenji's translated poems, "The Snow on Saddle Mountain",

and they, too, speak about weather but this time in Japan. The lines describe the

unstable weather in the "fields and woods" and the snowy weather on Saddle or

Kurakake Mountain, which is "a tall and quite visible mountain in Iwate Prefecture,

where Miyazawa lived" (Snyder, e-mail, February 17, 2006). This poem also presents

an orientalist's interpretation of Japanese weather to the Occident.

Evidently, Snyder's translated Chinese and Japanese poems are not merely a

translation, but an interpretation of an occidental representation of the Orient.

Although the American poet Gary Snyder has, "no illusion that the Han Shan

translations represent 'China' or that the MIYAZAWA Kenji translations represent

'Japan' to the world" (E-mail, October 8, 2006), the translations in themselves

introduce an occidental representation of oriental culture. Thus, the analysis of these

poems would demonstrate how China and Japan are represented, and what the West

knows about them – the occidental knowledge of the Orient – throughout Gary

Snyder's representation.

I. China As Represented in the Translation of Han Shan's Cold

Mountain Poems

Cold Mountain Poems is a small collection of twenty-four poems. It presents

many concepts and aspects of Chinese life which are basically introduced in the

main theme of the character of the Chinese monk Han Shan. Some of these concepts

30

and aspects of Chinese life concentrate on poverty, materialism, death, immortality,

isolation, wisdom, weather, and nature in China.

Essentially, Cold Mountain Poems speaks about Kanzan or Han Shan, a Chinese

hermit of the T'ang Dynasty who is dated to 627-650 AD or according to the scholar

Hu Shish to ca 700-750 AD (Snyder, e-mail, May 14, 2005). He lived "west of the

T'ang-hsing district of T'ien-t'ai at a place called Cold Mountain" (Snyder, 2004: 35).

The description of the character of Han Shan as a Chinese monk is considered the

main theme in the translated poems. This theme is about an entirely silly and crazy

character; a person who is roaming around dressing worn out clothes and has a

difficulty in communicating with other people. Yet he turns to be misinterpreted and

misjudged.

The main theme of the character of the Chinese monk Han Shan pictures him as

an old wizard with his vague character. No one knows exactly how he thinks and his

words are considered silly talk as these lines describe:

Most T'ien-t'ai men

Don't know Han-shan

Don't know his real thought

& call it silly talk (Snyder, 2004: 56)

The poems also characterize Han Shan, "like a tramp. His body and face were old

and beat" (Snyder, 2004: 35-36) as other lines show:

There's a naked bug at Cold Mountain

With a white body and a black head. (Snyder, 2004: 53)

The lines describe how Han Shan looks like "a naked bug" with "white body and a

black head". The description of Han Shan's character in such a way reflects the

difficulties which he faced in his life.

31

This reckless appearance is also far pushed by an act of craziness. Men in Cold

Mountain assume that Han Shan is crazy as the following lines show;

When men see Han-shan

They all say he's crazy (P: 62)

Partly, the aspect of craziness authorizes Han Shan's retirement from a previous

materialistic life.

Additionally, his external crazy look, lifestyle and his inside wisdom proves to be

a model to aspire in the time of the Beat Generation to represent Han Shan as an

American icon. It is almost the same way American youth aspire to live their lives as

the next two lines show:

And not much to look at

Dressed in rags and hides. (P: 62)

The way Han Shan's character is dressed "in rags and hides" presents an icon for the

young Americans. The rags and hides in the clothes of Han Shan represent a fashion

line for young Americans in the twentieth century.

The same as Han Shan, the young Americans are "dressed in old jeans and clothes

that looked worn out" (Chung, 2004: 2). They also, like him, did crazy stuff like

shouting, "calling and shouting happily, talking and laughing to himself" (Snyder,

2004: 35). He is to fulfill even their aspiration in a lifestyle followed as a fashion at

that time as this line presents:

He goes for a walk with his shirt and pants askew. (P: 53)

Like Han Shan, the young Americans also lean to make their "shirt and pants

askew". Thus, the theme of the character of the Chinese monk is not of a fictional

32

one, but of an occidental icon. This icon, most of the times, is represented as a poor

character.

With no doubt, the aspect of poverty introduced in the poems may refer to a certain

class status in China, since many individuals had followed the same lead of Han Shan

in living; one of them is his close friend Shih-te (Snyder, 2004: 35). Han Shan is

presented as a poor man who lives in a shack made of straw, and almost does not

acquire the simplest and basic possessions. This aspect of Chinese poverty is

interpreted in these two lines from two different poems:

Now I'll go rest in my straw shack (P: 51)

His Shack's got no pots or oven. (P: 53)

The previous lines also represent the difficulty of living in Cold Mountain. Still to

live in such hard conditions, to Han Shan, seems more appropriate than to live in the

materialistic world which he despises as most of the poems assert. This materialistic

world or aspect of materialism is introduced in a form of another class status and in

opposition to the previous poor low class status.

Probably, the description of the rich high class or the aspect of Chinese

materialism would not only indicate Han Shan's reason to retreat to Cold Mountain,

but also may refer to his struggle with a previous status of his. For this reason,

Watson believes that Han Shan perhaps had a career as a minor official before he

retired to Cold Mountain (1970: 9). In such a case, the contradiction between his poor

status and that status of the rich asserts class struggle within the Chinese society.

In the poems, Snyder's translation represents this class difference between the poor

and the rich. Some of the lines describe how on opposition to the "straw shack", the

rich own "barn and pasture":

33

With his big barn and pasture-

He just sets up a prison for himself.

Once in he can't get out. (P: 54)

The lines introduce, along with Han Shan's addressing of a rich persona, his attitude

towards seeking the material interests. For him, this kind of persons only "sets up a

prison for himself". It is a lifetime prison of material interests, "Once in he can't get

out".

The same attitude is detected in other lines, where Han Shan addresses richer

people whose money and status, according to him, are just useless:

Go tell families with silverware and cars

"What's the use of all that noise and money?" (P: 40)

These rich people own "silverware" and "cars" to indicate a higher status people in

the time of Han Shan. However this wealth for Han Shan is worthless and can only

bring misery.

The description of this aspect of materialism as a whole implies a Capitalist system

within China. Seemingly, as the previous lines demonstrate, people of the high class

enjoy all the benefits of their society; they own "big barns", "pastures", "silverwares"

and "cars"; an indication for a lot sum of money. In the meanwhile, the poor live in

"straw shacks" and almost own nothing: "no pots or oven". This unjust world credits

Han Shan's retreat to Cold Mountain. For that, the poems credit his settlement there

as it seems the only good move to take instead of living a greedy and much troubling

life.

The shadow of that previous, greedy and much troubling life in the poems is

always connected with the aspect of death. Death is described whenever Han Shan

remembers or more aptly reminds himself, from time to time, of the leap he made by

retiring to Cold Mountain. In other times, Han Shan personally returns back to his

34

previous world to see old friends and family, but only to reflect on the passing of time

in Cold Mountain as most of his friends and family turn dead:

Yesterday I called on friends and family:

More than half had gone to the Yellow Springs

Slowly consumed, like fire down a candle;

Forever flowing, like a passing river (P: 48)

The "Yellow Springs" in the second line "is what the Chinese called the underworld

where the dead go" (Snyder, e-mail, May 14, 2005). Generally, dealing with death

here explains Han Shan's concept of the unworthiness of life. This concept is revealed

in the use of the two expressions: "like fire down a candle" and "like a passing river".

It is also another reason to encourage Han Shan to abandon the unworthy world and

to search for home elsewhere.

His quest of finding home ends in Cold Mountain which he considers his original

home as it is "far from trouble" and safe enough for him. Of course, the much

troubling life that Han Shan abandoned is the reason behind his choice of retreat. At

this point Cold Mountain seems to him not only a good choice, but also "a good place

to settle", as the following lines from three different poems demonstrate:

I wanted a good place to settle:

Cold Mountain would be safe. (P: 43)

I settled at Cold Mountain long ago,

Already it seems like years and years. (P: 45)

My home was at Cold Mountain from the start,

Rambling among the hills, far from trouble. (P: 61)

The indication of home along with the feeling of safety – "safe", "My home" and "far

from trouble" – reflects how Han Shan is relieved with his choice. At the same time,

35

it represents how bad his life was before going to Cold Mountain as it is indicated in

the word "trouble".

The indication of relief and safety is so apparent in Han Shan's words that express

how safe life becomes after going to Cold Mountain compared to his previous state.

Cold Mountain, in this case, is more like a shelter that protects Han Shan from what

he witnessed in his previous life. Hiding there protects him from troubles as "troubles

cease –", when he is no longer near "the dusty world":

Who knows that I'm out of the dusty world (P: 51)

If I hide out at Cold Mountain (P: 55)

Once at Cold Mountain, troubles cease – (P: 57)

The use of the words "dusty", "hide" and "troubles" shows how Han Shan got tired of

his previous life and assures the rightness of his decision. Although retiring to Cold

Mountain is a big move, Han Shan never hesitates in taking it as the retreat is more

desirable than staying in the troubling and "dusty world".

Basically, this decision of retreat is not a sudden one, but it came after a

considerable thinking and even trying other different choices. One of Han Shan's

different choices is represented in the Chinese concept of immortality. In his poem

number twelve, Han Shan narrates how he spent the first thirty years of his life

wandering around from a place to another, taking drugs and even trying to be

"Immortal" as these lines indicate:

In my first thirty years of life

I roamed hundreds and thousands of miles.

Walked by rivers through deep green grass

Entered cities of boiling dust.

Tried drugs, but couldn't make Immortal; (P: 50)

36

The lines indicate how Han Shan tried moving and even roaming "hundreds and

thousands of miles" to escape from his material life. He even tried to take drugs and

turn into "Immortal". The concept of immortality is Han Shan's way to escape from

his previous life.

Through the Chinese history, many people sought to become "Immortal". This idea

of becoming "Immortal" by taking drugs belongs to the Taoist thought in ancient

China. To be "Immortal":

(in Chinese hsien) refers to a person or being who is not exactly immortal

forever, but one who has through discipline and mental practice achieved a

state of very very long life, thousands of years. They are believed to live in

the mountains, and look like very old people but with bright eyes and fresh

skin and laughter, (Snyder, e-mail, May 27, 2005).

The approach was fulfilled in many ways, mostly through minerals and herbs. One of

the used minerals was cinnabar; "which is ore of mercury, and which eventually will

poison you" (Snyder, e-mail, May 27, 2005).

As for the herbs, various species of mushrooms acted as the favorite herb. Likely,

some of the mushrooms used "must have made them feel very godlike and immortal,

at least for a while" (Snyder, e-mail, May 27, 2005). Nevertheless, Han Shan's

decision to make "hsien" was not achieved – "but couldn't make Immortal". Though,

in other lines Han Shan indicates that he really considered this path of immortality:

Hungry, I eat one grain of Immortal-medicine

Mind solid and sharp; leaning on a stone. (P: 59)

In the second line, the description of the reaction of eating "one grain of Immortal-

medicine", or the Taoist pill of cinnabar, on Han Shan more represents the effect of

taking L.S.D. or marijuana, "Mind solid and sharp".

37

Snyder describes the effect of the Taoist pill of immortality on Han Shan as turning

his mind "solid and sharp". The pill makes Han Shan "leaning on a stone", in another

word dizzy. This effect is mostly of marijuana and not of "Immortal-medicine". Still,

Chung believes that Snyder "renders this poem highly accessible to the modern

generation. In a more sophisticated fashion, Snyder replaces Chinese allusions with

metaphors easier for his American reader to grasp" (1977: 94). Positively, Snyder

succeeds in representing the intended reaction of the Chinese Taoist approach.

For Han Shan, he prefers not to become "Immortal" after all and "stays with the

'ordinary bones' in his own practice" (Snyder, e-mail, May 27, 2005). Although he

pities these ordinary bones he belongs to, he prefers them on being "Immortal". The

following lines show how he prefers to be "nameless" like the "ordinary bones" on

changing his practice:

I pity all these ordinary bones,

In the books of Immortals they are nameless. (P: 42)

The failure of Han Shan's trial to make "Immortal" directs his path to Cold Mountain.

Eventually, it was only a way to skip his previous life and another reason to leap to

Cold Mountain; a place which proves to be so remote and isolated.

In every sense, the translated poems represent Cold Mountain as an isolated place

the same as they represent Han Shan as an isolated character. The isolated character

of Han Shan is described as an integral part of the place, the same as his mood and

mentality. It is worth mentioning here that his name itself is to mean Cold Mountain.

Hence, Han Shan "takes his name from where he lived…. When he talks of Cold

Mountain he means himself, his home, his state of mind" (Snyder, 2004: 35). So the

description of Cold Mountain also is applied as a description of Han Shan's mood

and mind.

38

This home is shown to be remote and far from population. Most of all, there is no

path through Cold Mountain. There is no cart or horse that can go there and men

probably would get lost for there is no "through trail", as these three lines explain:

A path but no sign of cart or horse. (P: 39)

Bird-paths, but no trails for men (P: 40)

Cold Mountain: there's no through trail. (P: 44)

Again, this act of isolation proves a complete avoidance of the unsatisfactory life

which pushed him to settle in Cold Mountain in the first place. It also credits his

inability to communicate with people.

Seemingly, Han Shan's isolation is a result of his difficulty in communicating with

other people. There is no understanding between Han Shan and others, consequently

he prefers to cut this kind of connections:

They don't get what I say

& I don't talk their language. (P: 62)

The two lines prove the miscommunication between Han Shan and other people in

Cold Mountain. They both simply don't understand each other. Consequently, Han

Shan prefers to be isolated to being in contact with them.

Inasmuch, the picture of him as an isolated and lonely person legitimizes his act of

retirement and authorizes his outburst against his previous world. Such picture is of a

very lonely man who only keeps the company of his own shadow:

Body asking shadow, how do you keep up? (P: 39)

I waggle my shadow, all alone; (P: 42)

Now, morning, I face my lone shadow: (P: 48)

39

The repetition of the word "shadow", in this sense, assures how lonely he is in Cold

Mountain, while the use of "alone" and "lone" interprets how hard it is to live there –

"how do you keep up?" But not to forget that this loneliness is his choice. Han Shan

before going to Cold Mountain knew that in such far and remote place he would be

alone, accompanying only his own shadow with no human contact what so ever.

In other lines, the difficulty of human contact is also carried away by a total

misunderstanding of his mentality. This kind of lines presents Han Shan's

unrecognized wisdom. Since the silly crazy person, after all, turns out to be of certain

depth and his talk is no longer considered silly. These following lines assert Han

Shan as a wise man:

One follows his Karma through.

Days and months slip by like water,

Time is like sparks knocked off flint. (P: 55)

Han Shan's words completely credit him as a wise man. This wisdom mostly results

from his Buddhist dedication. It is an outcome of his growing awareness of the

emptiness of life.

Han Shan's lines describes a person who "in every word he breathed was a

meaning in line with the subtle principles of things, if only you thought of it deeply"

(Snyder, 2004: 35-6). These same lines shed the light on his unrecognized wisdom

while asserting his validity as a Chinese monk. Thus, his wisdom becomes an

inseparable part of his character, although it is not clear for most of people as the

next two lines demonstrate:

But He always carries the sword of wisdom:

He means to cut down a senseless craving. (P: 53)

40

The use of "But" here explains the misunderstanding of the character and proves the

conflict in his persona, as his outside appearance now is in contradiction with his

inside essence.

The use of "cut down a senseless craving", on the other hand, restricts Han Shan's

priorities through his renouncing to the pleasures of life or not following "senseless

craving". He is not to achieve his desires and is more to concentrate on the basics

which are part of Buddhist wisdom. In spite of his wisdom, he has no friends or

anyone to live with or for. He is completely lonely and isolated. Regardless to this

fact, he takes his chance and retires to Cold Mountain anyway, completely ready to

deal with this difficulty.

Another difficulty found to keep up with in Cold Mountain is introduced in the

aspect of weather. In many of the poems, the difficulty of living in Cold Mountain's

hard weather is introduced, as the lines show, with a kind of struggling between Han

Shan and this weather condition:

In the mountains it's cold.

Always been cold, not just this year

Jagged scarps forever snowed in

Woods in the dark ravines spitting mist. (P: 41)

The poem describes the nature of coldness in the mountains in all times, and then to

end with Han Shan's struggling to even see the sky:

And here am I, high on mountains,

Peering and peering, but I can't even see the sky. (P: 41)

The use of the word "peering" twice here reflects how difficult it is to live in this hard

and cold weather of the mountains.

41

In many different poems the weather in Cold Mountain is discussed thoroughly.

One of the poems is poem number six where ice does not melt – even in summer time

– and the sky is always foggy:

In summer, ice doesn't melt

The rising sun blurs in swirling fog. (P: 44)

In another poem Han Shan stresses this hardship of all times, "Morning after

morning" and "year after year":

Morning after morning I don't see the sun

Year after year, not a sign of spring. (P: 47)

The lines explain how the sun is not shining for most of the year and how there is no

sign of the moderate spring time.

This hardship also is endured almost with no house in the formal sense of the

concept. The house of Han Shan in Cold Mountain is simply the natural space. Such a

house has no walls, no doors, no ceiling, and no rooms. Mostly, it is not a house in

the agreed form as this poem explains:

Cold Mountain is a house

Without beams or walls.

The six doors left and right are open

The hall is blue sky.

The rooms all vacant and vague

The east wall beats on the west wall

At the center nothing. (P: 54)

But this style of life does not, in any way, bother Han Shan since he learns how to

adjust himself to such way of living.

42

Instantly, Han Shan figures out a way to adjust his life in Cold Mountain.

Although his adjustment carries a feeling of sacrifice, it is a desired one. After all it is

a choice of free will to retire to this life in Cold Mountain. Anyhow, Han Shan finds a

way to live through the hard conditions in Cold Mountain. For the cold weather, he

gets warm by striking fire. In getting hungry, he eats the greens, plants and berries of

the mountain as these lines demonstrate:

In the cold I build a little fire

When I am hungry I boil up some greens. (P: 54)

Living off mountain plants and berries – (P: 55)

Han Shan is not only adjusting his life willingly, but entirely accepting it with all its

badness and goodness.

The acceptance appears in Han Shan's awareness of the stillness of his life in Cold

Mountain. Still, he is happy with this stillness, far away from troubles, as these lines

assert:

Happy with a stone underhead

Let heaven and earth go about their changes. (P: 45)

I'm happy to sit among these cliffs. (P: 55)

The surrender to Cold Mountain simple life or life in general is so clear in the

previous three lines and the same is for these following ones:

I idly scribble poems on the rock cliff,

Taking whatever comes, like a drifting boat. (P: 57)

With this feeling of surrender and acceptance; as this phrase "Taking whatever

comes" indicates, Han Shan is happy with his life in Cold Mountain. In another line

43

he even declares "Alone; I hum a song – utterly without regret". With this statement,

Han Shan never regrets his leap to Cold Mountain.

Han Shan's love for this life, besides being his shelter, is probably for its charming

nature. Actually, Chinese beautiful nature is the reason behind his concentration on

describing Cold Mountain natural scenes throughout his poems. Knowing about

Snyder's love of nature, maybe this is one of the aspects that attracted him to Cold

Mountain Poems or Han Shan in general.

Intensively, through the twenty-four poems the nature of Cold Mountain is

represented with its shining moon, clear water and with all its freshness:

When the moon shines, water sparkles clear

When wind blows, grass swishes and rattles.

On the bare plum, flowers of snow

On the dead stump, leaves of mist.

At the touch of rain it all turns fresh and live (P: 52)

Such natural beauty is more detailed in many lines of the whole collection. The focus

on details in the previous lines shows how Han Shan appreciates the things around

him.

Sometimes the natural scene is even reflected upon his own state of mind. The

description of nature thus is reflected on the description of Han Shan's mood and

mentality:

On top of Cold Mountain the lone round moon

Lights the whole clear cloudless sky. (P: 60)

The use of the word "lone" in the first line recalls what kind of persons Han Shan is.

Just like the moon he is all alone in Cold Mountain. Nevertheless, Han Shan is happy

with his chosen loneliness and current state.

44

It is entirely true to say, that his focus on the details of nature around him

represents his own happiness. As once approved, when Han Shan "talks of Cold

Mountain he means himself" (Snyder, 2004: 35). Hence, such state of mind is

expected as his nature is the same one of Cold Mountain. So if he is happy, it is due

to the place he lives in where is:

Yammering, chirping – always birds (P: 47)

For that reason Han Shan never stops admiring nature or gets bored of his life in Cold

Mountain. On the contrary, he always tends to honor his life there like in the

following line:

Honor this priceless natural treasure (P: 60)

The previous line shows Han Shan's conviction of his life in Cold Mountain and also

how beautiful nature is there.

Very convinced with his life in Cold Mountain, Han Shan even urges others to

make it to Cold Mountain. He believes that this will take some effort, but definitely it

does worth it. For that he admits that his "heart's not the same as yours" or everyone

would come to Cold Mountain without hesitating:

How did I make it?

My heart's not the same as yours.

If your heart was like mine

You'd get it and be right here. (P: 44)

The previous lines prove that going there needs courage and much determination.

It is not an easy decision to leave everything behind and to retire life like Han Shan

did. For that the following lines stress the difficulty of making such decision:

45

Who can leap the world's ties

And sit with me among the white clouds? (P: 46)

The words "leap" and "world's ties" show determination and a possibility of giving up

almost everything in order to make the choice. And the result would be sitting with

Han Shan "among the white clouds". The expression of "the white clouds" shows

how difficult and at the same time rewarding going to Cold Mountain could be.

For that, in the last poem, Han Shan with much enthusiasm calls, in a direct way,

for trying to reach to Cold Mountain:

"Try and make it to Cold Mountain." (P: 62)

Han Shan's call presents a kind of invitation to all people to – in his own conception –

leap the World's boundaries of greed and selfishness. The line itself draws the end of

Snyder's collection of Han Shan's Cold Mountain Poems and summarizes the whole

experience of the Chinese hermit.

Generally speaking, the Chinese aspects which are discussed and analyzed in the

collection represent Snyder's interpretation of so many conceptions in ancient China.

