On Sogi

On Sogi

Of all the Renga poets I have spent time with the poet Sogi is the one I find most inspiring. Sogi lived from 1421 to 1502, a time of tremendous turmoil in Japan. During his long life Sogi was in much demand as a Renga Master and traveled throughout Japan leading Renga sessions and teaching this art. The Renga of Sogi’s day was the 100-Verse form known as Hyakuin. It is a complex form and it is said that it took twenty years of study to be able to internalize all the rules governing the placement of verses in a Hyakuin. It has been suggested by some scholars, such as Steven D. Carter, that the heavily rule laden nature of the Hyakuin served the function of providing a place of order in a time of great political and social upheaval. (The Road to Komatsubara, page 111.)

We don’t know a lot about Sogi’s personality which is in keeping with the art that he practiced. Carter writes, “One suspects that the final reason for his rather bland showing in the chronicles of his time is a result of the peculiar demands of his profession – for his age clearly saw him more as a renga master than as a celebrity. One ruling principle of linked verse, as well as of its practitioners, was anonymity. As the rules show so vividly, when he composed linked verse the poet entered a preconstituted world that in many ways represented a whole tradition.” (The Road to Komatsubara, page 109.) This is what I meant when I wrote in an earlier post that Renga was similar to the western Classical Period of music, where composers wrote within the strictures of a strong, inherited tradition; so much so that at times it is difficult to distinguish one composer from another, at least at first.

Interestingly, though, Sogi has left us some Solo Renga and it is in these solo ventures that one begins to cut through the fog of anonymity and see clearly the greatness of this poet. In particular, three years before Sogi died he wrote “A Hundred Stanzas Related to ‘Person” by Sogi Alone”. It is translated in Earl Miner’s “Japanese Linked Poetry”. Miner writes of this Renga:

“ . . . Three years before his death, the old renga master devoted four months to composing a sequence that would satisfy him. Such a long period is quite special, if not unique, and we may well think that only an accomplished master could make of it something particularly valuable. Sogi described his process of composition in the usual humble terms: ‘ . . . in 1499 I entered my seventy-ninth year, and about the 20th of the Third Month I found myself unable to let pass silently my emotions for the falling flowers and composed a brief sequence. As I later added one stanza and then another, I found myself enfeebled in mind and at a loss for words, utterly lacking the ability to think. But when I looked on the moon in this mental stupor, I found myself unable to stop what I had begun. As I completed something more than half the sequence, I found myself wondering how it might turn out, and at last, by the end of the seventh month, I brought it to a close’.” (Japanese Linked Poetry, page 227.)

I have found this particular Renga a constant source of inspiration. First, it inspired me to undertake solo Renga, with the authority of Sogi I felt that it was a legitimate undertaking. Second, I have found the links in this Renga, and the links in those Renga led by Sogi, to be particularly clear, to be excellent models to emulate and admire. There is a clarity about the flow of Sogi’s Renga that I often struggle finding in other Renga poets. I think that this is partly due to the heavy use of allusion in classical Renga, and also Haikai, and not being familiar with the references. Thus a great deal of annotation is needed in order to understand what is being linked. Sogi also uses allusion, but his verses seem to work on two levels. On one level there is what I think of as a “plain link”; that is to say the link does not require that one know the allusion in order to perceive the linkage. On a second level, the allusion to a Waka Collection, or other famous Japanese source is there to deepen the connection. The threads of Sogi’s linkages are always accessible, though they are often subtle as well. Here’s an example from Minase:

Entering the clouds
Today I crossed the peak where flowers
Had completely fallen (Socho)

Listening I hear farewells
In cries of spring geese overhead (Shohaku)

“Entering the clouds” is echoed by “spring geese overhead”; they are both upward moving and contain a similar motion. “Fallen flowers” link to “farewells”, they are both images of parting. “Entering the clouds” links to “farewells” because they both are images of entering the unknown and the shrouded. The first verse is a late spring verse because of the completely fallen flowers. The second verse is also late spring because of the spring geese. Yet there are also distinctions between the two. The first is visual, the second primarily sonic. Linked together the visual and the sonic form a unified and broad image. These two verses are followed by:

Oh stay on a while
Can you also think so common
This cloud-dimmed moon (Sogi)

Here Sogi deflects the moving away motion of the previous two verses and we are asked to stop and linger over the moon. But the moon is still upward, in the sky, but the motion of entering, and the motion of the geese, is now changed to a pause.

The links proceed like this. The annotations by Miner (this is all on page 195) make it clear that there are allusions. For example, “Oh stay a while” recalls a Waka from the Shingoshuishu, and no doubt readers well read in the classical Waka Collections would get the reference. That is a level that Sogi uses, but what I so admire about his writing is that other level, what I call the “plain” level of linking. Because of this plain level of linking the Renga flows in a very natural way from one verse to the next.

I think this is one of the reasons why some of the Renga that Sogi led have become famous. Among them are “Three Poets at Minase” and “Three Poets at Yuyama” (Minase is found in Miner’s “Japanese Linked Verse” and “Yuyama” is found in “From the Country of Eight Islands”.) Of the Minase Hyakuin Renga, Miner writes, “Japanese who have read but one renga sequence have read the “Hundred Stanzas by Three Poets at Minase.” (Page 171.) In these collective, participation Renga (which is the norm), Sogi shows his skill at leading in this subtle art form.

For those of us interested in renga today, even if we aren’t writing the 100-verse form, which is rare these days, Sogi can function as a guide and a model. In terms of the skill he demonstrates at linking and shifting, in terms of his dedication to his craft (he practiced renga for more than 40 years), and in particular for those of interested in solo renga, in developing renga as a solo form to stand with the sonnet and other solo forms, Sogi is a constant source of nourishment. One can find Sogi in translation in the following books:

From the Country of Eight Islands, An Anthology of Japanese Poetry, edited and translated by Hiroaki Sato and Burton Watson.

Japanese Linked Poetry, by Earl Miner.

The Road to Komatsubara, A Classical Reading of the Renga Hyakuin, by Steven D. Carter.

Traditional Japanese Poetry, An Anthology, by Steven D. Carter.

Linked Verse at Imashinmei Shrine, by Thomas Ware, Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 34, No. 2, Summer, 1979, pp. 169-208.