Maybe the representation of Han Shan's life and Cold Mountain is too random and

partial, as a concept, to modify as China or Chinese culture. Still, in every sense of

the words, Han Shan's lines represent an integral part of the big picture taken about

China in the West. After all, Han Shan's poems are ones of the most admirable texts

ever translated of Chinese culture. And Snyder here plays the role of the interpreter or

the intermediary between the too different cultures. As objective as any honest

translator could be, the American orientalist Gary Snyder successfully renders Han

Shan's Cold Mountain Poems to his audience. Most likely, this success in translating

Han Shan's Chinese poems led him to the translation of the eighteen Japanese poems

of Miyazawa Kenji.

46

II. The Image of Japan in Miyazawa Kenji's Eighteen Translated

Poems

There aren't many sources or critical approaches about Snyder's translation of

Miyazawa Kenji's poems as those found about his translation of Han Shan's poetry.

Still, the translation of the Japanese poems introduces a different interpretation and

representation of another and different language and culture. The study of the poems,

thus, would present another criterion for judging Snyder's interpretation of the Orient

through the eighteen poems of Miyazawa Kenji.

Miyazawa Kenji's eighteen translated poems cover different aspects of Japanese

life which are introduced in the main theme of the farmers' style of life. Throughout

the description of this lifestyle, Kenji speaks about nature, weather, ecology, science,

modernism and multiculturalism. Generally speaking, the Japanese life mostly has

two different styles of living. The first is centered on the farmers who are struggling

to overcome poverty and sadness. The second presents the greedy and materialistic

class of society.

The main setting of the poems concentrates on the rustic style of life while

presenting farmers in their natural surroundings. This main theme of the farmers'

style of life – rustic style of life – proves to be all about nourishing animals and

farming lands. It is a simple life that Kenji fully describes to present the way the

Japanese farmers earn their living. One way the Japanese farmers earn their living is

by nourishing cows and horses in pastures and barns. As the farmers' life is all about

these animals, their most worries do also involve them as the following lines present:

I left the oak gate in the fence

of the cowpasture open

probably because I was hurrying –

a white gate –

did I close it or not? (Snyder, 1971: 147)

47

The lines show one farmer's annoyance about forgetting to close the gate of his cow

pasture.

Nourishing these cows is what the farmer does for living, consequently he is far

concerned. For the same reason, Miyazawa Kenji is sure to represent this aspect as a

way of living. For the importance, one of his poems is even entitled as "Cow":

An ayrshire cow

playing, rubbing her horns in the grass,

in the misty soil, (Snyder, 1971: 140)

These lines demonstrate the importance of the "ayrshire cow" for the farmer as it

represents his way of living.

This way of life proves its simplicity through the farmers' concerns. Their animals

and fields, in general their lifestyle is what they care more for. In a supportive

attitude, Kenji's poems deal with these same concerns too. His lines always reflect

what's most important to the farmers including their worries and issues. Like his

poem "Cow", in other poems Kenji describes the farmers' priorities. One of these

priorities is taking care of their "thoroughbred" horses:

horses hurry:

hot-breatht Arab

glistening light-bodies thoroughbred (P: 142)

The horses introduced in the lines are "hot-breatht Arab". This expression, according

to Katsunori Yamazato "refers to Arabian horses" (E-mail, October 3, 2006).

The Arabian horses are known to be one of the most refined strains of horses

around the world. The farmers, aware of this fact, take special care of their well-bred

horses by "glistening". These horses are nourished and taken care of to be eventually

sold in the market providing the farmer's living:

48

– bright noisy market –

being led to the

stud inspection center. (P: 142)

The lines show how the farmers take their "hot-breatht Arab" to the "stud inspection

center" in order to sell them.

As selling horses provides the farmers' living so is planting fields. Farming is

another way the Japanese farmers in Kenji's region earn their living. In many lines

Kenji introduces this way of life presenting farmers within their fields mostly

"pleasant" and satisfied with their work as these two lines show:

– listening in the farmers fields

it seems pleasant enough work all right (P: 144)

Kenji's region, in general, seems to depend on the work of these simple farmers in

their fields. For that, in more than one poem, he concentrates on describing the work

of the farmers while planting their lands:

– just finished spreading manure

in the sandy loam (P: 135)

Except for few lines in the poems, the process of planting fields along with

nourishing animals seem to be the only style of life these farmers could have.

Miyazawa Kenji in one stage of his life retired his job as a teacher to help these

farmers. Their suffering affects him that much to dedicate the rest of his life to help

them. For that reason, the eighteen translated poems do intensively introduce the

different aspects of the farmers' life, from planting their fields to the kind of crops

they plant as the following lines demonstrate:

49

and last, a fellow I met during rice planting (P: 146)

then off to pillage a ricefield (P: 148)

The planting of rice is one of the stereotypes which are always transferred of

Japanese culture. One reason is that Japan's climate suits the planting of this crop. In

the second line, the verb "pillage" indicates the overcome of a different style of life

on the rustic style of the farmers.

The previous line, "then off to pillage a ricefield" between others, shows the urban

changes that take place in the country. The "pillage" of the "ricefield" in this poem

results from extending power lines through the field:

and the great power line pole of Hanamaki (P: 148)

This field is in a Japanese town in Iwate Prefecture and as it appears in the line the

town is called "Hanamaki", one of the places that reflect the urban style of life.

The urban style of life or the greedy and materialistic style is shown in Kenji's

sarcastic attitude towards politicians, infantries, and commercialization. One of

Kenji's poems, entitled "The Politicians", satirizes "the folly of humanity but also

implies the resilient energy of the wild that resists human dominance and destruction"

(Yamazato, 2004: 6):

Running around here & there

stirring up trouble and bothering people (P: 145)

In Kenji's view these "Politicians" cause nothing but "trouble" and are always

"bothering people".

50

His satire is also found in his attitude towards infantry companies which should

have no business in his region. The presence of an infantry itself in his natural scene

seems out of place:

The minus-1 Infantry Company

Leaves bivouac at 1 AM

From the present row of pine advancing

in a southerly direction (P: 143)

The lines reflect Kenji's satire of the presence of such an infantry between "row of

pine". Consequently "Saying minus one is sarcasm" (Snyder, e-mail, February 20,

2006). Partly, infantries reflect the political greed of statesmen who are, most of the

times, careless for farmers' affairs.

Miyazawa Kenji's sarcasm, thus, is explainable. His love for his region and own

countrymen make him defensive about their style of life. The selfish interests of

politicians or entrepreneurs offend nature and the farmers' simplicity. While

politicians are "stirring up trouble and bothering people" with their bare political

interests, entrepreneurs, on the other hand, with their commercial interests become

irrational when "A wild environment chosen as a possible site for a national park is

now in danger of being transformed into a commodity" (Yamazato, 2004: 5). This

irrational plan is represented in "Some Views Concerning the Proposed Site of a

National Park".

Kenji in his poem "Some Views Concerning the Proposed Site of a National Park"

is being sarcastic about the vulgar commercial ideas of Japanese entrepreneurs

(Snyder, e-mail, February 20, 2006). For one thing, the chosen site for the commodity

is completely unsuitable:

Well how do you like this lava flow?

not very scenic, is it. (P: 138)

51

The proposed location has "lava flow". Building a commodity where lava is flowing

seems senseless.

But when it comes to the commercial-minded entrepreneurs, such location may

have some possibilities as the next lines prove:

why sure! you could fix it up like Hell

with a real oriental charm to it, huh

a stockade of red spears

weird-shaped old dead trees put around (P: 138)

The possibility of setting this place "like Hell" with the help of "red spears" and

"dead trees" shows both; Miyazawa Kenji's sarcasm and his sense of humor in

dealing with such selfish and inconsiderate interests.

The interests of the politicians and the entrepreneurs don't only seem unacceptable

for Miyazawa Kenji and the farmers, but also for the whole setting. Mostly all the

poems concentrate on describing the beautiful nature of Iwate Prefecture, and

selfishness or greed is not part of this nature. Only beauty and charm are involved in

Kenji's distinctive description of nature. He describes in details all the natural

elements such as the varied colorful plants mentioned in the following lines:

akebia tendrils coil round clouds,

wildrose thicket, swampy leafmold – (P: 132)

blossoming cherries glow in the sun

wind comes again over the grasses

clipped tara trees tremble (P: 135)

upper section a buttercup is blooming

(high-class buttercup it is but

rather than butter, from sulphur and honey)

below that, wild parsley and clover (P: 136)

52

These lines intensively cite different kinds of plants; "akebia", "wildrose", "cherries",

"grass", "tara tree", "buttercup", "parsley", and "clover" to "remind the reader of some

poems by Snyder in their precision of plants names" (Yamazato, 2004: 4).

The same as Miyazawa Kenji, Gary Snyder when writing his own poetry develops

his sense of nature by citing names of plants. In his own poem; "Walking the New

York Bedrock: Alive in the Sea of Information" from his masterpiece Mountains and

Rivers Without End, Gary Snyder in the opening lines of the poem cites the names of

some of the plants that grow in his home country:

Maple, oak, poplar, gingko

New leaves, "new green" on a rock ledge, (1997: 97).

The lines, clearly, show how the two poets share the same interest in nature.

Back to Miyazawa Kenji, he in other poems, mentions "cypress", "meadow",

"gingko", "cedars", "silverberry tree", "mushroom", "hay", "flowers", "jimsonweed",

"viper grass", "wolfsbane", "birch", "willow", "walnut", "bamboo", "marl", "pine",

"water lily", "junsai", "lushes", "fern", "rice", "reeds", "oak", and "mistletoe". These

different plants invert different colors which are not only visualized, but thoroughly

detected in the poems such as amber, blue, black, white, gold, red, green, and peach-

color.

Nature also includes Japanese high mountains. In more than one poem of the

translated eighteen poems, there is the mention of some of the high mountains found

in Kenji's region, Tibet of Japan. For example, there is "Saddle Mountain" or

"Kurakake Mountain", which is "apparently a tall and quite visible mountain in Iwate

Prefecture, where Miyazawa lived" (Snyder, February 17, 2006). This mountain is

repeatedly mentioned in Kenji's translated poem, "Some Views Concerning the

Proposed Site of a National Park":

53

Saddle Mountain

well of course Saddle Mountain (P: 138)

The same mountain is even found in the title of one of the translated poems, "The

Snow on Saddle Mountain". Other mountains are "Kitagami Mountains" which they,

too, form a part of one of the titles of the translated poems, "Floating World Picture:

Spring in the Kitagami Mountains".

Related to the aspect of Japanese nature is the Japanese weather. In many

occasions Kenji's region is described to be windy, stormy, cloudy, rainy and snowy.

The translated poems describe all these different changes of weather, such as the

"fuzzy" winds and storms:

it's true, a great fuzzy windstorm (P: 131)

wind blowing

farm tools twinkling (P: 134)

Another weather condition, found in the poems, appears through "white and black"

clouds in the sky to indicate rains as these two lines show:

there's white and black both in the clouds; (P: 136)

rain and clouds drift to the ground (P: 148)

The lines show how the sky which once was full of white and black clouds is raining

continuously.

In other lines Miyazawa Kenji goes far to describe the picture of rain while it

"crackles" and is always "clinging":

rain crackles, (P: 136)

54

some raindrops still clinging (P: 149)

The rain suits the growing of the different plants which are found in the place. For

that, the ground is always green and colorful. After all, without rains the ground

couldn't always be that fresh and alive.

With the falling of white snow, the weather becomes colder. The poems always

contain such lines that show how chilly and frozen the weather is. The roads like the

mountains are always covered with the white snow and are usually "frozen" as these

lines from two different poems reflect:

tramping up a frozen rutted road,

rutted snow, (P: 131)

The only thing that can be relied on

is the snow on Kurakake Mountain. (P: 131)

All the previously mentioned weather conditions present Miyazawa Kenji's

perceptive description of Japanese weather. On another level, the weather conditions

which are introduced, along with the earlier aspect of nature present the nature of

Japanese community.

The community in Kenji's region takes another and different twist with the

presence of ecology. The Japanese poet finds a way to develop his sense of ecology

in the poems when plants, animals and even humans – humans and non-humans –

cooperate in one community, like in the following poem:

Nobody at the edge of the firepit

snowboots and jute leggings.

white birch flaming

jetting out sour hot sap

– a child sings the kite song (P: 141)

55

The child, here, doesn't seem out of place, but in harmony and an essential part of the

same community.

It is one of Miyazawa Kenji's aspirations to "liberate himself toward imagining a

community of humans and nonhumans by establishing a sense of place based on his

profound ecological grasp of the region" (Yamazato, 2004: 4). Of course, this is a

common point between Miyazawa Kenji the Japanese poet and Gary Snyder the

American poet. Both poets seem to have a shared sense of place where all, humans

and non-humans, live together with no consideration to language or to differences in

general.

In the poems, this ecological sense is presented in the weaving of living things

with natural surroundings to present one complete community. The presence of living

things makes the described scene more complete and whole. With the presence of

birds, for instance, like geese or an oriole, the community is more appreciated as the

following lines demonstrate:

wild geese will come

down to the four

cedars tonight! (P: 134)

oriole cries in the

silverberry tree …

stretch out on the grass, (P: 136)

The "geese" and the "oriole" are in harmony with nature. Although the geese would

change the setting by their coming to "the four cedars" at night, still they would

become a part of the same community.

About "the four cedars", Yamazato thinks "that there were really four cedars

standing together in his bioregion" (E-mail, October 3, 2006). After all, Kenji's

poems are all about his region. For the "oriole", it is already an integral part of Kenji's

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community just like the "silverberry tree" in which the bird "cries" and the "grass" on

which it is to "stretch out". The Japanese poet doesn't make only the "geese" and the

"oriole" part of the community, but also other different birds and animals such as; a

"crow", "bird", "larks", "dragonfly", "cuckoo", "cow", "horse", "dog", "lizard",

"sparrows", "squirrel" and "mosquito". These birds and animals change the whole

natural setting from being silent and still to be more alive and active.

To increase the action, there is also the presence of humans, whether they are

persons, farmers, children, guys, fellows, sisters or sometimes even thieves:

About when the stars of the Skeleton

were paling in the dawn:

Striding the crackly glitter

– frozen mud –

The thief who had just stolen a celadon vase

from the front of a store

Suddenly stopped those long black legs (P: 150)

The presence of the thief forms a part of Kenji's community just as the previous birds

and animals, or the stars of the same scene that "were paling in the dawn". Miyazawa

Kenji sees the gathering of these paling stars at dawn time is constructing the figure

of a "Skeleton". This image, accordingly, reflects "Miyazawa's sense of humor"

(Yamazato, e-mail October 3, 2006), and at the same time it forms a part of the same

community introduced in the poem.

This poem, which its title is also "Thief", presents a stereotypical image of thieves

in the expression of "long black legs". The thief introduced in the lines is wearing

"black tight pants that 'ninja' -- night time thieves -- used to wear, to help them hide

in the dark" (Snyder, e-mail, February 20, 2006). But what is out of character for this

image is "that the thief actually had long legs (unlike many Japanese men)"

(Yamazato, e-mail, October 3, 2006). The unfamiliarity of this description of

Japanese men is unexplainable as the translator himself admits that "You must

57

sometimes simply translate what the words say whether you quite understand them or

not. That's what I did" (E-mail, February 20, 2006).

This picture of the thief, anyhow, is Miyazawa Kenji's way to introduce some of

the different components that form his community as he similarly does with

geologists and politicians:

And when humanity is laid out like coal

somewhere some earnest geologist

will note them in his notebook.. (P: 145)

The pronoun "them" refers to the politicians who are eventually "laid out like coal"

and would be reformed as a part of nature "coal'. In this way, the whole scene – with

humans and non-humans – becomes in complete harmony to form a final matched

community. This community proves its modernism with Miyazawa Kenji's use of

science.

Science is considered one of the most remarkable aspects represented in the poems.

One of the accounts of science that Kenji presented and Snyder translated is in the

natural scene represented in the poem "Dawn". The poem portrays a breath-taking

scene where the sun sneaks upon earth and lights up the darkness at the beginning of

the day. The sun also shines on the white snow and the fading moon, turning them to

the tender peach color as the lines beautifully describe:

Rolling snow turned peach-color

the moon

left alone in the fading night

makes a soft cry in the heavens

and once more

drinks up the scattered light (P: 137)

The title of the poem itself in Japanese –"ariake" – presents the timing of the day

when the moon is fading and the sun is rising. While the sun is rising, it turns

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"Rolling snow" into peach color. The "Rolling snow" here may indicate a mountain

covered with white snow. The whole scene "gives us the colors of the gold of moon,

white of snow, peach of sun light, and deep blue of sky" (Yoshio, 2001: 4). These

different colors create a beautiful contrast in the natural setting.

On a different level, the poem shows Kenji's consideration of science. The poetic

line "drinks up the scattered light" indicates a physical fact of nature which describes

how the moon is shining by and at the same time absorbing the light of the sun. Also,

the use of the verb "drinks up" explains the way the moon gets its power for shining

softly upon earth (Yoshio, 2001: 4). Indeed, this use of science asserts Miyazawa

Kenji's modernism. A different way to describe it, the use of science is Kenji's way to

liberate his old and traditional community and guide it towards modernism.

Another distinctive approach of science which proves Kenji's modernism is found

in his poem "Spring and the Ashura". The poem describes the struggle of an

"Ashura"; a persona who appears to be angry and unhappy. This struggle is

reinforced, then, with the addition of the scientific term "Zypressen":

a holy crystal wind sweeps

the translucent sea of the sky.

Zypressen – one line of spring

blackly draws in ether, (P: 132)

Miyazawa Kenji in these lines is trying to free himself from the old and traditional

Buddhist community. The scientific terms "Zypressen" and "ether" change the

community to be modern and untraditional. The term "Zypressen" on its own "adds a

new dimension to the image of this place. In other words, the old landscape comes to

be seen as a bioregion analyzable in scientific language instead of a mere farming

village full of trees and plants" (Yamazato, 2004: 3).

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The term "Zypressen" is a German word which means "cypress". The word isn't

translated by Snyder in his interpretation of the poem "probably because this German

word also remains untranslated in Miyazawa's poem" (Yamazato, 2004: 3). Due to

the word importance, Snyder also capitalizes it to emphasize the state of the Ashura.

In doing so, "the anger and irritation of the Ashura is more emphasized than spelling

it in lower cases," (Yamazato, e-mail, October 3, 2006). The addition of this modern

and scientific word is a reflection of Kenji's modernist approach to the Asian

traditional community.

The first line of this same poem also proves his modernist approach. The poet

starts his poem as, "From the ash-colored steel of images". The expression explains

"how Miyazawa looks at the world (mental sketch); the world is imaged this way….,

and this is how he sees the world – the world has an ash-colored steel images"

(Yamazato, October 3, 2006). This kind of modern and scientific expressions is

adopted thoroughly in his poems. Kenji's use of science in general changes the

potential of the old community. Mainly, many of his poems are liberated due to his

use of scientific terms. Sometimes, science is reflected in explaining physical

processes or citing some of the chemical elements, and other times Miyazawa Kenji

goes far to show how knowledge of science can change man's perception of the

world.

Again, the use of science is Kenji's way to achieve modernism. For that there are

many of his poems that show his scientific and modern approach; like the one

describing the physical process of the melting of ice:

thawing, freezing, and thawing

totally untrustworthy. (P: 131)

The word "thawing" explains the way ice changes to water once the temperature

permits it. The frozen form of ice turns to the liquid form of water by high

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temperature. This physical process of thawing and freezing shows Kenji's concern

and use of science.

The translated poems in general proves that Miyazawa Kenji knows a lot of

science. Using his knowledge of some of the physical processes, like the way he

deals with the thawing of water, Kenji in other lines explains how clouds evaporate to

acid:

Clouds volatile as carbonic acid (P: 135)

Scientifically clouds are made of small droplets of water or bits of ice which are so

small and light that they can float in the air. But Kenji, in the previous line, describes

the reverse process. The line explains how clouds are dissipated to acid.

The mention of physical processes within the general community adds a distinctive

liberating characteristic to the poems. In other lines, Kenji cites some of the scientific

and chemical elements to reach this same effect of liberation:

toward those shriveled zinc clouds – (P: 131)

now it's all a picture in cobalt glaze. (P: 135)

The mention of the chemical elements; "zinc" and "cobalt", draws the readers'

attention to Kenji's scientific knowledge. This kind of knowledge goes far to change

the way Kenji perceives the world around him.

One of Kenji's translated poems; "Moon, Son of Heaven" proves how the way of

perceiving the world can be changed with scientific knowledge. The poem introduces

a child's story and his perception of the moon. The primary knowledge of the moon

basically appears to be acquired from "magazines and newspapers" like the following

lines explain:

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When I was a child

in all sorts of magazines and newspapers

– how many – photographs of the moon;

face scarred by jagged craters. (P: 146)

The "magazines and newspapers" seem to be the only source that the child uses to

gain knowledge.

As a first stage "photographs of the moon" in "magazines" or "newspapers"

develop the child's perception of this "heavenly body". Then at a following stage the

child depends on his own observation:

I clearly saw that the sun light strikes it.

later I learned it's terribly cold

and no air.

maybe three times I saw it eclipsed –

the earth's shadow

slipped over it, clearly.

next, that it probably broke off from earth. (P: 146)

The way the character gains his knowledge about the moon clearly is in progress. The

character's observation makes him realize different facts about the moon. He, at this

stage, is aware that "the sun light strikes it", it is "terribly cold and no air", it "broke

off from earth", and he is also familiar with the eclipse.

Still, the way the character gains his knowledge about the moon is naive and

unscientific. Depending on "magazines and newspapers" or on oneself observation is

not the perfect way to get information. Consequently, at the final stage of the poem,

the character adopts more scientific methods to know more about the moon. Different

from the previous methods used to get information, he, now with the help of a fellow,

uses a "telescope":

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from the Morioka meteorological observatory

once showed me that heavenly body through

a something-mm little telescope

and explained how its orbit and motions

accord with a simple formula. (P: 146)

The use of the scientific terms "meteorological", "observatory", "telescope", "orbit",

"motions", and "formula" proves the character's progress in receiving knowledge and

at the same time strengthens Miyazawa Kenji's modernism. The modernist approach

of the Japanese poet is his way to free himself from tradition while keeping on the

values of the Asian community.

Consequently, Miyazawa Kenji's modernism is never in contradiction with the

rustic life he is representing. Although he is a modernist, he "turned against urban

modernists in Tokyo and tried to create his own literature of place" (Yamazato, e-

mail, October 3, 2006). The literature created is modern and at the same time is about

his region, rustic and traditional. Likely, in his poem "A Break", Kenji describes the

community of his traditional region and at the same time he is expressing his

modernism:

fling off my hat it's the sooty cap of a mushroom

roll over and tilt my head back

over the edge of the dike.

yawn; shiny demons come out of space. (P: 136)

In these lines, the poet starts with describing a scene of a person standing "over the

edge of the dike" and ends with the vague expression "shiny demons come out of

space".

The "shiny demons" of the previous lines, as Katsunori Yamazato explains, may

refer to "natural phenomena"; or most likely they "suggest demons in Western

literature" (E-mail, October 3, 2006). Kenji, here, considers Western literature as he

believes that knowledge in the modern world is no longer related to his culture only,

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but to other cultures as well. Part of Kenji's awareness of the different cultures around

him or his multiculturalism evolves from his love for ecology. For that, the eighteen

translated poems show this awareness of world cultures, the same as they reflect

Kenji's ecological sense of place.

Kenji's poems prove his deep knowledge of science, self-awareness of other

cultures and also his wide readings. Beside representing Japanese culture and

considering Western literature, there is also an account for Middle Eastern writings.

His poem "Refractive Index" indicates that, for sure, "Miyazawa read around 1921

The Arabian Nights in English" (Yamazato, e-mail, October 3, 2006). Since, the

poem near the end introduces the Arabian character of Aladdin:

like a melancholick mailman

(or Aladdin with his lamp – ) (P: 131)

The story of Aladdin and his lamp is a very famous Arabian story that was one of the

premier works translated from Arabic literature. Miyazawa Kenji uses his knowledge

of this story in his poem.

In this respect, the line "(Aladdin with his lamp – )" is to refer to "Aladdin who

goes to look for happiness with the magic lamp" (Yamazato, e-mail, October 3,

2006). The Arabic story of Aladdin, in this poem, is used and compared to a mail

carrier, who carries happy letters. In this case, the Arabian Aladdin is compared to the

Japanese mailman to indicate a multicultural or global perspective of Kenji's poems.

The account for the eighteen translated poems and the general community,

consequently, is not of a mere interpretation of one country or one culture, but of a

perspective of one world where all humans share their life together. The different

considerations of ecology, science, modernism and multiculturalism that Miyazawa

Kenji takes care of, help to represent this global perspective. At the same time, they

64

make his poems become at many levels difficult to understand or even to interpret by

Gary Snyder.

Kenji's poetry is always difficult to read even for Japanese readers due to his

excessive use of scientific terms. For that there is a "careful attention that Snyder

pays to each word and its nuances and associations" (Yamazato, 2004: 2). This

difficulty of translating Miyazawa Kenji's poetry – along with the difficulty of

translating Han Shan's poems – may be the reason behind why Snyder didn't translate

other Chinese and Japanese poetry along with Cold Mountain Poems, Miyazawa

Kenji's eighteen poems, and few other T'ang poems included in his book The Gary

Snyder Reader.

The difficulty of translating different cultural text is also always accompanied with

the translator's huge responsibility of representation. Indeed, Gary Snyder's honesty

as a translator plays the most crucial part in the process of representation. Snyder is

the one to blame if Western or any other readers took the wrong conception about one

of the aspects of the Chinese or Japanese life introduced in his translation. But this is

not to happen as he entirely succeeds as an orientalist in representing an honest

picture of Han Shan's and Miyazawa Kenji's poems, at least as far as anyone else can

go. Gary Snyder in this respect embodies an orientalist's request not to orientalize, but

simply to seek knowledge of another and different culture.

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Chapter Three

The Occidental Appreciation of Oriental Art

Not that different from the translated Chinese and Japanese poems discussed in the

previous chapter, the perception of the Orient is similarly vivid in Gary Snyder's own

writings. When it comes to his own poetry, the poet still embraces the Orient to the

same degree to make his whole career an indication of a single-minded orientalist.

His long poem Mountains and Rivers Without End, a poem according to Beongcheon

Yu "owes its title, conception, and structure to the Orient" (1983: 223), proves to be

the best of his works for an analysis of oriental discourse. The two oriental aspects

which play the most essential and influential part in the making and structure of

Mountains and Rivers Without End, are the Chinese horizontal landscape scroll and

the Japanese No drama.

I. The Chinese Landscape Scroll and the Making of Mountains and

Rivers Without End

To begin with the Chinese landscape scroll, Dan Mcleod believes that it is

considered the "aspect of the Chinese imagination with the longest influence on

Snyder's poetry" (Hunt, 2004: 28). The critic believes this since all Snyder's poems

always tend to reflect an appreciation for nature and what lives in its lab, a common

feature in Chinese landscape paintings. For Mountains and Rivers Without End, the

influence of the Chinese landscape scroll is more obvious as it goes far to define the

genesis of the poem's title and its structure.

a. The Title of the Long Poem

Starting with the title of the long poem and as Gary Snyder mentions in "The

Making of Mountains and Rivers Without End", it is an accurate translation of the

name of a Chinese landscape scroll: (shou-chuan), (1997: 153). Actually, the

combination (mountains and rivers) works as a title for many Chinese landscape

paintings; one of those – Snyder comments – "is by the Yuan Dynasty painter, Hsu-

66

Pen, whose work inspired me" (Hunt, 2004: 8). In general, for the Chinese the term

(mountains and rivers) means landscapes.

The Chinese ideograms for (mountains and rivers), "are sometimes translated as

'mountain-stream,' 'mountain-river,' or 'mountain-water'" (Hunt, 2000: 7). Gary

Snyder, in this case, chooses the combination "mountain-river". Whatever the

translation of the Chinese ideograms would be, Mountains and Rivers Without End

the same as the Chinese landscape painting intend to capture the essence of nature;

which is what Snyder is most interested in.

b. The Genesis and Structure of the Long Poem

As an embodiment of the Chinese landscape paintings, the long poem with its

thirty-nine sections can be read as one section at the time or as one complete poem.

Such structure is adopted as Mountains and Rivers Without End as a whole can be

seen as one Chinese horizontal landscape scroll. Just as the landscape consists of

parts that can be fully grasped separately and at the same time as one unit whole, the

sections of the poem can be understood as separate units and at the same time as one

long poem. It is entirely true to say that the long poem, right from its beginning till its

end, is made in the form of an ongoing landscape scroll. This landscape scroll can be

fully grasped from the beginning of Mountains and Rivers Without End; more

specifically its opening section.

The opening section, "Endless Streams and Mountains", both starts and represents

the whole poem. On the one hand, the section starts the trip the readers are about to

make in reading Mountains and Rivers Without End and the journey the poet already

has taken through his whole life. On the other hand, the section represents the totality

of the landscape of the entire sections. Completely based on the Chinese landscape

scroll itself – Ch'i-shan wu-chin – the opening section pictures the form which the

long poem is about to take.

67

Just like the long poem, "Endless Streams and Mountains" is based on, "an

unsigned handscroll (35.1 by 213 cm) done in ink and slight coloring on silk with

nine colophons that provide information about the work's early history. (Hunt, 2004:

60). The section represents the same painting of the unsigned handscroll, beginning

with the same description of a land seen from a boat slowly coasting by the river:

Clearing the mind and sliding in

to that created space,

a web of waters streaming over rocks,

air misty but not raining,

seeing this land from a boat on a lake

or a broad slow river,

coasting by. (Snyder, 1997: 5)

Then the poet continues to describe the landscape in details and section by section.

Much like observing the landscape painting, the poem describes the horizontal

scroll from left to right, climbing up till the total landscape is created together while

the readers go along with Snyder's words. Through his words, the poet creates the

landscape with the details given of a path "comes down along a lowland stream"

which then becomes not visual because of "boulders" and "leafy hardwoods". The

landscape also contains scenes of "cottages", "shelters", "gateways" and "rest stops",

and continues with five men sharing the same scene;

A man hunched over, sitting on a log

another stands above him, lifts a staff,

a third, with a roll of mats or a lute, looks on;

a bit offshore two people in a boat. (Snyder, 1997: 5)

These men represent the "tiny travelers" who would be seen now and then through

the landscape scroll of the long poem. Moving upward, the trail goes on till it reaches

the land around the bay.

68

Action, then, is added to the landscape. The readers and viewers would spot a

village where someone is fishing, another is riding, and there is also who are walking,

hiking, and a group of travelers along with a boatman who "looks lost in thought".

Finally, the poet steps back from the described and observed horizontal scroll as;

The watching boat has floated off the page. (P: 6)

The image of the boat, here, serves as a mean to coast across the landscape of this

section and the scroll of the whole poem.

After the image of the boat, there are five colophons – out of the original nine ones

found on the handscroll – included just before the end of the section. The nine

colophons on the painting are kind of personal comments written by those who came

into possession of the scroll through the passing of time. They are made in order for

the painting to be fully realized by its audience. Out of these original nine colophons,

Snyder's section includes only five. Evidently, these five colophons are not randomly

chosen as Gary Snyder declares; "I chose and translated those that I felt made a

contribution to the painting, and to the poem" (E-mail, May 14, 2007). Snyder's

section itself, for the Chinese handscroll, is considered "one more colophon –

commentary poem on the painting – to be added to its story" (Hunt, 2004: 64). In the

same manner, the chosen five colophons, for Snyder's poem, represent an

interpretation of the Chinese handscroll.

After the five quoted colophons, the section ends with the poet's assertion that the

journey is yet not over to emphasize the idea that, "There is always another

dimension, another depth, other heights and other distances, to be found in such

landscape scrolls. To the artist who made them as well as to the imaginative viewer

of them, they are truly 'without end'" (Hunt, 2004: 64). For that reason the final lines

of the poem assert the continuity of the journey:

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Walking on walking,

under foot earth turns. (P: 9)

Such an endless end of the opening section; "Endless Streams and Mountains", draws

the beginning of the larger Chinese horizontal landscape scroll of the long poem,

Mountains and Rivers Without End.

Once the landscape of the opening section is finished, it paves the way for another

section of the long poem's scroll with a short poem called; "Old Bones". The short

poem continues the motif of walking introduced in the final lines of "Endless Streams

and Mountains" as it similarly locates the landscape in the outdoors. It begins with;

"Out there walking round," and continues to be set "Out there somewhere". The story

of the poem starts with a hunter-gatherer who is wandering around in the outdoors;

"looking out for food." And who is:

plucking, digging, snaring, snagging,

barely getting by, (P: 10)

But this hunter-gatherer can only find "no food out there".

The story of the section asserts the idea that only with the help or even consuming

other beings, humans get to live and prevail. For that reason man should be grateful

for his life which mostly depends on the sacrifice of other creatures. It is a story of:

dust and bones, seeds, roots, and tubers interconnects with other

beings, our companions, the animals, and the earth itself. It is,

above all else, a story of the food chain – our interdependency.

Those of us who have prevailed have done so only with the help

of others, even to consuming the others. For this communion, we

must be grateful (Hunt, 2004: 70).

So, it is the story of the food chain, or in Snyder's words, it is the story of:

70

What we ate – who ate what –

how we all prevailed. (P: 10)

As a part of the larger horizontal landscape scroll, the short section introduces an

outdoor landscape of the "old ones" who may be animals as well as humans. The end

of this short section prepares for the beginning of one of the longest sections of

Mountains and Rivers Without End.

With the third section of part I of the long poem, the landscape changes to become

modern, the mode of travel switches to hitchhiking, but the section still locates the

readers "out there walking round." Positively named on a name of a highway, the

section "Night Highway 99" sketches the idea of hitchhiking along the length of

Highway 99. "Having spent most of his life in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco,

Snyder's choice of a north-south route in that region seems evident" (Hunt, 2004: 73).

Through this chosen route, the poem takes the readers to cities and towns in the

United States like; Washington, Oregon, California and ends in San Francisco.

Highway 99 is a route of commerce and travel for many destinations like; Reno,

L.A., North Dakota, Waco Texas, and Alaska. The section focuses on the multiplicity

of drivers as well as the different destinations to reflect the negative aspects of the

highway. Consequently, most of the stories told in this section are of the poor and sad

people who day by day face the reality of the unjust life. Still, the section does not

merely present a picture of gloom as the simple life of the poor also has its

advantages like these lines show;

On Second Street in Portland.

What elegance. What a life.

Bust my belly with a quart of

buttermilk

& five dry heels of French bread

from the market cheap

clean shaved, dry feet, (P: 19)

71

The expression "What a life" shows how this simple life is cherished by the poet, the

same way it was cherished before by Han Shan. Travelers of the section share this

same sense of simplicity through the stories which mostly reflect images of

affirmation.

Besides the different stories introduced in the section, "Night Highway 99"

presents another part of the long poem's scroll. The landscape of the poem which is

basically modern is full of little travelers who hitchhike through Highway 99. Those

travelers sometimes are introduced as:

Tiny men with mustaches

driving ox teams

deep in the cedar groves

wet brush, tin pants, snoose – (P: 11-12)

Those "Tiny men with mustaches" are the narrator's friends who:

Went out on trail crews

Glacier and Marblemount

There we part. (P: 11)

Here, the use of the word "Tiny", "reinforces the idea of figures traversing a

landscape painting" (Hunt, 2004: 76). On the other hand, the expression "wet brush"

is connected with painting a landscape scroll.

Another unmistaken connection with the landscape scroll can be detected in the

poet's description of a scene in "Lake Shasta". The description is much like an

interpretation of a Chinese landscape painting with its tracks and natural scenes. This

landscape is described in a direct way like follows:

Snow on the pines & firs around Lake Shasta

–Chinese scene of winter hills and trees

us "little travelers" in the bitter cold (P: 21)

72

Again, the expression "'little travelers'" introduces the figures moving across the

landscape of the section; which ends in white space and line breaks:

No

body

gives a shit

man

who you are

or what's your car

there

IS no 99 (P: 23-24)

The space in these final lines of the section reminds the readers with the white space

of the Chinese horizontal landscape scroll.

Unrolling the same scroll, once again one section ends and another begins. The

following section; "Three Worlds, Three Realms, Six Roads", carries the same tune

of the previous "Night Highway 99". Both sections present directions and paths; but

ones of the material world while the others of the spiritual world. Unlike the material

world of "Night Highway 99", the current section is of spiritual nature that is

essentially based on Buddhist teachings. Still, for the second time, there are cities and

towns to be visited and roads to be taken. Readers "are taken from Seattle to Portland,

then to a 'Lookout,' San Francisco, a 'Ship at Sea,' and, finally, to Kyoto" (Hunt,

2004: 76). These six different places present the six subsections of "Three Worlds,

Three Realms, Six Roads". Through these six subsections, the personality of Gary

Snyder as an individual is developed.

The section mainly speaks about some of the activities done by Snyder through his

life. It begins with the subsection "Things to Do Around Seattle" which describes the

activities of Snyder's childhood like; "Biking to Lake Washington", and "catch

muddy little fish". The following subsection "Things to Do Around Portland"

presents some of the poet's activities like:

73

Go walk along the Sandy when the smelt run

Drink buttermilk at the Buttermilk Corner

Walk over Hawthorne Bridge the car tires sing

Take the trolley out to Sellwood when cherries are in bloom

Hiking the woods below Council Crest, a tree house high in

Douglas fir near the medical school. (P: 25-26)

These activities are done by the poet during his adolescence and through high school

after he moved with his family to Portland in 1942. Going walking and hiking

represent the image of a traveler journeying across a landscape scroll.

The listed activities of the third subsection "Things to Do Around a Lookout" goes

back to the summer of 1952 and 1953. During that period of time, the poet worked as

a lookout for the U.S. Forest Service in Crater and Sourdough Mountains where he

could;

Wrap up in a blanket in cold weather and just read.

Practice writing Chinese characters with a brush

Paint pictures of the mountains (P: 26)

Just like the painter of the Chinese landscape scroll, Snyder here uses his "brush" to

"Paint pictures of the mountains".

The fourth subsection "Things to Do Around San Francisco" goes back to the time

when Snyder returned to San Francisco in the spring of 1952. As a fifth subsection,

"Things to Do Around a Ship at Sea" refers to the time Snyder "spent on board the

Sappa Creek from the end of August 1957 to mid-April 1958" (Hunt, 2004: 77). On

board, Snyder did "Practice tying knots" and he did "Learn to weld and run a lathe".

But mostly the poet was just "Making plans".

The final subsection "Things to Do Around Kyoto" detects the activities done when

Gary Snyder was in Kyoto, Japan, where he could;

74

Lie on the mats and sweat in summer,

Shiver in winter, sit and soak like a foetus in the bath. (P: 29)

….

Quiet weeks and weeks, walking and reading, talking and

Weeding (P: 30)

Citing those different activities done by Gary Snyder in different stages of his life

while moving through the six subsections of the section, reflects the sense of

journeying which is the distinctive characteristic of all Chinese landscape scrolls.

Along with that, the whole section "Three Worlds, Three Realms, Six Roads"

presents a cityscape just like the preceding section; "Night Highway 99".

As the scroll of the long poem keeps unrolling, a new perception is added with the

fifth section of part I, "Jackrabbit". Moving from the perceptions of humans, viewers

of the scroll for the first time encounter an animal; a jackrabbit:

Jackrabbit,

black-tailed Hare

by the side of the road,

hop, stop. (P: 31)

The jackrabbit here introduces a new level of interest in the horizontal scroll of the

long poem. Indeed, this short section asserts the concept that animals "too have a

share in the communal living space of the planet. They've been around longer, seen

more, and certainly listened more intently than humans have, or do" (Hunt, 2004: 84).

The encounter of an animal in this section asserts the poet's insistence on talking and

listening to animals as they too are part of the circle of life.

With the beginning of another section of the long poem, the landscape of "The

Elwha River" introduces one of the poles of nature for the Chinese landscape scroll;

the river. Mostly written in prose form, the section narrates a story of a girl with three

different rivers involved in the story. The girl first passes through an experience over

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the bridge of the Elwha River, then she writes an essay about her experience on this

bridge using her imagination, and of course there is the level of reality:

The Elwha River, I explained, is a real river, and different from

the river I described. Where I had just walked was real, but I

wrote a dream river – actually the Elwha doesn't fork at that

point.

As I write this now I must remind myself that there is

another Elwha, the actual Olympic peninsula river, which is

not the river I took pains to recollect as real in the dream.

(P: 32)

The use of the expression "actually the Elwha doesn't fork at that point" separates the

river described in her essay from the real river.

According to the sequence of the story, the three different rivers introduced are; the

one which the girl walked on in the real experience, the dream river she wrote about

out of her imagination in the essay, and "the actual Olympic peninsula river". In a

way, the Elwha River is both invented and not invented. It is invented as it appears to

be different from "the actual Olympic peninsula river", and not invented since it

presents an actual physical experience in the girl's mind. This is the same level of

reality discussed in Dogen's "Painting of a Rice Cake"; cited in the first pages of the

published long poem. With this sense of reality, the section ends while another one

begins.

One of the most complicated sections of Mountains and Rivers Without End is the

average length poem "Bubbs Creek Haircut" which narrates some of the journeys

which are taken by the poet. The section is "a composite of more than one journey

into the Sierra Nevada taken by Snyder, sometimes with friends and at times alone"

(Hunt, 2004: 92). The setting of the section is in a barbershop, where the poet goes to

have a haircut. Snyder looks in "the double mirrors" and sets off for his journeys. One

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of these journeys is taken across Highway 99; a familiar route to the readers from the

third section of the long poem:

A few days later drove with Locke

down San Joaquin, us barefoot in the heat

stopping for beer and melon on the way

the Giant Orange,

rubber shreds of cast truck retreads on the pebble

shoulder, highway 99. (P: 34)

These lines indicate one of Snyder's taken journeys with a friend of his; "Locke".

Ultimately, the element of journeying is one of the distinctive aspects of the

Chinese horizontal landscape scroll. For that reason, the section – as a part of the

horizontal scroll – is full of the expressions which indicate walking and journeying

such as; "on our way", "hitchhiking", "trail", "Crossing", "we climb on", and

"hitching down". The use of these expressions, "is metaphorical point of congruence

for the endless walking associated with ... the dynamic unrolling of paths in the

Chinese scroll" (Hunt, 2004: 91).

On another level, there are some of the lines of the section which describe one of

the familiar scenes in all Chinese horizontal scrolls:

– a view that few men see, a point

bare sunlight

on the spaces

empty sky

molding to fit the shape of what ice left

of fire-thrust, or of tilted, twisted, faulted

cast-out from this lava belly globe. (P: 35)

The description of "bare sunlight" and "empty sky" which are "molding to fit" the

shape of mountains, reminds the readers, or in this case the viewers, of "the silk void

in the reaches of a Chinese landscape scroll as it intermingles with the upthrusted

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mountain peaks. Whiteness becomes tangible cloud and fog, which in turn slips

among and into the rocks" (Hunt, 2004: 93).

Unfolding another section of this same scroll, the tool of navigation across the

scroll once again appears. Already encountered in the opening section "Endless

Streams and Mountains", the boat used in sailing through the scroll becomes a part of

the landscape in the section "Boat of a Million Years". However, the boat introduced

in this section is the "Sappa Creek" or in Snyder's words; "Gray old T-2 tanker":

The boat of a million years,

boat of morning,

sails between the sycamores of turquoise, (P: 39)

Of course, the image of this boat floating along "the sycamores of turquoise" is much

connected with the scenes of a horizontal scroll; the same is for the blue sky of the

following section.

After describing the image of the boat; the recognized tool of navigation in all

Chinese horizontal landscape scrolls, Gary Snyder ends part I of his long poem with

the long section "The Blue Sky". This section presents an integral part of the larger

landscape scroll as the sky has always been an essential constituent for Chinese

painters. The section is also of great importance since it is used "as an all-

encompassing poem, one that will bring East and West together," (Hunt, 2004: 103).

Effectively, the section reflects the purpose of the long poem in its invitation for all

people to overcome their indifferences and live together in harmony under the same

"Arched cover" as:

Comrade: sharing the same tent or sky,

a bent curved bow. (P: 43)

With this invitation the section draws the end of part I of the long poem.

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But as it became already familiar with the Chinese handscroll and the long poem,

the final lines of the section are "without end". For that, the blue sky of the painted

scroll in this section becomes endless:

where the eagle that flies out of sight

flies. (P: 44)

The two lines with their wide spaces reflect the vast spaces of the landscape scroll.

With these lines part I ends while another part begins uncovering another section of

Snyder's horizontal handscroll.

Part II of the long poem is more connected with cityscapes. It tries to reconnect the

geography introduced in part I while adding the touch of European civilization to it.

This second part begins with the opening section; "The Market". In this section, the

poet describes some of the markets from all over the world starting with markets near

his home in the United States. Snyder first describes markets from San Francisco and

Seattle then adds other markets like; Saigon in Vietnam, Kathmandu in Nepal, and

Varanasi in India.

The markets described in the section present the landscape of the poem which

mostly "inserts the countryside into the very heart of the city" (Hunt, 2004: 113), as

the poem's opening lines indicate;

Heart of the city

down town

the country side. (P: 47)

The cityscapes of this section present a part of the larger scroll of the long poem.

Additionally, traveling around the States, Vietnam, Nepal and India represents the

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sense of journeying which is the distinctive characteristic of the Chinese landscape

scroll. This same distinctive characteristic is rather stressed through the following

section; "Journeys".

The section "Journeys", with its nine subsections, narrates personal, historical,

cultural, mythical and spiritual journeys; all interwoven together to present one

multidimensional journey. Thus, in all senses, the section is just "a mirror of the

larger Mountains and Rivers Without End, itself a journey with stages and

culminating point that implies newfound wisdom" (Hunt, 2004: 124). As a part of the

larger handscroll, the section "Journeys" is full of such descriptions of scenes that are

always found in all Chinese horizontal scrolls:

Lower down, always moving slowly over the

dry ground descending, can see through the breaks

in the clouds: flat land.

Damp green level rice fields, farm houses,

at last to feel the heat and damp.

Descending to this humid, clouded level world:

now I have come to the LOWLANDS. (P: 54)

The scene introduced in the previous lines is a familiar one to the viewers of the

Chinese handscroll with one of the "little people" walking through the paths of; "dry

ground", "flat land", "rice fields" and "farm houses" to finally reach "the

LOWLANDS".

With the following section "Ma", the viewers of the larger handscroll meet those

"little people" again. The section, as Snyder has said, is "an actual letter he

discovered in an abandoned shack in the mountains not far from his home on the

western slopes of the Sierra Nevada" (Hunt, 2004: 124). This letter is from a mother

to her son commenting on how little waging her son gets for work. Besides the son,

the letter also mentions other characters like,

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Ruby didn't plant anything so she comes over and takes what

she wants.

Vino did get in once, she got in by the dead tree.

….

I told Ruby that Mel and Shafer were up they left last night.

….

Zip ate some of it and liked it she said, … (P: 58)

The characters "Ruby", "Vino", "Mel", "Shafer" and "Zip" represent "the 'little

people' who are seen time and again walking the paths on an unrolling scroll-poem

journey" (Hunt, 2004: 125).

Unrolling another part of the scroll, the section "Instructions" reasserts Snyder's

intention to add the touch of European civilization on the traditional Chinese

landscape scroll of Mountains and Rivers Without End. The poem essentially speaks

about the nature of fossil fuel and presents a scene where the light of the sun shines

on "dull silver metal":

Fuel filler cap

–haven't I seen this before? The

sunlight under the eaves, mottled

shadow, on the knurled rim of

dull silver metal. (P: 61)

In addition to the description of the "Fuel filler cap", there is also the description of

the work of the "Oil filler cap" and "Oil drain plug".

The following section "Night Song of the Los Angeles Basin" keeps the same

mode of modern European civilization. As a part of the Chinese handscroll, the

section:

shows us artistically traced calligraphic lines on the surface of the

planet, made not only by the engineered streets and the lights of

cars that move on them, but by the animals who made the

pathways long before the machines took them over, and by

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Snyder the painter in words who memorializes all these lines on

the unwinding scroll of Mountains and Rivers Without End

(Hunt, 2004: 131).

The calligraphic lines are represented in "calligraphy of cars", "streetways",

"calligraphy of freeways of cars" and also in the paths of animals like follows:

A mouse,

a hawk.

The calligraphy of lights on the night

freeways of Los Angeles

will long be remembered. (P: 64)

The "Owl", "Vale", "Mouse", "pocket-gopher", "lizards", and "hawk" in the lines

show the calligraphy of the landscape of the section.

The section "Night Song of the Los Angeles Basin" then is followed by "Covers

the Ground". This section "contrasts the 'wildness' evident in the landscape of an

earlier era with the 'stuff' of modern society that has since been deposited on the

scene" (Hunt, 2004: 134). It is a kind of contrast between California as it is used to be

and what it became as the following lines explain:

"The Great Central Plain of California

was one smooth bed of honey-bloom

400 miles, your foot would press

a hundred flowers at every step

it seemed one sheet of plant gold; (P: 66)

The previous lines show the wildness of the old landscape of California. But this old

landscape changes to a different one with, in Snyder's expression, "us and our stuff

just covering the ground".

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With the following poem "The Flowing", the handscroll of the long poem has a

new section with the presence of the Kamo River. The poem with its four

subsections, "starts high above Kyoto where the headwaters of the Kamo River gush

forth through the 'dragon-mouth jet' of a bronze pipe sticking out of the wall of the

cliff" (Hunt, 2004: 139). In Snyder's words;

Head doused under the bronze

dragon-mouth jet

from a cliff

spring – headwaters, Kamo

River back of Kyoto, (P: 68)

Undoubtedly, the river has always been an essential section of all Chinese landscape

scrolls as the title of the long poem itself demonstrates: Mountains and Rivers

Without End.

Through the following two sections, the viewers of the handscroll once again meet

with animals. With the section "The Black-tailed Hare" the viewers meet with a

jackrabbit. Not necessarily the jackrabbit encountered in the fifth section of part I of

the long poem, the jackrabbit of this section is:

A grizzled black-eyed jackrabbit showed me

irrigation ditches, open paved highway,

white line

to the hill … (P: 73)

The lines show the importance of sharing life with animals. This same idea controls

the following section "With This Flesh".

The section, "With This Flesh", "ultimately celebrates a food chain based on the

sacrifice of a (cow) being for the betterment of (human) beings" (Hunt, 2004: 153-

54). It shows many benefits of the cow for humans such as:

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the SKIN shoes, saddles, sheaths

the BONES buttons

the FAT buckets of lard

HORNS & HOOVES glue.

Loose vulva, droopy udder;

the MILK buttermilk babes (P: 78)

Those benefits which the humans get from the cow are a proof of the importance of

animals both as a part of the circle of life and of the landscape scroll.

After the section "With This Flesh" begins the last section of part II of the long

poem, "The hump-backed flute player". This last section carries the sense of

journeying which is the distinctive characteristic of the Chinese landscape scroll:

The hump-backed flute player

walks all over.

Sits on the boulders around the Great Basin

his hump is a pack. (P: 79)

The poem introduces a journey taken by the "The hump-backed flute player", as the

tile shows, through India and China.

Part III of the long poem begins with the same sense of journeying which modified

the end of part II. The first section "The Circumambulation of Mt. Tamalpais" is an

actual journey made by Philip Whalen, Allen Ginsberg, and Gary Snyder as the

following lines illustrate:

Walking up and around the long ridge of Tamalpais, "Bay

Mountain," circling and climbing – chanting – to show

respect and to clarify the mind. Philip Whalen, Allen

Ginsberg, and I learned this practice in Asia. So we opened

a route around Tam. It takes a day. (P: 85)

The ten-stages journey takes a day as the poem describes and this completely,

"mirrors the performance mode of the larger poem" (Hunt, 2004: 163). It is the mode

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of the one long journey that the readers or more specifically the viewers are taking by

reading Mountains and Rivers Without End.

The second poem of part III introduces a scene of a flowing river as a part of the

larger Chinese landscape scroll. The section entitled as "The Canyon Wren",

basically "commemorates the Stanislaus River, which flows westward out of the

central Sierra Nevada" (Hunt, 2004: 171). The opening of the section describes the

movement of this river as:

I look up at the cliffs

but we're swept on by downriver

the rafts

wobble and slide over roils of water

boulders shimmer

under the arching stream

rock walls straight up on both sides. (P: 90)

Then, this scene of the river is interrupted by a "hawk" and a "Canyon Wren" as a

familiar combination between nature and animals. The interference of the "hawk" and

the "Canyon Wren" in the natural scene of the "arching stream", which has "rock

walls straight up on both sides", is also another familiar combination in the Chinese

landscape scroll which introduces both nature and what lives in its lab.

The following section "Arctic Midnight Twilight: Cool North Breeze With Low

Clouds, Green Mountains Slopes, White Mountain Sheep" has the same mode of the

previous section as it too starts with describing a natural scene to be interrupted by an

animal. But in this section the animal in the scene is "wild sheep":

Green mountain walls in blowing cloud

white dots on far slopes, constellations,

slowly changing not stars not rocks

"by the midnight breezes strewn"

cloud tatters, lavender arctic light

on sedate wild sheep grazing (P: 92)

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The lines describe a natural scene of "Green mountain walls" and white clouds in the

sky. Like "their pictorial representation in Chinese scrolls, the clouds that float

among these peaks and valleys embody both substance and intangibility. In such

places we discover yet again the significance of emptiness" (Hunt, 2004: 174). Also,

these white clouds and spaces represent the misty cloud void which is always

encountered in Chinese landscape scrolls.

Away from natural scenes of mountains, clouds and space, the following section

"Under the Hills Near the Morava River" is inspired from "an archaeological

discovery of a unique Upper Paleolithic burial site in Dolni Vestonice, a site where

several well-known Upper Paleolithic 'goddess' figurines were once uncovered"

(Hunt, 2004: 178). In Snyder's words, the section describes the discovered burial

location as:

She lay there midst

Mammoth, reindeer, and wolf bones:

Diadem of fox teeth round her brow

Ocher under her hips

26,640 plus or minus 110 years before "now".

Burnt reindeer-pelvis bone bits

in her mouth,

Bones of two men lying by her,

one each side. (P: 96)

The previous lines describe a burial of three young skeletons; a female in the middle

and two men "one each side". The hole also contains some fragments of reindeer and

wolf bones, which all form a part of nature and so of the Chinese landscape scroll.

A different perception from the one introduced in "Under the Hills Near the

Morava River" is that of the following poem "Walking the New York Bedrock: Alive

in the Sea of Information". According to Anthony Hunt, this section "is a poem about

experiencing the wild within the city" (2004: 182). Thus, the section of the handscroll

introduced in the poem is of a wild landscape of:

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Maple, oak, poplar, gingko

New leaves, "new green" on a rock ledge

Of steep little uplift, tucked among trees

Hot sun dapple –

wake up. (P: 97)

This wildness of the "New leaves, 'new green'" is introduced within "the Sea of

Economy" or "the Sea of Information" as both the title of the section and the lines of

the section describe.

The poem also contains a familiar scene of the Chinese landscape scroll that one of

animals and people traveling across the space of the scroll of the following lines:

Walk away in the woods toward

A squirrel, toward

Rare people! Seen from a safe distance. (P: 97)

The image of the "squirrel" and the "Rare people" remind the reader of the "little

people" drawn in the Chinese landscape scroll, while the expression of "from a safe

distance" reflects the space and the void of the scroll.

The following two sections, "Haida Gwai North Coast, Naikoon Beach, Hiellen

River Raven Croaks" and "New Moon Tongue" are mostly written for the realms of

plants and animals parallel to the human realm. In "Haida Gwai North Coast,

Naikoon Beach, Hiellen River Raven Croaks", Snyder focuses on "Acknowledging

our place in the food chain, that every being is intended to be utilized, if not directly

eaten, by some other being, is to accept the existence of apparent chaos" (Hunt, 2004:

192). This principle is already encountered in an earlier stage of Mountains and

Rivers Without End from the second part of the long poem in "With This Flesh".

Along with the idea of the food chain, the section celebrates the two realms of

plants and animals:

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eagles, ravens, seagulls, over surf,

Salal and cedar at the swelling river, (P: 103)

These two realms of "eagles", "ravens", "seagulls" and "Salal", "cedar" are beyond

the human vantage point. The section of "New Moon Tongue", on the other hand

focuses on the same idea since it is written for all beings embraced by the same

moon:

Faint new moon arc, curl,

again in the west. Blue eve,

deer-moving dusk.

Purple shade in a plant-realm –

a million years of sniffs,

licks, lip and

reaching tongue. (P: 105)

The lines embrace the "plant-realm" and the realm of animals "sniffs, licks, lip and

reaching tongue" as a part of life in general and of the Chinese landscape scroll in

particular.

The section "An Offering for Tara", one of the most important poems of

Mountains and Rivers Without End, forms another unmistaken section of the Chinese

landscape scroll. As Anthony Hunt puts it, the section makes "one may remember the

equally apt example of East Asian painting in which the very materials – the colored

inks – used to create vast artistic landscapes are prepared from the substance of the

land itself" (2004: 200). One of the scenes that succeed in doing so begins as:

Alluvium carried up the slope

shaped into gompas, temples,

confidence, patience, good humor

in the work of hands with the stone grit of the world.

….

is played like a brush – sand colors,

fine-ground minerals from

cut-banks and outcroppings,

pulverized rocks from the canyons,

monk-artists making vision palaces,

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maps of stages of the soul and all its pathways,

out of mountain dust… (P: 107-108)

The lines illustrate how the "monk-artists" shape "gompas, temples" and "vision

palaces" out from "mountain dust", just like an artist with "a brush – sand colors"

creates a Chinese landscape scroll out of the land substance. Not to forget that the

mention of "a brush – sand colors" is much connected with painting a handscroll.

The following section "The Bear Mother" again is directed towards the animal

realm with an invitation to enrich the animal – human interaction. The section

narrates an encounter between the poet and a bear mother eating salmon and sharing

"blueberries" or as Snyder describes it:

She veils herself

to speak of eating salmon

Teases me with

"What do you know of my ways"

….

Her mouth full of blueberries,

We share. (P: 113)

The bear mother is a part of the larger landscape just like the humans or the "little

people" found now and then traveling across the Chinese landscape scroll

represented, in this section, in the character of the poet himself.

As an end of part III of the long poem, the section "Macaques in the Sky" follows

the same mode of the previous section "The Bear Mother". This section, too, speaks

about the animal realm within the realm of plants. It introduces a landscape of "A

mother monkey" and "An old male" with their children within "trees", "boughs" and

"vines":

A mother monkey sits and nurses,

A couple perching side by side,

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A face peeks from another leaf screen, pink cheeks,

shining eyes,

An old male, silver belly, furrowed face,

laid back in a crotch

harsh little cough-calls echo

faces among the leaves,

being ears and eyes of trees

soft hands and haunches pressed on boughs and vines (P: 114)

The expressions "laid back in a crotch", "faces among the leaves" and "soft hands and

haunches pressed on boughs and vines" reflect how nature and animals are

considered as one unit in the Chinese landscape scroll. This landscape represents the

last section of part III of the long poem Mountains and Rivers Without End.

Part IV or the last part of the long poem mainly focuses on humans and animals

within nature. As a beginning of the last and final part of the Chinese landscape

scroll, the first section "Old Woodrat's Stinky House" adds a detailed description of a

landscape inside the house of Woodrat. The description goes as:

Pocket gopher, elk, elk-calf, deer, field mouse,

snowshoe hare, ground squirrel, jackrabbit, deer mouse,

pine squirrel, beaver.

Jumping mouse, chipmunk, woodrat, pika.

House cat, flying squirrel. Duck, jay, owl, grebe,

fish, snake, grasshopper, cricket, grass.

Pine nuts, rose seeds, mushrooms, paper, rag, twine, orange peel,

matches, rubber, tinfoil, shoestring, paint rag, two pieces of a

shirt – (P: 120)

Apparently the section with its attentive counting of the different animals, plants and

other stuff in the house, "calls on its readers to develop both a heightened

attentiveness to – and respect for – the planet and new strategies for sharing it with

other beings" (Hunt, 2004: 218). This plea of sharing the planet with other beings is a

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united call throughout the long poem Mountains and Rivers Without End. The

section, then, ends in motion or the constant call of moving and journeying on, "Me.

I'm traveling on".

The second section of the last part of the long poem "Raven's Beak River: At the

End" concentrates on the river as one of the two main poles of nature in the Chinese

landscape scroll. The river of this section is "Doab of the Tatshenshini River and the

Alsek Lake" as the first line of the section illustrates. The section is a proof of how

"Snyder's verbal brush goes on to point a veritable panorama of ice, water, rock, sky,

and land" (Hunt, 2004: 222). This verbal landscape is also complemented with

animals:

we are the bears, we are the ravens,

We are the salmon (P: 123).

The "bears", "ravens" and "salmon" in this sense complete the natural setting of the

landscape of the section.

Then the section describes another landscape of the movement of the Tatshenshini

River. Just like the painter does in painting a landscape of the Chinese scroll, Snyder

with words describes:

Looking north

up the dancing river

Where it turns into a glacier

under stairsteps of ice falls (P:123)

The directions made in the lines, "north", "up", "turns" and "under" represent the

attentive details given by the poet to get a full and complete view of the landscape of

this section and so for the larger Chinese scroll. The section ends with Snyder's call

or invitation for journeying and moving on to the following section, "flying off

alone".

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Moving one section forward, the poem "Earrings Dangling and Miles of Desert"

continues the concept of moving on across the Chinese landscape scroll of the long

poem. As the title may indicate, the journey in this section is taken by The Goddess

Artemisia, "Artem in Greek meant 'to dangle' or 'earring.'", through the miles of

desert. The lines of the poem describe the landscape of the desert with a lizard

"scooting":

– brushy, bushy, stringybark cobwebby tangle

multi-stemmed, forking,

twiglets jut sidewise, a scatter of silky tiny leaves,

dry twigs stick up straight;

a lizard scooting in the frizzy dust – (P: 125)

The description of the "cobwebby" and "frizzy" desert continues in this section

offering the readers a "stretching for miles" to stress the idea of the void and space

which are found in the Chinese landscape scroll.

Moving on again, the following short section "Cross-Legg'd" presents the

combination of humans and nature within the one same landscape. This short

section, in Snyder's words, presents:

always new, same stuff

life after life

….

Our love is mixed with

rocks and streams,

a heartbeat, a breath, a gaze

makes place in the dizzy eddy. (P: 128)

The "always new, same stuff" are the same interaction between humans within

nature. This interaction is represented by the character of the poet himself and a

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female companion – his wife Carole whom the poem is dedicated to – in the lab of

nature of "rocks and streams".

To move along again, the journey through the larger landscape scroll of the long

poem takes another step towards clarity with the section "Afloat". In this section,

the tool of navigation used in journeying across the Chinese landscape scroll – the

"tiny boat" – is encountered for the third time. This section, "actually records a

double-kayak voyage shared by Snyder and a companion, most likely Carole Koda,

in Adams Inlet, Glacier Bay" (Hunt, 2004: 233). However, the voyage of this

section is not only taken by Snyder and his wife, but also by the readers and viewers

of Mountains and Rivers Without End while using the same "tiny boat":

Floating in a tiny boat

lightly on the water, rock with every ripple,

another skin that slides along the water

hung by sea and sky

green mountains turn to clouds

and slip slow by

two-mile saltwater channel

sucks and coils with the tide, (P: 130)

The lines of the poem present a section of the landscape scroll of the long poem.

This section is mostly of water and land involving vast spaces of sea and sky.

The poem also contains a line that represents a recognized section of the Chinese

scroll. Like a painter with his brush, Gary Snyder in the following line draws a

landscape with his words:

where land meets water meets the sky, (P: 132)

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On the one hand, the line reminds the readers with the weaving of land, water and

sky in Chinese paintings. On the other hand, Snyder in the line uses spaces and

breaks between words to reflect the vast space of the Chinese landscape scroll.

The following two sections; "The Dance" and "We Wash Our Bowls in This

Water" continue, in the same style of the previous section, in representing a natural

landscape but this time the landscape is mainly of "rivers", "headwaters", "river

sidebars", "streams", "creeks", "channel"; generally about water. In "The Dance",

"Ame-no-uzume" or the "Outrageous Heavenly Woman" while dancing presents

this landscape of water and so is for the great Chinese poet "Su Tung-po" and

"Dogen" in "We Wash Our Bowls in This Water". However, these two sections are

of a lower key and a plainer style to pave the way for one of the most intense and

important sections of Mountains and Rivers Without End, "The Mountain Spirit".

The section entitled as "The Mountain Spirit" represents the final meeting for the

viewers of the landscape with The Goddess. In the poem, The Goddess Yamamba or

the Old Woman of the Mountains:

In most legends she is shown wandering among the peaks and

valleys of the wild. Yamamba is always associated with

mountains. Literally, the Japanese characters for yama-uba mean

"mountain-old woman". Her name has been variously translated

as "mountain crone," "mountain hag," "granny mountains," or in

Snyder's case, as "mountain spirit". (Hunt, 2004: 255)

Yamamba's connection with mountains shapes the landscape of this section; a

landscape of "an actual gathering of peaks just north of Death and Saline Valleys on

the California/Nevada border" (Hunt, 2004: 246).

In the lines of the section, Snyder gives a description of these peaks of "Last

Chance range" as follows:

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I go to the pass, turn north,

end of day, climbing high,

find an opening where a

steep dirt side road halts.

A perch in the round dry hills,

prickly pinyon pine boughs shade,

a view to the Last Chance range, (P: 141)

The directions given in the lines, "go to pass", "turn north", "climbing high" drive

the attention of the viewers of the landscape towards the journey which the

character of Gary Snyder or the "tiny traveler" takes to reach the "White

Mountains".

Journeying on once more, the following short section "Earth Verse" ultimately,

"serves as a quiet and graceful bridge between the climactic section, 'The Mountain

Spirit,' and the final resolution of the entire poem in 'Finding the Space in the

Heart'" (Hunt, 2004: 261). However short the section is, it represents an unlimited

landscape of desert as the following lines prove:

Wide enough to keep you looking

Open enough to keep you moving (P: 148)

The vast and "Wide" desert landscape of this section is based on a journey taken by

the poet to Australia in 1981. Gary Snyder; "reveals that the section 'was written in

the incredibly lonely Musgrave mountains of the central Australian desert' …. The

Musgrave Ranges, 'a series of granite hills, in northwestern South Australia, about

130 miles long' lie 'within the arid Central Australian Aboriginal Reserve'" (Hunt,

2004: 259). This desert landscape encourages the readers of the long poem to "keep

you moving".

One last step is taken towards the last section of the Chinese landscape scroll in

its final turn in "Finding the Space in the Heart". This final landscape is set in the

desert of the Great Basin in Nevada as the lines of the section describe:

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all equal, far reaches, no bounds.

Sound swallowed away,

no waters, no mountains, no

bush no grass and

because no grass

no shade but your shadow. (P: 151)

The lines describe the unlimited and vast space of the desert of the "far reaches"

while representing the flatness of the landscape:

Just as surely as the last unrolling of the Cleveland landscape

scroll Ch'i-shan-wu-chin reveals a relatively level horizontal

space after multiple peaks and valleys, so readers, having

journeyed through Mountains and Rivers Without End to the last

section, "Finding the Space in the Heart," find themselves

standing on an immensely flat, horizontal space in the Great

Basin. (Hunt, 2004: 262)

The flat space of the great Basin embodies the last resolution of the Chinese

landscape scroll in Snyder's long poem.

As the last section goes on, the lines represent an endless horizontal space of

desert where there is nothing but the sky and the ground with "no place between"

just to prepare for the endless end of Mountains and Rivers Without End:

– the ground is the sky

the sky is the ground,

no place between, … (P: 151)

Finally, "the wet black brush" which Gary Snyder used to paint the landscape of this

section and the landscape scroll of Mountains and Rivers Without End, "lifts away"

from the paper as the last lines of the section explain:

The space goes on.

But the wet black brush

tip drawn to a point,

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lifts away. (P: 152)

Although the previous lines make the end of "Finding the Space in the Heart" and so

for the Chinese landscape scroll, still the long poem does not close at this stage but

it stays open as "The space goes on" to be "without end" just as the spaces of the

landscape scroll.

II. The Japanese No Play Within the Dramatic Structure of Mountains

and Rivers Without End

As far as the Chinese landscape scroll affects the genesis and making of Mountains

and Rivers Without End so does the Japanese No drama concerning the composition

of the long poem. The same as the Japanese No play, Mountains and Rivers Without

End has the same structure of the jo-ha-kyu, the essential rule of composition in the

No drama:

Jo (or Introduction): The ideogram for Jo means "Beginning."

This part is straightforward, and rather slow in tempo.

Ha (or Development): The ideogram for Ha means

"Breaking." The Jo part is broken up and developed into a more

elaborate stage. There is a change in tempo.

Kyu (or Conclusion): The ideogram for Kyu means "Rapidity."

As a rule this part is quicker than the Ha, vigorous in some

pieces, and gives an impression of conclusion. (Hunt, 2004: 44)

This dramatic structure of No is evidently used in Snyder's long poem as the poet

himself admits that "The structure of Noh is usually tri-partite. It is called 'jo ha

kyu'- - calm opening ….. long & detailed exposition - - swift conclusion. Sometimes

there are 4 parts, jo ha ha kyu. Double detailed exposition. That's a guide to the four

parts of Mts & Rivers." (E-mail, November 12, 2010).

Applying the rule of composition of No on Mountains and Rivers Without End,

part I with its nine sections makes up the jo or the "calm opening" of the long poem.

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Both part II and part III are the ha or the "long & detailed exposition". Still, part III

as a ha is more intense and complex than the ha of part II. The fourth and final part

of the long poem is the kyu or the "swift conclusion" of Mountains and Rivers

Without End. Evidently, "At a most basic level, in accordance with the jo-ha-kyu

principle," the long poem contains "a perceivable introduction, development, and

close to the entire sequence as well as in each of its four parts" (Hunt, 2004: 47).

Henceforward, each part of the four parts in itself is divided into jo-ha-kyu. For

example, part III begins with a ritualistic introductory jo "The Circumambulation of

Mt. Tamalpais". The part develops in the middle with a ha until a moment of climax

in "An Offering for Tara". Then part III quickly closes with the shorter sections

"The Bear Mother" and "Macaques in the Sky" or the kyu. And so for the rest three

parts of the long poem.

a. The Jo of Mountains and Rivers Without End

With the beginning of part I or the jo of Mountains and Rivers Without End, the

Japanese No play Yamamba or (Old Mountain Woman), the one which the long

poem is based on, begins too. Just as in the Japanese No play, "The action of the

play begins … with the reverberating sound of a foot stamp on the wooden boards"

(Hunt, 2004: 43). In the same manner, the beginning section "Endless Streams and

Mountains" represents the No movement of the foot stamp:

stamp the foot, walk with it, clap! turn,

the creeks come in, ah! (P: 8)

With this sound of the foot stamp, the clap and turn, the No play begins in the first

section of Mountains and Rivers Without End.

Then the play continues in the last lines of the same section "Endless Streams and

Mountains" with the first appearance of the waki – the second main actor in the

Japanese No – in the ending lines of the poem:

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Walking on walking,

under foot earth turns.

Streams and mountains never stay the same. (P: 9)

The poet-actor Gary Snyder is the waki in the long poem, "who is traveling to a

shrine or through some culturally important landscape" (Hunt, 2004: 43). The line

"Walking on walking" starts Snyder's journey through enlightenment, while the

"Streams and Mountains" represent the "culturally important landscape".

As the waki steps forward through his journey of enlightenment and through

Mountains and Rivers Without End, he counts the different journeys he has taken in

his way to achieve wisdom in the section "Night Highway 99". The section

represents "his 'traveling song' (michi-yuki), recounting the paths he has traveled to

get to this place" (Hunt, 2004: 76). The waki in "Night Highway 99" recounts to the

viewers of No the cities and towns which he has traveled in the United States like;

Washington, Oregon, California to finally get to San Francisco. The poem is also

built on the No structure of the jo-ha-kyu as its:

Dynamic movement and sound start slowly and build in

successive waves to an intense moment in the poem when a

medley of sounds and sights are delivered to the reader in a

concentration of short bursts. The rhythms then loosen and

lengthen once more, especially after we reach the rhythmic lines

"Going to San Francisco/ Yeah San Francisco…," after which the

poem appears to have more white space and silence. (Hunt, 2004:

75-76)

The section in itself and for itself is a representation of a "calm opening", "long &

detailed exposition" and a "swift conclusion".

The section begins in the jo mode with the "calm opening" of the waki while

setting for his journeys. Then it reaches to the ha or the "long & detailed exposition"

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as the waki narrates the details of the different journeys which he takes. Finally the

section closes with the kyu or the "swift conclusion":

No

body

gives a shit

man

who you are

or what's your car

there

IS no 99 (P: 23-24)

The final lines of the section have white spaces and line breaks to represent the

smooth close of the section.

The waki in the following section "Three Worlds, Three Realms, Six Roads"

presents his nanori to the viewers of the No in Mountains and Rivers Without End.

The section is compared to the waki's nanori which is "a set of lines in which the

pilgrim introduces himself to the audience and tells them 'where he is from, who he

is, why he is appearing, and what he aims to do'" (Hunt, 2004: 76). It is a kind of an

introductory meeting between the waki and the viewers of the No play.

The first subsection "Things to Do Around Seattle" describes the activities of

Snyder's childhood to represent "where he is from". The following three

subsections, "Thing to Do Around Portland", "Things to Do Around a Lookout" and

"Things to Do Around San Francisco" covers the poet's adolescence and youth to

represent the "who he is". The subsection "Things to Do Around a Ship at Sea"

represents "why he is appearing" which is simply because the waki tries "Figuring

out" and "Making plans". The last subsection "Things to Do Around Kyoto"

represents the "what he aims to do" which is "Going home".

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Then the shite appears for the first time in "Jackrabbit". "The shite's first

appearance is 'in the guise of a quite ordinary contemporary of the waki'" (Hunt,

2004: 43). The disguise here is in the form of a jackrabbit or "black-tailed Hare".

The shite or the jackrabbit "is the ghost or specter of a person involved in events

long ago at the imagined site of the action … In the ensuing conversation with the

waki, the shite usually reveals what events occurred in this place in the past" (Hunt,

2004: 43). In the lines of the poem the conversation of the waki Gary Snyder and the

shite goes as:

you know me

a little. A lot more than I

know you. (P: 31)

The waki's announcement to the shite "you know me" proves that the relationship

between them goes way to the past. At this stage of the No play the shite disappears.

The following section "The Elwha River" is a complete No play in itself. The

section "is an elliptical miniaturization of the No play Eguchi" (Hunt, 2004: 90).

The journeying waki Gary Snyder actually attended the performance of Eguchi

while he was in Japan. In a letter to his wife Joanne, "he summed up the plot as

'about [a] prostitute who is actually Samantabhadra (Infinite Love) in disguise'"

(Hunt, 2004: 88). "The Elwha River" is based on this No play Eguchi which goes

as:

a traveling monk in his way to a large Buddhist temple arrives at

the town of Eguchi, which was an important crossing point on

the Yodo River. The monk knows the story of the legendary

Lady of Eguchi, a courtesan, who once refused lodging to a

famous hermit poet, Saigyo, in order to teach him to have higher

aspirations (e.g., higher than a night's stay in a house of ill

repute). The twist in this story within a story is that the lady is

actually the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra and she turns Saigyo

away for his own good. Remembering this legend, the traveling

monk is directed to the original home of the Lady of Eguchi. A

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woman there, actually the ghost of the Lady of Eguchi, appears

to him, tells him her version of the Saigyo story, and then

vanishes. In part two of the play the lady herself, attended by two

young courtesans, returns as if on a barge by the river in a

visionary dream sequence…., and finally the Lady ascends into a

white cloud as the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra. The monk is left

overwhelmed with what he has seen. (Hunt, 2004: 89)

In "The Elwha River" the frustration of the waki Snyder – as – girl of having "C-"

from the teacher is the same frustration of Saigyo when he was refused from the

Lady of Eguchi. Another interpretation of the No play Eguchi is in the character of

the female teacher. Like Eguchi who is also Samantabhadra, the female teacher of

"The Elwha River" is also "used to be a man".

In the jo mode, the following section introduces to the viewers the early life of

Gary Snyder. The section "Bubbs Creek Haircut" describes the waki's early life in

the Sierra Nevada through multiple journeys to different places like San Joaquin,

King's River Canyon, Cedar Grove, Lake Union, Forester Pass, Oregon, Warm

Springs, Portland, Berkeley, Upper Kern River and Bubbs Creek. Then the waki

describes these journeys to be arisen:

out of the memory of smoking pine (P: 38)

This image of the "smoking pine" is simply "conjuring up the No drama's phantasms

as evoked against a painted pine tree backdrop on a stage constructed of pine wood"

(Hunt, 2004: 98). The waki Gary Snyder resembles his early life to the No play

which is set on the stage where always stands "a painted pine tree".

Part I of Mountains and Rivers Without End continues in the jo mode of the

Japanese No play. The last section of the first part "The Blue Sky" asserts the jo

rhythms as "in this section Snyder ascends to a moment of poetic intensity and then

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pauses, tableau-like, long enough to focus on blue colors and mantric sounds" (Hunt,

2004: 103).

The blue sky

the blue sky.

The Blue Sky

is the land of

OLD MAN MEDICINE BUDDHA (P: 44)

The poet at these final lines of the section proves how Part I is the "calm opening"

with the white space, the color of blue and the sound of Buddha, as he repeats "the

blue sky". The mantra of "OLD MAN MEDICINE BUDDHA" is in the essence of

the teachings of Buddhism which itself is in the essence of Japanese No drama. The

sound of Buddha ends this final section of the jo of Mountains and Rivers Without

End.

b. The Double Ha of the Long Poem

After the "calm opening" begins the ha or the "long & detailed exposition" of the

Japanese No play with the beginning of part II. Still, as part II begins, the opening

sections "The Market" and "Journeys" stays in a declarative mode or the jo mode as

an introductory sections of the ha of the No play.

As the "Ma" section begins, it reassures the influence which the Japanese No play

Yamamba or (Old Mountain Woman) has over Gary Snyder. The poem is based on

an actual letter from a mother to her son. Evidently, "the portrait of mother and son

given in 'Ma' is an echo of the archetypal mother-son relationship found in several

other poems. Snyder has spoken, …, of Yamamba's relationship with her son,

Kintaro (sometimes called Kintochi or Kintoki)" (Hunt, 2004: 127). So, the close

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mother-son relationship which is introduced in the section is the same of Yamamba

and her son Kintaro in the No play.

In the following sections Gary Snyder starts to introduce the setting and style of

the No play to the viewers of No in Mountains and Rivers Without End. In "The

Flowing" his description of the "Riverbed" represents the style of the present-day

No. The lines go as:

Down at the riverbed

singing a little tune.

tin cans, fork stick stuck up straight,

half the stones of an old black campfire ring,

The gypsy actors, rags and tatters,

wives all dancers,

and the children clowns, (P: 68)

The riverbed which is described in the previous lines is the home of the gypsies. The

poet's "emphasis on communal performance ('actors,' 'dancers,' 'clowns') easily

alludes to the origins of the present-day stylized No drama in early informal song-

dance-mime entertainments and harvest celebrations" (Hunt, 2004: 141). The lines

of the poem alludes to this style of No drama in the way the "gypsy actors", "wives"

and "the children clowns" sing and dance around "an old black campfire ring".

The setting and style of the No play is also evident in Snyder's use of prose lines

inside his poems. The section "With This Flesh" is a proof for this intentional

stylistic exposition as the poem is written in both poetry and prose. The section also

includes the rhythms of No play. In the lines of the section, Snyder "chants, No like,

an inventory of water in its native rhythms" (Hunt, 2004: 154), as the following

lines represent:

Aggvacaamanc – creek of the hawks

Camane caamanc – creek of the cardon cactus

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Cabelulevit – running water

Vaba cabel – water of the camp

Cunitca cabel – water of the large rocks

Cabelmet – water and earth. (P: 78)

The poet chants the lines as the waki chants in the No play. The lines also include

the silence and pause of the No music and rhythms.

The same style is used in the following section "The Hump-backed Flute Player"

concerning the insertion of prose lines and following the rhythms of the No music.

The poem, "may even be evidence of Snyder's structural imitation of the two-scene

No play: In 'The Hump-backed Flute Player' we encounter the pines in their 'normal'

guise" (Hunt, 2004: 155). In the final lines of the poem Snyder speaks of these pine

trees or "the Oldest of Beings":

Up in the mountains that edge the Great Basin

it was whispered to me

by the oldest of trees.

By the Oldest of Beings

the Oldest of Trees

Bristlecone Pine.

And all night long sung on

by a young throng

of Pinyon Pine. (P: 82)

The pine trees of this section are in their normal form amidst the White Mountains

of California on the edge of the great Basin. These pine trees, later on, would be

transformed in a different guise. As an ending section of the ha of part II, the poem

swiftly closes with these lines in the kyu mode.

The second ha of Part III of Mountains and Rivers Without End begins in the jo

mode in "The Circumambulation of Mt. Tamalpais". The section "begins a new

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aesthetic cycle in a lower register…. it has a prefatory quality to it" (Hunt, 2004:

163). As an introductory section, it is similar to the three sections "Endless Streams

and Mountains", "The Market" and "Old Woodrat's Stinky House". The four

sections represent the jo of the four parts of the long poem. For that reason, "The

Circumambulation of Mt. Tamalpais" presents its message through its form and

goes nowhere further. Simply, the section's message is the religious ritual in its

practical form.

Moving on in the ha part, the section "Arctic Midnight Twilight: Cool North

Breeze With Low Clouds, Green Mountain Slopes, White Mountain Sheep" adds

the music of No play to Mountains and Rivers Without End. The section near the

end ascends musically as follows:

Up the knife ridge

the trail crosses over and heads down a glacier,

tracks fade in the snow.

Sheep gone, and only endless twilight mountains. (P: 95)

The music of the lines ascends from "Up the knife ridge" to be "down", "fade" and

then "gone". Effectively, the lines "present a visual analogue to the sound of a No

flute subsiding into silence" (Hunt, 2004: 177). Like the sound of the flute in the No

play ascends till it fades away, the lines musically ascends to finally reach "only

endless twilight mountains".

The No play continues to the midpoint of the second ha of Mountains and Rivers

Without End. At the middle of part III of the long poem, sections like "Under the

Hills Near the Morava River", "Walking the New York Bedrock: Alive in the Sea of

Information", "Haida Gwai North Coast, Naikoon Beach, Hiellen River Raven

Croaks" and "New Moon Tongue" have a much detailed exposition of the theme.

This is expected at this stage of Mountains and Rivers Without End since "anyone

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familiar with the fractal rhythms of the No would expect a more extensive treatment

of the theme as we return to its elaboration a second time, albeit in a different

setting" (Hunt, 2004: 182). After this detailed exposition of the theme, the second

ha of part III reaches its climax with the section "An Offering for Tara".

The climatic section "An Offering for Tara" follows the rhythm of No drama. Gary

Snyder begins the section in prose in the form of question and answer. For the readers

of No, the adoption of question-answer format in this section:

has a certain resonance with the kind posed by a journeying waki

when he encounters an unassuming yet mysterious person on the

path: "Who is this person standing before me?" The answer

presented in the No play usually calls up the significance of the

locale along with the ghostly presence of the spirit who abides in

that place. When the spirit appears, the encounter, culminating in

a dance, transforms all. (Hunt, 2004: 198)

But Snyder's questions of this section stay unanswered. The waki Gary Snyder does

not provide any answers to his posed questions in this section.

Leaving this job to the readers, the answers of each question would be suggested

while the readers move on in their journey of enlightenment through the No play of

Mountains and Rivers Without End. Some of these questions are:

Have you seen my companion

With her moon-like forehead

Has she passed this way? (P: 106)

These opening lines of the section pose the unanswered questions about the Goddess

Tara. So, like the No play these questions do stir the appearance of the spirit of the

Goddess Tara in this section.

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Part III of Mountains and Rivers Without End reaches its fast close after the

section "An Offering for Tara". The last section "Macaques in the Sky", ends the

second ha of the long poem in the kyu mode. Following the fractal nature of the No

play, the section itself follows the principle of jo-ha-kyu. Genuinely, the section "Can

be divided into five observable parts that may also imitate the basic structure of No

(jo-ha-ha-ha-kyu): prose beginning, the description of the macaques in the trees, the

realistic leap of the mother monkey, the symbolic import of that leap printed in

italics, and the final scientific naming" (Hunt, 2004: 218). On a most specified level,

the five jo-ha-ha-ha-kyu of the poem represent the kyu of the second ha of part III.

c. The Kyu of Mountains and Rivers Without End

As part IV begins, the ten sections of this final part represent the kyu of Mountains

and Rivers Without End. The ten sections swiftly closes the two-part No play of the

whole thirty-nine sections of the long poem. Effectively, as a kyu of a two-part No

play part IV:

invariably ends with the shite's transforming reenactment in

dance of all that has come before. Thus key poems within this

ten-section unit draw the long poem toward artistic resolution by

spiraling around, often providing faint echoes from earlier parts

albeit with a new tone or a fresh vision. And Snyder has the kyu

aspect of No in mind as he repeats the dance motif several times

in these sections. (Hunt, 2004: 218-19)

Consequently, the sections of this final part involve a lot of dancing. But as it

became familiar to the viewers of the No drama through the previous three parts of

Mountains and Rivers Without End, part IV begins in the jo mode too.

The beginning sections "Old Woodrat's Stinky House", "Raven's Beak River" and

"Earrings Dangling and Miles of Desert" are just an introduction for the up-to-come

climatic dance sections. In the jo mode, they introduce the setting of the No play

since, "prose paragraphs are intermingled with passages of carefully constructed

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verse, more than likely in accordance with Snyder's sense of the fluctuating

cadences of the No" (Hunt, 2004: 226). Evidently, this technique is adopted

throughout Mountains and Rivers Without End to copy the pattern and setting of the

Japanese No drama.

Along with the insertion of prose, the section "Raven's Beak River" concentrates

on the No rhythms. The section,

Instead, in the midst of dazzling imagistic energy, the poem

paradoxically insists on sitting still, on silent meditative

attentiveness to one's interconnection with the flow of life, of

finding the still point at the heart of this whirling circle of the

senses. As visual as this section is, it remains a poem of sounds

and silence. (Hunt, 2004: 223)

The poem, more than any other poem in Mountains and Rivers Without End of

equal length, is metrically rhythmical.

In "Raven's Beak River" some words and phrases are repeated to form a

regularity of sound and rhythm like in the following lines:

Mind in the mountains, mind of tumbling water,

mind running rivers,

Mind of shifting (P: 123)

The repetition of "Mind" and "mind of" makes a rhythmical repetition of sounds.

This sound pattern is much related to the kyu mode of the No play.

The following section "Earrings Dangling and Miles of Desert" suggests an

answer to Snyder's posed questions in the previous section of part III "An Offering

for Tara". Again the viewers of the No play in Mountains and Rivers Without End

are in the presence of the spirit of the Goddess. But this time the Goddess is

Artemisia as the lines illustrate:

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Artemisia,

who lives across the ranges,

stretching for miles,

she's always there:

with saltbush and greasewood, with rabbitbrush

and all the little grasses.

Her blue-gray-green – (P: 126)

Like the spirit of the Goddess Tara previously appeared, the viewers of the No play

now in the presence of the Goddess Artemisia.

In this section, "For a brief moment we are imaginatively in the same half-natural,

half-supernatural, atmosphere of the No play. Like the traveling waki, our encounter

with the commonplace has suddenly left us in the presence of a spirit" (Hunt, 2004:

227). The lines represent the emergence of the visual image of the spirit "Artemisia"

with "Her blue-gray-green" of the plant. Afterwards, the two-part No play reaches the

climax of the kyu mode with the beginning of the shite's dance.

With the beginning of "The Dance", one of the key poems of the kyu part, the

journeying waki Gary Snyder becomes face to face with the shite's final dance. The

section describes the dance of the shite Ame-no-uzume or "Outrageous Heavenly

Woman" to lure Amaterasu "'Shining Heavens,' Goddess of the Sun" out of her cave.

The story of this dance begins with Izanami as the consort of Izanagi as one of the

most original divine couples. After mating, Izanami produces the world. Then she

gives birth to fire and dies or in Snyder's words "so burned she died".

The lonely Izanagi, after her death, goes to the underworld (yomi) in his trial to get

her back. He breaks his vow and looks at her corpse. In return she enacts punishment

on him. Izanagi survives and seals Izanami in the underworld. She vows to have

thousands killed, and he vows to have many born more than she can kill. Then

Izanagi forms new divinities, Amaterasu and her brother Susanowo, as Snyder

narrates:

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"Shining Heavens," Goddess of the Sun,

her brother flung

mud and shit and a half-skinned pony through

the palace,

so she entered a cave – shut it up with a rock –

made the world dark. (P: 133)

The lines allude to Susanowo's jealousy of his sister Amaterasu "Goddess of the

Sun". He contaminates her palace with "mud and shit" to separate her, like Izanami

before her, from the world. As a consequence, she enters a dark cave and "shut it up

with a rock".

Ame-no-uzume or "Outrageous Heavenly Woman" hears about what happens to

Amaterasu. She determines to lure her out of the dark cave with her dance. Gary

Snyder, at this stage of the poem, "deliberately connects this dance with that observed

in the No theater, for he uses the technical terms associated with it: the 'stamp of the

foot' and the 'mai' (dance) that forms the climactic moment of each spirit play" (Hunt,

2004: 240). As in every Japanese No play, Ame-no-uzume's dance has the "stamp of

the foot" too:

Ame-no-uzume-no-mikoto bound up her sleeves with

a cord of heavenly bi-kage vine, tied around her head a

head-band of the heavenly ma-saki vine, bound to-

gether bundles of sasa leaves to hold in her hands, and

overturning a bucket before the heavenly rock-cave

door, stamped resoundingly upon it. (P: 135)

The lines visualize how Ame-no-uzume uses vines and leaves all around her body

and then dances, No-like "stamped resoundingly", on the sounding board which she

puts in front of Amaterasu's cave. Successfully, her dancing lures Amaterasu out of

the dark cave. This dance is as essential to the story of this section as it is to the kyu

mode of part IV of Mountains and Rivers Without End.

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The kyu part includes more of "stamp the foot" dancing in the section "The

Mountain Spirit". Based on the No play Yamamba itself, the section is one of the

most, if not the most, important poems of Mountains and Rivers Without End.

Exclusively, "While all of Mountains and Rivers Without End may be seen as a

cosmic No play, this section serves, fractally, as a mirror of the dynamics of the

larger poem" (Hunt, 2004: 246). The section reflects the dramatic structure of the No

drama within the long poem. It has the same setting of No which is already

encountered in the previous sections, in addition to the jo-ha-kyu structure.

In the jo mode "The Mountain Spirit" begins with an introductory song of six

lines, just in the same manner of "Endless Streams and Mountains" and "Old Bones".

In the section, the journeying waki sings of his journey along the road "south from

Reno", the same as the traveling song or the (michi-yuki) of "Night Highway 99". The

section also contains the "name-introducing" part, "I'm a traveler" with its counterpart

in large in "Three Worlds, Three Realms, Sis Roads". The same as the waki in the

two-part No play, "who first meets the shite in the guise of ordinary person,

unsuspecting that an enlightening second encounter with the veritable shite will

follow in a dream vision" (Hunt, 2004: 250), so is for the incarnations of the spirit of

the Goddess throughout the whole poem. The same applies to the shite's final dance

at the end of the play which is intensively illustrated in the key poems of the kyu of

part IV.

The appearance of the Goddess is the climax for the long poem Mountains and

Rivers Without End and for "The Mountain Spirit" section. The section is "the

summit of the 'kyu' poems that make up part IV and the apex of dramatic movement

in the complete long poem. Like the waki, without knowing it, readers have been

drawn toward her [the Goddess] from the first pages of the book" (Hunt, 2004: 250).

Finally, the viewers of the No play in Mountains and Rivers Without End, get to meet

the Goddess Yamamba herself in the section "The Mountain Spirit". Yamamba or

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(Old Mountain Woman) is also the name of the Japanese No play which has the

deepest influence on Gary Snyder and Mountains and Rivers Without End.

Gary Snyder in the section "The Mountain Spirit" redirects the original Japanese

No play Yamamba to the viewers of No in Mountains and Rivers Without End. As the

long poem is based on the structure of the Japanese No play Yamamba, consequently,

the play is not only a mirror for Snyder's section "The Mountain Spirit", but also for

his Mountains and Rivers Without End. This Japanese No play begins with:

PART ONE

1.1. Artist Enters: An entrance song (shidai) is sung. Hyakuma, a

famous singer/dancer from the city, travels (michi-yuki) with her

attendants on a pilgrimage to Zenkokji Temple in the mountains.

Not knowing which road to take, they ask for guidance from a

villager. Suddenly the sky darkens.

1.2. Spirit Enters: Woman (Yamamba embodied in a young woman)

offers them a place to stay. (Hunt, 2004: 247)

The beginning of the Japanese No play Yamamba is redirected in Snyder's version in

"The Mountain Spirit".

Likewise, Snyder begins the section with the "entrance song (shidai)":

Ceaseless wheel of lives

ceaseless wheel of lives

red sandstone;

gleaming dolomite

ceaseless wheel of lives

red sandstone and white dolomite. (P: 140)

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After the entrance song, Snyder travels (michi-yuki) "south from Reno". He tells the

"Ranger" who he is (nanori), "I'm a traveler", then asks her for directions to reach

"the White Mountains". The evening comes. Then "A voice says":

"You had a bit of fame once in the city

for poems of mountains,

here it's real." (P: 141)

Once Snyder hears the voice of (The Mountain Spirit) he wonders "What?" or whom

he has heard.

The first part of the Japanese No play continues while Yamamba is still in

disguise and not in her "true" form. She, as a shite, is in her first appearance in the

double No, while the waki (Hyakuma) is unaware that he is in the presence of the

Goddess. Literally, this first part ends in the following manner:

1.3. Spirit and Artist Converse: Woman (Yamamba) wants to observe

Hyakuma perform the song and dance (kusemai) that has made

her famous. The woman promises to reveal her true form after

watching Hyakuma perform.

1.4. Spirit Tells Story: The Woman (Yamamba) narrates the story of

her wanderings and promises again to show her true form as well

as to dance a dance in imitation of Hyakuma's dance.

1.5. Spirit Exits: The Woman (Yamamba) leaves the stage. (Hunt,

2004: 247)

In a like manner Snyder converses with the spirit. Yamamba asks him "Still, I'd like

to hear that poem". He answers:

" – Tonight is the night of the shooting stars,

Mirfak the brilliant star of Perseus

crosses the ridge at midnight

I'll read it then." (P: 142)

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The spirit tells story as she implies her knowledge, right from the start, of "minerals",

"stone" and "time". Then the spirit exits since Snyder wonders "Who am I talking

to?" and he walks "back to camp".

Then part two of the No play begins. It begins with the artist's waiting, "2.1. Artist

Waits: A waiting song (shidai) is sung as Hyakuma waits for Yamamba to return. 2.2.

Spirit Re-enters in 'True' Form: Yamamba appears in her 'real' form as the 'old

woman of the mountains'. 2.3. Spirit and Artist Converse: Yamamba asks Hyakuma

to perform the Kusemai" (Hunt, 2004: 247-48). Likewise, Snyder begins his version

of part two of Yamamba with a waiting song (shidai): "Evening breeze up from the

flats". After a brief time Yamamba appears to Snyder as the "old woman of the

mountain" or the "mountain spirit":

the Mountain Spirit stands there.

Old woman? white ragged hair? (P: 143)

As she "stands there" in front of Gary Snyder, she asks him to perform his poem, "I

came to hear – ". In his return, Snyder begins to chant his poem "The Mountain

Spirit" in her honor.

The climax of the play begins from the confrontation of the artist Gary Snyder

with the spirit in her true form of the "Mountain Spirit" or Yamamba. After he sings

his poem for her, she starts to perform her dance just as the sequence in the original

Japanese No play Yamamba goes:

2.4. Spirit Dances and Sings: The climax of the play. In fact it is

Yamamba who ritualistically performs a slow dance as she, and not

Hyakuma, performs the kusemai (a traditional Song/dance) which

tells the story of Yamamba's endless rounds and her agonized desire

to be free from this endless attachment to the world even as she

knows it is an impossible wish.

2.5. Spirit Performs Final Dance/Exits: The play ends with an energetic

short dance (tachimawari) performed by Yamamba. As the chorus

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sings the final lines Yamamba stamps her foot and exits. (Hunt,

2004: 248)

On the music of Snyder's poem "Walking on walking" Yamamba performs the

kusemai, while telling her endless planetary dynamics. Finally, she performs a short

dance "dance the pine tree" or the (tachimawari), she "stamp the root-foot DOWN"

before "she's gone".

The end of the section "The Mountain Spirit" prepares the viewers of the No play

in Mountains and Rivers Without End for the end of the long poem. Approaching the

conclusion of the Japanese No play too, the following short section "Earth Verse" in

the kyu mode sets the tone for the final foot stamp in "Finding the Space in the

Heart". This last section ends the long poem in the same manner of its beginning with

the plea "Walking on walking". Finally, the shite disappears after his/her last stamp of

the foot, the players retreat and the music dies down but only to go on in the mind of

the readers of Mountains and Rivers Without End.

Although the final section "Finding the Space in the Heart" ends both the Chinese

landscape scroll and the Japanese No play, Mountains and Rivers Without End goes

on and on in the mind of its readers and viewers. This masterpiece with its

embodiment of two forms of oriental art proves Snyder's success in making a new

kind of music-dance poetry. It also credits him as an orientalist by opening limitless

doors for the upcoming multi-cultural poems.

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Chapter Four

The Adoption of Oriental Religion

It is completely true to assume that Buddhism is the main reason behind Snyder's

interest in China and Japan in the first place. His translation of Han Shan's and

Miyazawa Kenji's poems is a consequence of his growing interest in Zen Buddhism.

Even his adaptation of the two forms of oriental art, the Chinese landscape scroll and

the Japanese No drama in Mountains and Rivers Without End, is simply because they

both are Buddhist art. Han Shan is a Buddhist, Miyazawa Kenji is a Buddhist and

Gary Snyder is a Buddhist himself. Consequently, Snyder's translation of Han Shan's

Cold Mountain Poems, the eighteen poems of Miyazawa Kenji, and his own work

Mountains and Rivers Without End are his contribution to the transmission of the

ancient oriental wisdom of Buddhism to the Occident.

I. Han Shan's and Miyazawa Kenji's Buddhism in Gary Snyder's

Translation

a. Han Shan's Cold Mountain Poems

At the beginning of his literary career as a Buddhist poet, Snyder was introduced to

different translations of Han Shan's Cold Mountain Poems. He decided to add his

own version of twenty-four poems of Cold Mountain Poems. His translation includes

Buddhist teachings and practices while exposing Buddhism as a religion to the

readers of Han Shan's poetry. Mainly, the translated poems concentrate on the

Buddhist concept of asceticism, wisdom, impermanence, Buddha's nature,

meditation, emptiness and the concept of sound as a way to achieve awareness.

Although the twenty four translated poems are both short and few, they are

considered a practical representation of Zen thinking.

In more than one poem, Han Shan speaks about his dedication to Buddhist

teachings. For example, he mentions his renouncing for the physical pleasures of life

as a Buddhist doctrine. Snyder in his translation represents Han Shan's renouncement

in his outside appearance as the following lines demonstrate:

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When men see Han-shan

They all say he's crazy

And not much to look at

Dressed in rags and hides (Snyder, 2004: 62)

The lines invert how Han Shan is not interested in dressing fine clothing; instead he

lives in complete asceticism. In another poem, Snyder mentions that "His shack's got

no pots or oven"; since he "means to cut down senseless craving". Such ascetic life is

one of the four doctrines of Buddhism; The Third Noble Truth: suffering can only

cease if desire ceases.

As a Zen Buddhist, Han Shan is also known for his unrecognized wisdom; "But he

always carries the sword of wisdom", a distinguished characteristic of the Buddhist

monks. Snyder describes him as, in the outside; he "looked like a tramp. His body

and face were old and beat. Yet in every word he breathed was a meaning in line with

the subtle principles of things," (2004: 35-36). In spite of his outside appearance, Han

Shan is known as a wise person. Some of his wise words are:

One follows his karma through.

Days and months slip by like water,

Time is like sparks knocked off flint.

Go ahead and let the world change –

I'm happy to sit among these cliffs. (Snyder, 2004: 55)

The lines represent Han Shan's wisdom as the outcome of his dedication to Buddhist

teachings.

Han Shan's words prove how he embraces and accepts the impermanence of life.

The line "Go ahead and let the world change" is undoubtedly, "a kind of base line of

the Buddhist teachings, their famous doctrine of impermanence" (Bielefeldt, 2004:

9). More than once, Han Shan stresses on this idea of change; "Let heaven and earth

go about their changes", as an essential Buddhist doctrine. However, Buddhism is not

all about rigid rules or doctrines, but it is indeed a practical way of living.

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Buddhism, generally, is a "natural" religion. It has the sense of the value of nature,

Buddha's nature, which makes it more earthy and authentic. Contemplating nature is

in the essence of Buddhism. Han Shan's Cold Mountain Poems, as a consequence,

present a perceptive description of nature in Cold Mountain as the following lines

prove:

White clouds gather and billow.

Thin grass does for a mattress,

The blue sky makes a good quilt. (P: 45)

The natural details of the "White clouds", "Thin grass" and "The blue sky" is Han

Shan's and Snyder's way to appreciate nature and to celebrate all that's natural. Nature

is also the only way to live the Buddhist life and put Buddhism into practice.

Han Shan, in many of his poems, speaks about living the Buddhist life and

practicing the Buddhist teachings. As Snyder translates, meditation is one way to do

that. In one of Han Shan's translated poems, Snyder speaks about "A fountain of

light":

Gone, and a million things leave no trace

Loosed, and it flows through the galaxies

A fountain of light, into the very mind –

Not a thing, and yet it appears before me:

Now I know the pearl of the Buddha-nature

Know its use: a boundless perfect sphere. (P: 61)

The previous lines prove that meditation is the practical way to achieve

enlightenment and awareness. They explain how Han Shan meditates to be "Gone"

and "Loosed" in the emptiness of nature to achieve "A fountain of light". His

meditation makes him realize "the pearl of the Buddha-nature" and "its use" which is

emptiness. Emptiness is "central notion of Buddhism …. all things are regarded as

without essence" (Hunt, 2004: 15). So everything in the world is empty, "Not a

thing", including oneself.

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Both meditation and emptiness are of great importance for Zen Buddhism. The two

concepts are to be practically achieved through perceiving nature. Almost, all Han

Shan's poems stress the concept of meditation as the way to recover the notion of

emptiness through contemplating nature. One of these poems begins with a

description of nature as follows:

Spring-water in the green creek is clear

Moonlight on Cold Mountain is white

Silent knowledge – the spirit is enlightened of itself

Contemplate the void: this world exceeds stillness. (P: 49)

The lines explain how Han Shan through meditation, "Contemplate the void" of

emptiness to achieve the enlightenment of "the spirit". His meditation makes him

aware that "this world exceeds stillness". The phrase "this world exceeds stillness" is

an invitation to concentrate and listen to the sound of nature.

Listening to the sound of nature is another way to achieve enlightenment and

awareness. Listening or, "Sound, as Snyder has said more than once, is the 'way in' to

awareness" (Hunt, 2004: 170). The element of sound is very essential for Buddhism.

As if Buddha's authority can be heard in the sound of the "pines" and "birds" like

follows:

A hill of pines hums in the wind. (P: 39)

Light wind in a hidden pine –

Listen close – the sound gets better. (P: 43)

The pine sings, but there's no wind. (P: 46)

Yammering, chirping – always birds (P: 47)

All the previous lines from different poems stress the importance of the element of

sound as a "way in" to enlightenment. The lines invite the readers to "Listen close" to

the sounds of "pines" and "birds" or nature in general to achieve the Buddhist

enlightenment and awareness.

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As short and few these twenty-four translated Cold Mountain Poems are, they

explain some of the most important Buddhist doctrines and teachings. Mostly, Han

Shan's Buddhist perspective is about living the Buddha's life and practicing the

Buddhist teachings. In other words, his perspective for Buddhism is all about the

practical Buddhism or how to make Buddhism a way of life. Like Han Shan, Snyder

too believes in living and breathing Buddhism. Maybe this is one reason behind

Snyder's translation of Han Shan's poems. They both seem to share the same

perspective for Buddhism with their shared love for nature. This same perspective is

also embraced by the Buddhist Japanese poet Miyazawa Kenji. Maybe this is also the

same reason behind Snyder's translation of eighteen poems of Miyazawa Kenji.

b. Miyazawa Kenji's Eighteen Poems

Miyazawa Kenji's eighteen poems deeply reflect his own perspective for Zen

Buddhism in his adaptation of science. Snyder's translation of these eighteen poems is

a proof "that Miyazawa's Buddhism coexists with his strong interest in science"

(Yamazato, 2004: 1). The translation of the eighteen poems asserts Kenji's belief that

both Buddhism and science complement each other. For that reason, Kenji's poems

are full of Buddhist and scientific terms. In his poem, "Spring and the Ashura" Kenji

confuses both religion and science as the following lines prove:

I am an Ashura!

(the scene gets blurred by tears)

smashed bits of cloud cross my vision,

a holy crystal wind sweeps

the translucent sea of the sky.

Zypressen – one line of spring

blackly draws in ether, (Snyder, 1971: 132)

The previous lines show how Kenji uses religious terms like "Ashura" and "a holy

crystal wind" along with scientific terms like "Zypressen" and "ether".

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Miyazawa Kenji in his poem "Spring and the Ashura" first declares "I am an

Ashura". Two lines later, Snyder translates a religious combination "seihari no kaze,"

into "a holy crystal wind". These two poetic lines are of Buddhist nature. For the term

"Ashura", it is:

a Sanskrit Buddhist term for beings inhabiting one of the six

realms of existence. They are malevolent giants in constant strife,

often represented in art as human warriors, samurai, killing each

other. The ashura realm is the warring, contentious, hostile area

of the mind. The other five realms are hell-dwellers, hungry

ghosts, animals, mankind, and devas. (Snyder, 1971: 133)

After Kenji uses the Buddhist term "Ashura", he uses the combination "seihari". The

term "seihari" is "a combination of sei and hari. Sei means 'holy' and hari, which

comes from Sanskrit, means 'crystal' or 'glass'. Hari is also one of the seven treasures

of Buddhism" (Yamazato, 2004: 3-4). A line later, Kenji adds two scientific terms to

those two religious ones.

The two scientific terms "Zypressen" and "ether" change the old and traditional

landscape in the poem to be modern and untraditional. The term "Zypressen" is a

German word which means "cypress". The word isn't translated by Snyder in his

interpretation of the poem "probably because this German word also remains

untranslated in Miyazawa's poem" (Yamazato, 2004: 3). Due to the word importance,

Snyder also capitalizes it to emphasize the state of the "Ashura". In doing so, "the

anger and irritation of the Ashura is more emphasized than spelling it in lower cases,"

(Yamazato, e-mail, October 3, 2006). The addition of these two modern and scientific

terms is a reflection of Kenji's modernist approach to the Asian Buddhist themes.

Miyazawa Kenji was both a Buddhist and a scientist. As a consequence, most of

his poems combine religion with science. Like in his poem "Spring and the Ashura",

his poem "Dawn" too proves how science complements religion. The poem begins

with a natural scene and ends with an untranslated line as follows:

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Rolling snow turned peach-color

the moon

left alone in the fading night

makes a soft cry in the heavens

and once more

drinks up the scattered light

(parasamgate, bodhi, svaha!) (P: 137)

The lines describe how the sun shines on the white snow and the fading moon;

turning them to the tender peach color. They portray a breath-taking scene where the

sun sneaks upon earth and lights up the darkness at the beginning of the day.

The poetic line "drinks up the scattered light" indicates a physical fact of nature

which describes how the moon is shining by and at the same time absorbing the light

of the sun. Also, the use of the verb "drinks up" explains the way the moon gets its

power for shining softly upon earth (Yoshio, 2001: 4). After this scientific fact, Kenji

ends his poem with the untranslated line "parasamgate, bodhi, svaha!" This line is

quoted from a Buddhist scripture as Snyder states:

There is one little sutra, … that is known and admired all through

the Mahayana Buddhist world. It is only one page long. It is

called "The Heart of the Great Wisdom (=prajna paramita)

Sutra." The original text is in Sanskrit, but in China, Korea, and

Japan it is known in a Chinese version …. The last line of the

sutra is "gate, gate, paragate, parasamgated, bodhi, svaha." This

is an evocation of great transcendence. It means "gone, gone,

gone beyond, gone beyond beyond, awakening! Hail!" Miyazawa

was both a scientist and a Buddhist. The part he quotes means:

"gone beyond beyond, awakening! hail!" (E-mail, February 20,

2006)

Evidently, this is not the only poem that has a quotation from Buddhist texts. As a

Buddhist and scientist at the same time, Miyazawa Kenji quotes from classical

Buddhist scriptures to support his themes.

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Kenji's poem "Some Views Concerning the Proposed Site of a National Park" is

another proof that the Buddhist poet quotes from classical Buddhist texts. The poem

is a sarcastic treatment of the vulgar commercial ideas of Japanese entrepreneurs. At

the middle of the poem Kenji quotes:

by the "cuckoo singing on the path after death"

and the "ford of the river of the three ways"

"the gate to the new womb" at Yama's office (P: 139)

Katsunori Yamazato, in his analysis of the previous lines, mentions that "The

quotation marks indicate that it could be a quote from a famous classic work" (E-

mail, November 12, 2006).

The first quotation "cuckoo singing on the path after death" is taken from a

Buddhist mythology. Snyder explains that "In popular Buddhist mythology (which

comes from India) there is a trail the spirits walk until they come before Yama, the

judge of the dead" (E-mail, February 20, 2006). The "cuckoo" of this quotation "is

known as a bird of the other world (the world after death)" (Yamazato, e-mail,

November 12, 2006). The whole line, the same as the following two ones, is about an

after death experience.

The three quotations picture what happens to the spirit after it leaves the human

body. The second line, "ford of the river of the three ways" is part of this same after

death mythology. Yamazato explains this quotation as "the river which a dead man

must cross during the first week after death. It has three different currents, slow,

medium and fast; hence, sanzu, 'three ways.' One who has done good acts in his life-

time crosses the slow current, and one who has done evil acts has to cross the fast

current" (E-mail, November 12, 2006). After crossing "the river of the three ways"

the spirit comes before the lord of the realm of the dead or "Yama's office".

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Yama "is the judge of the dead. He sends spirits to one of the heavens, one of the

hells, or to be reborn in the human realm, or an animal realm, etc" (Snyder, e-mail,

February 20, 2006). If Yama decides that the spirit is to be reborn in the human

realm, he sends it to "the gate to the new womb". This last quotation continues the

same Buddhist Mythology. Snyder explains this line as:

Popular Buddhism believes in reincarnation …. The gate to the

new womb means the gate into the body (for the bodiless spirit to

enter) into a woman's womb so you can be born again. This

happens when the spirit which is kind of cruising around, and is

invisible, comes on a man and woman making love, and as it

watches them it is filled with desire. So it goes into the woman's

womb, because a fetus, and will thus be born as the baby of that

couple. (E-mail, February 20, 2006)

However, Snyder mentions that educated Buddhists consider "the gate to the new

womb" only a myth.

Generally, Miyazawa Kenji in his eighteen poems concentrates on adapting

Buddhist terms and quoting Buddhist classical texts. This is the reason why his

poetry, on many levels, is difficult to understand or even to translate by Gary Snyder.

As a consequence, there is a "careful attention that Snyder pays to each word and its

nuances and associations" (Yamazato, 2004: 2). In spite of its difficulty, Kenji's

poetry is considered a valuable source for Zen Buddhism since it is rich of Buddhist

mythologies and teachings. For that Miyazawa Kenji is considered one of the few

Japanese poets who helped to transfer the wisdom of the Orient or Zen Buddhism to

the Occident. Inspired by Miyazawa Kenji, Gary Snyder too plays a crucial part in

transferring and explaining Buddhism to the reader's of his poetry.

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II. The Account for Zen Buddhism in Mountains and Rivers Without

End

Snyder's Mountains and Rivers Without End is by all means his great contribution

for understanding Zen Buddhism in the Occident. Right from the beginning, the Zen

poet has the intention of writing his masterpiece Mountains and Rivers Without End

as a representation of essential Buddhist thinking. Already proved, the long poem

follows the form of both Chinese landscape scroll and Japanese No play. Snyder's

adaptation of these two forms of oriental art in his long poem is yet another way to

embody Zen Buddhism. Both Chinese landscape scroll and Japanese No play,

"embody the 'emptiness,' the music of silence, that is at the tangible heart of Zen

thought" (Hunt, 2004: 43). The long poem with its four parts embodies emptiness as

an essential Buddhist doctrine. In addition, Gary Snyder in Mountains and Rivers

Without End explains to his readers some of the essential Buddhist thinking,

teachings and sutras.

The opening section "Endless Streams and Mountains", which is a mirror of the

entire poem, is an interpretation of a Chinese landscape painting Ch'i Shan Wu Chin.

Snyder's interest in Chinese landscape paintings in the long poem and the beginning

section goes with the Zen concepts of "space" and "emptiness". The beginning lines

of the section confirm Snyder's use of space to achieve enlightenment:

Clearing the mind and sliding in

to that created space, (Snyder, 1997: 5)

The expression "Clearing the mind" is Snyder's way to meditate into space and

emptiness.

Like Han Shan before him, Snyder uses the concept of "space" to include "the

possibility of Buddhist 'enlightenment,' a moment when one 'awakens' to 'a nowness

of emptiness…' wherein one comprehends 'the true nature of things' by knowing that

126

'the entire universe is emptiness,' including oneself" (Hunt, 2004: 36). Beside the Zen

concepts of "space" and "emptiness", this same section is compared to the opening

section of Dogen's Mountains and Waters Sutra.

The ending lines of "Endless Streams and Mountains" remind the readers of the

opening section of Dogen's Mountains and Waters Sutra. Dogen Zenji is the founder

of the Soto school of Zen and his famous Mountains and Waters Sutra, which is part

of his Shobogenzo, represents his great contribution in the transmission of Zen

Buddhism to the Occident. Like Dogen, Snyder ends his opening section with the

constant walking of the foot on earth:

Walking on walking,

under foot earth turns. (Snyder, 1997: 9)

Similarly, "The unnerving image of the solid earth walking under our feet reminds us

of the opening section of Dogen's Mountains and Waters Sutra, in which he

comments on a Zen Saying, 'The blue mountains are constantly walking'" (Bielifeldt,

2004: 9). Evidently, Snyder has Dogen's writings on mind when he wrote Mountains

and Rivers Without End.

Two sections later, Snyder still remembers the writings of the great Zen Buddhist

Dogen in his "Night Highway 99". In one of the journeys which he takes through

Highway 99, Snyder "speaks of 'Creating/ 'Shasta' as I go,' a sophisticated piece of

Buddhist, and postmodern, reasoning that declares all landscapes to be images –

Dogen's painted rice cake, so to speak" (Hunt, 2004: 75). Due to its importance,

Dogen's Buddhist text is also quoted in the first pages of Snyder's print of Mountains

and Rivers Without End. Beside Dogen's "Painting of a Rice Cake", the section

"Night Highway 99" also has an interpretation of the Avatamsaka Sutra.

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The Avatamsaka Sutra is also called the Flower – Wreath Sutra. The sutra, as a

sect of Buddhism, is not widely studied, only in few temples in Japan. However,

Snyder explains that the "Avatamsaka philosophy underlies Zen teaching and

method." (E-mail, August 10, 2011). His interpretation of the sutra goes as follows:

– Abandon really means it

the network womb stretched loose all

things slip through

Dreaming on a bench under newspapers

I woke covered with rhododendron blooms

alone in a State Park in Oregon. (P: 20)

The lines explain how Snyder wakes up from his dream to find out that the

newspapers which he used to cover his body while sleeping "on a bench" in "State

Park in Oregon" turns into flowers. The interpretation of this Buddhist sutra in this

section is related to the poet's deep interest in explaining some of the Buddhist

concepts to his readers.

Likewise, the following section "Three Worlds, Three Realms, Six Roads" is

totally based on Buddhist concepts, starting from the title to the content. For that, the

section is considered a representation of fundamental Buddhism. The section traces

the life of Gary Snyder from his childhood through his development and growing up

to prove the Buddhist point that nothing is fixed or static. The poem also is a

representation of the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence through the constant flow of

events.

Even the poem's title itself is derived from Zen Buddhism. Basically;

The "Three Worlds" are periods of time: past, present, and future.

The "three realms," triloka, describe the universe in terms of

desire, form, and formlessness. The "six paths" are territories of

psychological passage: the hells, the animals, the humans,

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delightful gods and goddesses, angry warrior-geniuses, and

hungry ghosts. (Snyder, 1997: 159)

The section as a consequence is Snyder's interpretation of those Buddhist concepts.

The interpretation of the past, present, and future or the "Three Worlds" is inverted

in the six subsections of the poem. The first five subsections "Things to Do Around

Seattle", "Things to Do Around Portland", "Things to Do Around a Lookout", "Things

to Do Around San Francisco", and "Things to Do Around a Ship at Sea" are the

interpretation of the past for Gary Snyder. In these five subsections, the poet

describes the activities of his early childhood, adolescence and till he reaches 1958.

In the first subsection, he describes his activities in Seattle because his family moved

there when he was two years old. In 1942 when he was twelve he moved with his

family to Portland. The activities cited in Portland develop from adolescence through

high school and then on to college.

The listed activities of the third subsection "Things to Do Around a Lookout" goes

back to the summer of 1952 and 1953. During that period of time, the poet worked as

a lookout for the U.S. Forest Service in Crater and Sourdough Mountains. The fourth

subsection "Things to Do Around San Francisco" goes back to the time when Snyder

returned to San Francisco in the spring of 1952. As a fifth subsection, "Things to Do

Around a Ship at Sea" refers to the time Snyder "spent on board the Sappa Creek

from the end of August 1957 to mid-April 1958" (Hunt, 2004: 77). Generally all

those five subsections represent the past for the poet.

The six and last subsection of "Three Worlds, Three Realms, Six Roads"

represents both the present and future time. The events of the final subsection "Things

to Do Around Kyoto" detects the activities done when Gary Snyder was in Kyoto,

Japan, which is "closest in time to the actual writing of the section and may even be

considered as 'the present time' of the poem" (Hunt, 2004: 77). The end of this last

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subsection also represent the future of "Three Worlds, Three Realms, Six Roads" in

the poet's intention of "Going home". Literally, the "home" at the end of the poem

may refer to Snyder's return to the United States, his home or destination after Kyoto.

However, knowing Snyder the "home" becomes ambiguous and may refer to

uncovered future.

The "Three Realms" of desire, form and formlessness in "Three Worlds, Three

Realms, Six Roads" are interpretation of the kamaloka, rupaloka and arupaloka in

Buddhist terms. The realm of kamaloka or desire involves "sexual and other forms of

desire" (Hunt, 2004: 81). Tracing these kind of desires in the poem, Snyder speaks of

"Dream of girls", "about yr girlfriend" and "Get buttered up by bar girls", going to

bars and getting "drunk all the time", and even "Fall in love" and "wanting children".

The realm of rupaloka is the realm of form where, "desire for sexuality and food

falls away, but the capacity for enjoyment continues" (Hunt, 2004: 81). The Kyoto

subsection represents this realm of form through the poet's simple sensual pleasures

like:

Walk down back alleys listening to looms

Watching the flocks of sparrows whirling over trees in winter

sunsets (P: 29)

Unlike the sexual pleasures of kamaloka, the poet enjoys other beings, sounds,

silence, and mountains in the realm of rupaloka. The third realm arupaloka or the

realm of formlessness "is impossible to speak of or write about since it exists beyond

form…. This realm points to enlightened moments immersed in the limitlessness of

space and time and consciousness" (Hunt, 2004: 81-82). The only clue for this realm

is the poet's growing awareness of emptiness in the ending lines of the poem.

The "Six Roads" in "Three Worlds, Three Realms, Six Roads" can be easily

connected to the six locales of Seattle, Portland, lookout, San Francisco, ship at sea,

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and Kyoto than to Buddhist territories. However, as Buddhist terms, they are mostly

connected to the six Buddhist "territories of psychological passage: the hells, the

animals, the humans, delightful gods and goddesses, angry warrior geniuses, and

hungry ghosts" (Snyder, 1997: 159). The territory of "the hells" is about "those who

suffer 'infernal tortures,' … from 'the inevitable reactions of their own deeds'" (Hunt,

2004: 80).

The territory of "the animals", on the other hand, is about the inarticulate beings

that are subject to their blind destiny of natural necessity and instinct. The Buddhist

territory of humans simply involves the world of man. The Buddhist territories of

"delightful gods and goddesses", "angry warrior geniuses" and "hungry ghosts" cling

to "devas", "Asuras" and unsatisfactory beings. However, these six Buddhist paths

are not interpreted in the poem.

The following section "Jackrabbit" concentrates on a different but rather

fundamental Buddhist concept. The short poem is a proof that "Mahayana Buddhism

is nonelitist, a way of life accessible to and for all beings" (Hunt, 2004: 83). In this

section Snyder concentrates on the Buddhist plea of sharing life with all beings

through the concept of listening. Snyder's "stress on listening (or hearing) connects

with the East Asian figure of Avalokiteshvara (Chinese: Kuan-yini; Japanese:

Kwannon)" (Hunt, 2004: 83). The translation of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara or

the Chinese name Kuan-yini literally means "Regarding the Sound Waves".

This Buddhist figure stresses the importance of hearing to achieve enlightenment.

Snyder's use of this Buddhist figure in this section is yet his way to show the

importance of listening to animals as they too are part of Buddha's nature. As short

and significant this section is, it is only a key poem for the appearance of the figure of

the Buddha in the final two sections of part I, "Bubbs Creek Haircut" and "The Blue

Sky".

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The section "Bubbs Creek Haircut" is one of the most important yet complicated

Buddhist sections in Mountains and Rivers Without End. The section is set in a

barbershop, where the poet goes to have a haircut. Snyder looks in "the double

mirrors" and sets off for his journeys. In a way, the mirror reflecting images is just

like the mind. To empty this mirror of images and get back to the state of "mirror

empty" is thus; one way the mind recognizes emptiness. The poem as a consequence,

"embodies enlightenment insofar as it dramatizes the speaker's recognition of

emptiness, the illusion at the core of things" (Hunt, 2004: 93). The readers of the

poem would get to the same recognition of emptiness as they set forth with Snyder in

his multiple journeys in "the double mirror waver".

On many levels, these journeys are of Buddhist nature as they too correspond with

the story of the Buddha and his "great departure". The character of the barber itself is

taken from the same story of the life of the Buddha. In this story, the figure of the

barber or "Vissakama":

came on the instant, by his superhuman power, into the presence

of the Future Buddha [Gautama Buddha]. And assuming the

guise of the barber, he took from the real barber the turban-cloth,

and began to wind it round the Future Buddha's head; but as soon

as the Future Buddha felt the touch of his hand, he knew that it

was no man, but a god. (Hunt, 2004: 96)

Snyder uses the character of the barber in his poem as an interpretation of Buddha's

journeys of enlightenment. As the barber is part of Buddha's story so is the action of

shaving. Snyder gets his head shaved in the barber shop; "Just clip it close as it will

go", like Buddha did before his "great departure" in his path of enlightenment.

After shaving his head, Snyder sets forth in his journeys in "the double mirrors" of

the barbershop. Like Buddha in his journeys, Snyder in "Bubbs Creek Haircut"

encounters old age, disease, and death. Snyder's encounter with old age is embodied

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in the character of the barber himself who, in Snyder's words, is "Old haircut smell"

or an old man. The second encounter is with disease:

The Master of the limbo drag-legged watches

making prices

to the people seldom buy. (P: 33)

The man who is introduced in the previous lines is deformed by his "drag-legged" to

represent Snyder's encounter with disease. For the last encounter, "The Buddha's

confrontation with death is represented here by the heaped-up piles of 'unfixed junk'

in the Goodwill store, the dead and dying things of civilization" (Hunt, 2004: 96).

After Snyder's three encounters, he, like the Buddha, continues in his journeys

through his many reflections in "the double mirror waver".

Due to the multiple journeys and reflections in the mirror in the barbershop, at

many levels the poem gets difficult and complicated. However, the section "becomes

clear when one understands how it literally embodies the Buddhist philosophy of

interdependence set forth by the Avatamsaka Sutra and carried out by the poem's

emphasis on mirroring" (Hunt, 2004: 92). The Buddhist interdependence philosophy

or the Avatamsaka philosophy is about the many and different reflections of the poet

in the mirror of the barber's shop which embody his many and different directions in

life.

As Snyder see himself many times in the mirror, he sets out in the many journeys

in his life. These multiple journeys are set to different places like San Joaquin, King's

River Canyon, Cedar Grove, Lake Union, Forester Pass, Oregon, Warm Springs,

Portland, Berkeley, Upper Kern River and Bubbs Creek. These journeys are meant to

embody Snyder's recognition of the Buddha and his journeys of enlightenment.

One section later, the readers again get to meet the Buddha himself. However, the

Buddha of the current section is "Old Man Medicine Buddha" or "the Master of

Healing". As the final section of part I, "The Blue Sky" represents the countless

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Buddhist "pure lands" or Buddha-realms, each of which is ruled by a different

Buddha. Out of these countless realms, "The most important is Sukhavati, the pure

land of the west or the western paradise, ruled by Buddha Amitabha. An eastern

paradise is the pure land of Bhaishajyaguru Buddha ('Medicine Guru Buddha')"

(Hunt, 2004: 106).

Snyder in this section focuses more on the eastern paradise or the realm of

"Bhaishajyaguru". The opening lines of the poem refer to this eastern realm and a

lapis lazuli world:

"Eastward from here,

beyond Buddha-worlds ten times as

numerous as the sands of the Ganges

there is a world called

PURE AS LAPIS LAZULI

Its Buddha is called Master of Healing,

AZURE RADIANCE TATHAGATA" (P: 40)

The realm which is referred to in the previous lines is the eastern realm of the

"Master of Healing" or "AZURE RADIANCE TATHAGATA". This realm is

different from the western realm which Snyder refers to at the end of the poem. Since

the ending lines of the poem describe the Buddha "Amitabha" and "his western

paradise".

Snyder's focus on the eastern realm or paradise in "The Blue Sky" is due to his

interest to explore some of the nature of healing in Mahayana Buddhism. His use of

the "Medicine Buddha" in this section goes with his intention of explaining the

healing powers of the "LAPIS LAZULI". The "LAPIS LAZULI" is an ancient

Buddhist blue stone which is known for its healing powers. Snyder uses the healing

powers of this stone in this section to cure the illness of the spirit like it is represented

in the following lines through the story of the sick girl:

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when Ono-no-Komachi the strange girl poet

was seventeen, she set out looking for her father

who had become a Buddhist wanderer. She took ill

on her journey, and sick in bed one night saw

AZURE RADIANCE THUS-COME MEDICINE

MASTER

in a dream. He told her she would find a hotsprings

on the bank of the Azuma river in the Bandai mountains

that would cure her; and she'd meet her father there. (P: 42)

The lines are not about bodily disease but about being ill as not being enlightened.

Snyder here offers his readers, the same as "the strange girl poet", enlightenment on

the hand of the "Great Medicine Master".

Snyder's section "The Blue Sky" is one of the most important representations of

Buddhist thinking and sutras. The "OLD MAN MEDICINE BUDDHA" with his

"lapis lazuli" and healing powers is actually an interpretation of "Hsuan-tsang's

translation of the Sutra on the Merits of the Fundamental Vows of the Master of

Healing, The Lapis Lazuli Radiance Tathagata" (Hunt, 2004: 107). The English

version of that translation is interpreted in the opening lines of "The Blue Sky".

The same as in Snyder's section, Hsuan-tsang in his translation narrates how "The

Buddha told Manjusri: 'If you go eastward beyond as many Buddha fields as there are

ten times the number of grains of sand in the Ganges River, you will find a realm

known as "Pure Lapis Lazuli." The Buddha there is known as Master of Healing, the

Lapis Lazuli Radiance Tathagata'" (Hunt, 2004: 108). Literally, Snyder interprets

Hsuan-tsang's translation in the opening lines:

"Eastward from here,

beyond Buddha-worlds ten times as

numerous as the sands of the Ganges

there is a world called

135

PURE AS LAPIS LAZULI

Its Buddha is called Master of Healing,

AZURE RADIANCE TATHAGATA" (P: 40)

With that interpretation of the famous Buddhist sutra, the section "The Blue Sky"

ends part I of Mountains and Rivers Without end in the presence of the "Master of

Healing".

The second part of the long poem repeats the same Buddhist themes of part I but

within the setting of the city. The beginning section of part II, "The Market", is a

Buddhist meditation on the worthiness of life and the concept of value. Like Han

Shan before him, Snyder in this section again raises the question "was it worth it?" In

this section, the poet describes some of the markets from all over the world starting

with markets near his home in the United States. The main question "was it worth it?"

is the essential Buddhist argument in this section to assert the unworthiness of

material interests for Buddhist thinking.

The following section "Journeys", for the second time, echoes Dogen's "Painting

of a Rice Cake". There is no difference whether the journeys of this section are real or

just dreams. Snyder here applies the same level of reality which is introduced in

Dogen's comments on the multiple realities of "Painting of a Rice Cake", the ones

included in the opening pages of Mountains and Rivers Without End.

The following two sections reestablish the Buddhist main concept of "emptiness"

within the wilderness of the city. These sections are Snyder's proof that Buddhist

enlightenment could be achieved in the city and not only in the mountains. His

"Night Song of the Los Angeles Basin" reconnects the wilderness of the trees, hills,

forests with the city. The section is an invitation to become "wild" and "free" within

the city. In this manner, the section represents, "another way to connote 'emptiness';

to be 'free' or 'wild' is to go 'beyond,' into the realm of that which is simultaneously

both 'all' and 'nothing'" (Hunt, 2004: 129). This same plea is adopted in the following

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section "Covers the Ground". The poem introduces the Buddhist concept of

emptiness through the poet's emphasis on becoming free within the wilderness of the

city.

Two sections later the poet introduces another interpretation of the Avatamsaka

Sutra. Previously, Snyder interpreted part of this same sutra in the third section of

part I of the long poem. In part II, The section "With This Flesh" actually opens with

an epigraph from the Avatamsaka Sutra:

"Why should we cherish all sentient beings?

Because sentient beings

are the roots of the tree-of-awakening.

The Bodhisattvas and the Buddhas are the flowers and the fruits.

Compassion is the water for the roots."

Avatamsaka Sutra (P:

75)

This epigraph from the Avatamsaka Sutra basically confirms the necessity of

cherishing all sentient beings in order to become enlightened. They are the roots and

being compassionate with them leads to the flowering and the fruitfulness of

becoming an enlightened self. To "recognize how completely interconnected all

beings are in time and space is to know the true meaning of emptiness: nothing, no

thing, no species, exists in and for itself" (Hunt, 2004: 58). Compassion towards all

beings is the way to emptiness so to enlightenment.

After "With This Flesh", part II ends with one of the key Buddhist poems in

Mountains and Rivers Without End, "The Hump-backed Flute Player". This section

mainly narrates the journey of Hsuan Tsang through India and China. Hsuan Tsang is

the Buddhist scholar-pilgrim who "brought back the famed 'Heart Sutra' – the one-

page condensation of the whole philosophy of transcendent wisdom" (Hunt, 2004:

160). The section begins as follows:

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Hsuan Tsang

went to India 629 AD

returned to China 645

with 657 sutras, images, mandalas,

and fifty relics –

a curved frame pack with a parasol,

embroidery, carving,

incense censer swinging as he walked

the Pamir the Tarim Turfan

the Punjab the doab

of Ganga and Yamuna, (P: 79)

The lines describe Hsuan Tsang with his "curved frame pack with a parasol" and how

he brings Buddhist sutras in his "frame Pack". They also cite some ranges and rivers

from India to China to mark the path of the transmission of some of the famous

Buddhist sutras.

Hsuan Tsang through his journeys translated several important Buddhist sutras,

including the Heart Sutra. In his "curved frame pack", he helped in transferring

Buddhism and its essential concept of emptiness. At this point, Snyder uses the

Buddhist school of emptiness and relates it to the picture of Kokop'ele or the hump-

backed flute player:

he carried

"emptiness"

he carried

"mind only"

Vijnaptimatra

The hump-backed flute player

Kokop'ele

His hump is a pack. (P: 79)

The function of the Kokop'ele in the previous lines is of a healer. He admits that,

"There is 'nothing' in the curve of his humped back, or in Snyder's backpack, yet a

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new world arises out of such emptiness" (Hunt, 2004: 161). In this respect, Kokop'ele

and Snyder offer the readers enlightenment through the recognition of emptiness.

The use of the figure of Kokop'ele with his flute also asserts Snyder's affirmation

on the sense of sound as a path in to Zen enlightenment. The readers of the poem are

invited to listen to the sound of Kokop'ele's flute as the sound of wholeness. In the

ending lines of the poem, Snyder for the second time in the same poem stresses on

the importance of sound for Zen Buddhism:

it was whispered to me

by the oldest of trees.

By the Oldest of Beings

the Oldest of Trees

Bristlecone Pine.

And all night long sung on

by a young throng

of Pinyon Pine. (P: 82)

Snyder in these lines describes how he sits "by the oldest of trees" and meditates. He

listens to the sound of nature to achieve enlightenment. He listens "all night long" to

the sound of emptiness. The expression "the Oldest of Trees" echoes the tree which

the Buddha sat under when he became enlightened. So, the last section of part II ends

in the same way of the last section of part I with the appearance of the Buddha.

Different from the formalistic part II of the long poem, part III is more about ritual

Buddhism. However, part III repeats the same Buddhist themes of the second part of

the long poem, but rather in a more practical mode. The opening section "The

Circumambulation of Mt. Tamalpais" with no doubt is "a complete ritual in and for

itself" (Hunt, 2004: 162). The section is an actual journey made by Philip Whalen,

Allen Ginsberg, and Gary Snyder as the following lines illustrate:

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Walking up and around the long ridge of Tamalpais, "Bay

Mountain," circling and climbing – chanting – to show

respect and to clarify the mind. Philip Whalen, Allen

Ginsberg, and I learned this practice in Asia. So we opened

a route around Tam. It takes a day. (P: 85)

The ten-stage journey which takes a day is a complete Buddhist ritual. In this ritual,

Snyder and his friends sing and chant Buddhist mantras and sutras like the Heart

Sutra. This practical Buddhist ritual is a kind of meditation as walking and

circumambulation are ones of the ancient human spiritual exercises.

The two following sections discuss the theme of enlightenment through the

element of sound. Both sections have the same of invitation of listening to animals as

they too share the same universe. The section "The Canyon Wren" stresses on the

importance of listening to the sound of the breath of the canyon wren:

hear the song of a Canyon Wren.

A smooth stretch, drifting and resting.

Hear it again, delicate downward song

ti ti ti ti tee tee tee (P: 90)

The wren's song or its "ti ti ti ti tee tee tee" is just a way in to enlightenment.

According to Zen thinking, Buddha's authority can be heard in the wren's song. It also

can be heard in the song of the sheep in "Arctic Midnight Twilight". Moving from

birds to sheep, the section "Arctic Midnight Twilight", too, continues in stressing the

importance of the element of sound for Zen Buddhism.

As an extension of the Buddhist themes of Part II, part III continues in explaining

the same Buddhist concepts of emptiness, sound, and meditation. In the section

"Walking the New York Bedrock", Snyder concentrates on the Buddhist concept of

meditation. He meditates on buildings to prove that "One does not have to go to the

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mountain for enlightenment" (Hunt, 2004: 182). The poet in this section tries to prove

that enlightenment could be achieved in the city. He meditates in the following

manner:

Empty eye sockets of buildings just built

Soulless, they still wait the ceremony

that will make them too,

new, Big

city Gods, (P: 100)

Snyder in these lines meditates on buildings undergoing construction. There are no

windows in the buildings, "empty eye sockets", so they are without soul. They wait

for enlightenment to become "new, Big/ city Gods". In this way, the section asserts

that meditation could be practiced anywhere.

In the same manner of the previous two parts of the long poem, part III ends with

the appearance of the Buddha too. The section "New Moon Tongue" with its seven

poetic lines is simply, "a Buddhist symbol of the Tathagata – of perfect and complete

enlightenment. Even enlightenment may be understood as just a high phase in a

cycle" (Hunt, 2004: 195). Even the following section "An offering for Tara" is a

representation of "perfect and complete enlightenment". Instead, the readers in "An

Offering for Tara" are in the presence of the Bodhisattva and not the Buddha:

Have you seen my companion

With her moon-like forehead

Has she passed this way? (P: 106)

Tara is a female Buddha of compassion and wisdom. She is one of the most revered

Bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism. She is the savior the one that, in Snyder's

words, "brings across".

141

The figure of the Bodhisattva Tara is related to the new system of Mahayana

Buddhism, in contrast with the old masculine system. Snyder's use of the figure of

Tara as a feminine deity here is his recognition of the sexless Mahayana system. He

even explains the recognition of Tara as a Bodhisattva in his lines:

Tara's vow

"Those who wish to attain supreme enlightenment

in a man's body are many …

therefore may I,

until this world is emptied out,

serve the needs of beings

with my body of a woman." (P: 108-109)

Snyder's lines are part of the Buddhist story of Tara the female Buddha who refused

that her body becomes that of a man. Although her desire would be granted, she

preferred "to attain supreme enlightenment" as a woman. Her level of awareness

broke the bondage of sexism, since even the earthly difference between male and

female is unconditioned in the terms of emptiness. Henceforward, Tara became one

of the first female Buddhas in Mahayana Buddhism.

The Bodhisattva Tara is both important and essential for the new Buddhist system.

Devotion for her is a way in to enlightenment. In this manner, Snyder's dedication of

an entire section in her favor is his way to achieve enlightenment. This female

Buddha is also a representation of the Heart Sutra. The goddess Tara, "proffers the

ability to recognize the impermanence (illusion) of all things, a recognition of the

very heart of the Heart Sutra: 'form is emptiness, emptiness is form.' These words are

spoken by the gendershifting god/goddess Avalokiteshvara, out of whose tears of

compassion Tara is said to have arisen" (Hunt, 2004: 196-97). It would not be a

surprise then to meet her again in the last section of the long poem which is basically

based on the Heart Sutra.

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Another appearance of the goddess is in the final two sections of the current part of

the poem. Both "The Bear Mother" and "Macaques in the Sky" witness the presence

of the "mother-goddess" of the animal world. In "The Bear Mother", the bear mother-

goddess invites humans to share her salmon and berries to enrich the animal-human

interaction. The goddess's invitation enriches Snyder's call for compassion with all

sentient beings. In "Macaques in the Sky", the monkey mother-goddess is the

"mother of all heavens". She is the symbol of fertility and nurturing. With this image

of the goddess, part III ends in the same manner of part II. But only to prepare for the

final Buddhist resolutions of the ending part IV.

The final part of Mountains and Rivers Without End embodies the climax of

Buddhist thinking in the long poem. Snyder in this final part concentrates on the most

important Buddhist concepts and sutras, and tries to reinterpret them for one last time.

Again Snyder explains the essential Buddhist concepts of emptiness, meditation,

enlightenment, impermanence, in addition to the most important Buddhist sutras like

the Heart Sutra.

The opening section "Old Woodrat's Stinky House" opens with a Buddhist

epigraph about the Zen concept of emptiness:

The whole universe is an ocean of dazzling light (P: 119)

The line embodies the Zen concept of emptiness through the awareness of nowness.

The plea of "The whole universe is an ocean of dazzling light" is ceasing the present

moment, the "nowness", in order to achieve Zen enlightenment. There is always, "the

possibility of Buddhist 'enlightenment,' a moment when one 'awakens' to 'a nowness

of emptiness…'" (Hunt, 2004: 36). The "dazzling light" could be found anywhere and

at any now.

143

Most of the sections of this final part, and even the previous three parts, cover the

Zen concept of emptiness. It is almost true to assume that emptiness is the way and

the mean in Mountains and Rivers Without End. The section "Raven's Beak River",

too, is a representation of meditation on emptiness. In this section Snyder asserts the

idea that meditation "is not just a rest or retreat from the turmoil of the stream or the

impurity of the world. It is a way of being the stream, so that one can be at home in

both the white water and the eddies" (Hunt, 2004: 224). It is a level of awareness to

the emptiness of the stream or the world in general.

To reach this awareness Snyder meditates on emptiness by repeatedly stating chant

phrases like fallows:

Flying off alone

flying off alone

flying off alone

Off alone (P: 124)

Those lines serve as a chanted mantra for a meditation on emptiness. Snyder

continues in meditating on emptiness in the present sections to prepare for the

appearance of the Bodhisattvas in "Cross Legg'd".

The section "Cross Legg'd" is a proof for Snyder's commitment to the less-rigid

Mahayana Buddhist system. Like in the section "An Offering for Tara", the readers of

Mountains and Rivers Without End are now in the presence of a female Buddha. The

section begins in a ritual tone like follows:

Cross-legg'd under the low tent roof,

dim light, dinner done,

drinking tea… (P: 128)

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As a practitioner of Zen, Snyder begins his section "Cross-legg'd" with a formal rite.

The "drinking tea" alludes to a moment of clarity, a meditative moment that prepares

him for the company of the Bodhisattva.

The cross-leggedness itself refers to the lotus position of a devotee in meditation.

Additionally, it refers to "the position of the partner's legs as dictated by the

Vajrayana ritual of sexual union called yab-yum" (Hunt, 2004: 231). Most apparently,

the yab-yum is a sexual embrace of lovers in order to go beyond to recreate their

lives. It’s a ceremony of rebirth which "in the Buddhist lamaseries of Tibet":

the holy images showed the various Buddhas and Bodhisattvas

joined with their Shaktis in embrace, in the yogic posture known

as Yab-Yum, "Father-Mother." And the great prayer wheels of

Tibet, OM mani padme HUM, "The jewel (mani) in the lotus

(padme)," signifies on one level: the immanence of nirvana (the

jewel) in samsara (the lotus); another: the arrival of the mind (the

jewel) in nirvana (the lotus); but also, as in the icon of the male

and female joined in the yoni. (Hunt, 2004: 231)

The Buddhas and Bodhisattvas join in this sexual embracement of compassion and

wisdom in order to overcome the duality of appearances and achieve enlightenment.

Again, it is all about overcoming appearances in the recognition of emptiness.

Snyder's stress on emptiness as the essential Buddhist concept continues in the

final sections of part IV. The poet starts with "a Zen training-hall meal verse" in "We

Wash Our Bowls in This Water", and then alludes to the Heart Sutra in "The

Mountain Spirit". He continues to meditate and pray in "Earth Verse", but only to

reach his final resolutions of the most important Buddhist concepts in the ending

section of Mountains and Rivers Without End. Meditation, emptiness, impermanence

and his own interpretation of the Heart Sutra are Snyder's final resolutions in

"Finding the Space in the Heart".

145

The section "We Wash Our Bowls in This Water", in Snyder's words,

"incorporates a Zen training-hall meal verse" (1997: 162). It is a kind of a mealtime

grace, the prayer that should be said in grace of food. The following section "The

Mountain Spirit" witnesses the appearance of the female goddess Yamamba. This

section is of a great importance for Zen Buddhism since it is entirely based on

Japanese No drama which is essentially a Buddhist art. The poem also alludes to the

famous Heart Sutra in Snyder's statement "nothingness is shapeliness", which is a

frank recognition of emptiness.

The poet then meditates in "Earth Verse" which is a kind of prayer for paying

gratitude to the universe. The poem has a simple structure to make it easy to chant.

This song goes as:

Wide enough to keep you looking

Open enough to keep you moving

Dry enough to keep you honest

Prickly enough to make you tough

Green enough to go on living

Old enough to give you dreams (P: 148)

The lines of the poem work as an intoned prayer. They form a kind of thankful prayer

for the given blesses for humans. As if the poet is telling his readers to sing this

section in daily bases in order to pay gratitude to the universe and what has been

given to mankind.

Finally and for the last time, Snyder stresses on the most important Buddhist

teachings in the final section of his long poem. In all means, "Finding the Space in

the Heart" represents, "the concise expression of the all-important Buddhist

philosophy of emptiness" (Hunt, 2004: 264). In other words, the section is a

representation of the Heart Sutra, which is:

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shortest of the forty sutras that constitute the Prajnaparamita-

sutra. It is one of the most important sutras of Mahayana

Buddhism and, particularly in China and Japan, it is recited by

monks and nuns of almost all schools. The sutra is especially

emphasized in Zen, since it formulates in a particularly clear and

concise way the teaching of shunyata, emptiness, the immediate

experience of which is sought by Zen practitioners. The pith

sentence of the Heart Sutra is, "Form is no other than emptiness;

emptiness is no other than form," an affirmation that is frequently

referred to in Zen. (Hunt, 2004: 281)

The importance of the Heart Sutra for Zen and for Snyder himself is in its affirmation

that emptiness is the way and the mean for Mahayana Buddhism.

The notion of emptiness is very essential as a practical way of living for

Buddhism. Due to its importance, Snyder dedicates this final section for explaining

the Heart Sutra and the Buddhist concept of emptiness. At the heart of "Finding the

Space in the Heart" Snyder writes:

all equal, far reaches, no bounds.

Sound swallowed away,

no waters, no mountains, no

bush no grass and

because no grass

no shade but your shadow.

…

No loss, no gain. So –

nothing in the way! (P: 151)

The list of no's empties the landscape of mountains and rivers. It is Snyder's way to

prove that form is emptiness and emptiness is form, which is the very heart of the

Heart Sutra.

Practically, "To be empty means to be alive, to breathe in and out. We cannot be

alive if we are not empty. Emptiness is impermanence, it is change …. [W]ithout

impermanence nothing is possible" (Hunt, 2004: 265). Understanding and grasping

147

this wisdom would undoubtedly lead to compassion for all beings and awareness for

liveliness. In Snyder's Words:

O, ah! The

awareness of emptiness

brings forth a heart of compassion! (P: 149)

The lines show how the recognition of emptiness leads to compassion for all beings.

Undoubtedly, these lines represent the essential message of both Gary Snyder and

Mountains and Rivers Without End for the readers.

From the beginning of the long poem Snyder pays great attention to explaining, to

his readers, the importance of emptiness for Buddhism and generally for life.

Emptiness is the way in to awareness and enlightenment. It is the one important

Buddhist concept for the recognition of the impermanence of life. But most

importantly, the awareness of emptiness is the way for compassion. For Snyder it is

all about compassion. Only with compassion that man can live in satisfaction and

happiness. Compassion is the only way for living in peace and harmony with oneself

and with other beings. It is even the only way to bring East and West together to live

as "Comrade: sharing the same tent or sky" in spite of all the differences.

148

Conclusion

At the beginning of this subject certain constructed concepts affected the judgment

of Gary Snyder's representation. Mainly, Edward Said's critique was the adopted

approach for judging Snyder's poetry. However, after sinking inside the lines and

between the lines of Snyder's analyzed poems, the book took a completely different

path of the one intended at its beginning. Thus, the development of the book and its

current form were never planned for, but they are a natural outcome of my desire to

research and explore.

A consideration of recent critical arguments of Orientalism has revealed Edward

Said's critique as a brilliant critical approach on occidental representations of the

Orient. Whether this Orient alludes to the Middle East or the Far East, Said's

discourse of analysis is worldly applied on all culturally different representations.

Regardless of the deconstructive arguments about the involvement of Orientalism

with colonialism, hegemony, and Eurocentrism; Said's Orientalism is present

whenever an orientalist's work is under discussion.

However, some critics like Nick Clifford and Eric Hayot find Said's theory

inapplicable to the occidental representations of China and Japan. On opposition,

most of the critics like Robert Kern agree with Said and insist that there is a discourse

involvement in the representations of the Far East by American orientalists.

In my study of Snyder's poetry, I hoped to prove that it would be unfair to attach

Said's critique with Snyder's representation of China and Japan. The analysis of

Snyder's selected poems hopefully draws a defining line between Said's Orientalism

and Snyder's representation of the Orient. This has been made clear through an

intensive analysis of Snyder's translations of Chinese and Japanese poems, and his

own writings.

149

The study of Han Shan's translated Chinese poems has revealed Snyder's success

in representing the aspects of Chinese life which are introduced in Han Shan's poems.

In many ways, the translation of Cold Mountain Poems assures Snyder's success as

an orientalist in his handling of the differences of language and culture. Also, the

study of the translation of the eighteen Japanese poems of Miyazawa Kenji reveals

Snyder's honesty as a translator and an orientalist. In spite of the cultural and

semantic difficulties, Snyder's translation indicates his success in representing

Japanese culture to the Occident.

The study of Snyder's own writings also reveals the same attachment with the

Orient. The consideration of Snyder's Mountains and Rivers Without End shows his

appreciation of two forms of oriental art. Both Chinese landscape paintings and

Japanese No drama are in the essence of his Mountains and Rivers Without End. The

analysis of the thirty-nine sections of the long poem evidently reveals Snyder's

adoption of oriental paintings and drama in the genesis, making and structure of his

long poem.

In this book I even go far to prove how the embracement of Buddhist thinking

affects Snyder's poetry. An analysis of the Buddhist themes in Snyder's translations

and his long poem has revealed his adoption of Buddhist teachings and practices.

This kind of analysis deeply connects Gary Snyder with the Orient in his

embracement of the oriental religion of Buddhism in his poetry.

The whole book aims to prove that not all occidental representations of the Orient

are categorized under Edward Said's terms. With all due respect to Said's appreciated

claims in the field study of Orientalism, Gary Snyder's poetic translations and his

own poems are free from Said's discourse of analysis.

Consequently the main achieved goals of the book assert that although Gary

Snyder is recognized as an orientalist, he is not to be categorized in the terms of

150

Edward Said's Orientalism. His translation of Chinese and Japanese poetry is not of

the same nature of Ezra Pound's Cathay. The oriental discourse in his own writings is

not connected to Gramsci's hegemony or Foucault's power relations. Neither the

adoption of Buddhist thinking is about a fascination of the ancient wisdom of the

Orient. The one simple conclusion is that Snyder's poetry is the outcome of his

growing cultural awareness. After all, it is one universe for all beings to share, in

spite of the diversities and differences.

151

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http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/650/op11.htm

163

Salmons, Catherine A. "Gary Snyder Delivers His Opus". Retrieved in February 13,

2004 (in)

http://www.bostonphoenix.com/alt1/archive/books/reviews/03-

97/SNYDER.html

Schlepp, Wayne. "Translating Chinese". Retrieved in June 15, 2004 (in)

http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~yhe/poetry/schlepp.html

Seager, Richard Hughes. "Big Sky Mind: Buddhism and the Beat Generation".

Retrieved in February 27, 2004 (in)

http://www.jbe.gold.ac.uk/5/seager981.htm

Selby, Nick. 1997. " Poem as Work-Place: Gary Snyder's Ecological Poetics".

Retrieved in February 25, 2004 (in)

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/snyder/selby.htm

Skinner, Geoffrey. 1998. "Encountering Gary Snyder". Retrieved in February 27,

2004 (in)

http://www.redgravenstein.com/people/gs/lit/litexplore/encountering-

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Skinner, Jonathan. "Snyder, Gary: Mountains and Rivers Without End". Retrieved in

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Snodgrass, Judith. 2003. "Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism,

Occidentalism, and the Columbian Exposition". Retrieved in March 1, 2004

(in)

http://www.uncpress.unc.edu/chapters/snodgrass_presenting.html

Snyder, Gary. "Buddhism and the Coming Revolution". Retrieved in February 23,

2004 (in)

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_ _ _. 1961. "Buddhist Anarchism". Retrieved in February 23, 2004 (in)

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Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1997. "Eurocentrism and its Avatars: The Dilemmas of

Social Science". Retrieved in February 29, 2004 (in)

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Whalen-Bridge, John. 1998. "Gary Snyder, Dogen, and 'The Canyon Wren'".

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Windschuttle, Keith. 1999. "Edward Said's 'Orientalism Revisited'". Retrieved in

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Yoshio, Haruna. 2001. "A Comparison of Poems by Gary Snyder and Miyazawa

Kenji". Retrieved in October 24, 2005 (in)

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ents/haruna2.html.

II. E-mails

Snyder, Gary. "GS as an Orientalist.. response". E-mail to [email protected].

April 3, 2005.

_ _ _. "Re: Thank You". E-mail to [email protected]. May 14, 2005.

_ _ _."Re: Translating Han Shan's Poems". E-mail to [email protected]. May

27, 2005.

_ _ _. "Re: Welcome Home". E-mail to [email protected]. June 8, 2005.

_ _ _. "Re: Miyazawa Kenji". E-mail to [email protected]. February 17,

2006.

_ _ _. "Ending Miyazawa Kenji". E-mail to [email protected]. February 20,

2006.

_ _ _. "Chapter 2.2". E-mail to [email protected]. October 8, 2006.

_ _ _. "Chapter Three". E-mail to [email protected]. May 14, 2007.

165

_ _ _. "Re: Some Information". E-mail to [email protected]. August 2, 2011.

_ _ _. "A Note on the Avatamsaka". E-mail to [email protected]. August 10,

2011.

_ _ _. "Re: The Flower Wreath Sutra". E-mail to [email protected]. August

23, 2011.

_ _ _. "A Comment". E-mail to [email protected]. September 10, 2011.

Hayot, Eric. "Re: To Prof. Hayot". E-mail to [email protected]. April 18,

2005.

_ _ _. "Re: Dear Prof. Hayot". E-mail to [email protected]. May 24, 2005.

_ _ _. "Re: Dear Professor". E-mail to [email protected]. June 8, 2005.

Yamazato, Katsunori. "Re: Snyder's Translation of Kenji's Poetry". E-mail to

[email protected]. October 3, 2006.

_ _ _. "Re: Chapter Four". E-mail to [email protected]. November 12, 2006.