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Reginald
Horace Blyth (1898-1964)
Prepared
by Michael P. Garofalo
http://gardendigest.com/zen/blyth.htm
Biography ... Bibliography ... Links
Chronology
1898
Born on December 3, 1898, in Essex, England. He was the only child
of Horace Blyth, a railway
clerk, and Herrietta Williams Blyth, housewife.
His family was poor.
1914 Greatly influenced by the writings of Matthew Arnold on self-development and excellence.
1915
Graduated from County High School for Boys, Ilford, England. Blyth was a
, healthy and
energetic young man.
1916
Imprisoned in Wormwood Scrubs because he was a conscientious objector to World
War I and a pacifist.
1923 Graduated from London University,
with honors, in English. Blyth learned to play the
organ and flute,
began making musical instruments, and loved the music by J.S. Bach. He was
self-taught in numerous European languages. He adopted a vegetarian
lifestyle which he
maintained throughout his life.
1924
Graduated from London Day Training College with a teaching certificate.
Married
Annie Bercovitch. Taught for awhile in India.
1925
Assistant Professor of English at Keijo University in Seoul, Korea. Began
learning
Japanese and Chinese.
1926 Began his study of Zen under Kayama Taizi Roshi of Myoshinji Betsuin in Korea.
1927
ly influenced by the Zen works of Daisetz Suzuki. Immersed himself in Japanese
culture, art, films, and lifestyle.
1933
Adopted a Korean boy. This son later became a teacher, and was executed
shortly after
the Korean War.
1935 Divorced from Annie Bercovitch.
1937 Married Tomiko Blyth. They had two daughters: Nana and Harumi.
1939 Became a teacher of English at the Fourth High School in Kanazawa, Japan.
1941-1945
Interned as an enemy alien in Kobe, Japan. His influential friends included:
D.T. Suzuki,
Nosei Abe, Katsunoshin Yamanashi. He wanted to take Japanese
nationality but his request was denied.
His home and extensive library
were destroyed in a bombing raid during the war.
1942 Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics published by The Hokuseido Press, Tokyo.
1944
Introduced Robert Aitken to Zen Buddhism during their wartime internment at the
Rinkangaku
Reform School, in Futatabi Park above Kobe, Japan. Also
interned at Futatabi Park were Max Brodofsky
and Roy Henning. Despite
the wartime rigours, the chief guard, Mr. Higasa, treated the internees with
respect and kindness. For more information about this period, discuss the
matter with Mark S. Schwartz.
1946
Blyth and Harold G. Henderson worked on numerous high level projects in the post-war
transition to peace between the Americans and Japanese. Blyth was a
liaison with the Emperor's
household, and Henderson was on the Occupation
Forces Headquarters staff, under the direction
of General MacArthur.
Blyth and Henderson worked together on Emperor Showa's "Human-Being
Declaration"
- a public proclamation that the Emperor of Japan was a human being and not a
God.
1946
Blyth became a Professor of English at Gakushuin University (Peers' School).
Blyth was
one of the English language tutors of the Crown Prince, Akihito,
who later became the Emperor of Japan.
1949-1952
Haiku (4 Volumes), and Senryu were published by Hoksueido Press
and financed
by the Prime Minister, Shigero Yoshida. The
book is dedicated to Sakuo Hashimoto and Naoto Ichimada.
1956 Awarded a Doctorate in Literature from Tokyo University.
1957 Awarded the Zuihosho (Order of Merit) Fourth Grade by the Japanese government.
1959 Japanese Life and Character in Senryu, and Oriental Humor are published.
1960 Zen and Zen Classics volumes begin to be published.
1961 Edo Satirical Verse Anthology published..
1964
Died on October 28th of a brain tumor and complications from pneumonia.
He died in the
Seiroka Hospital in Tokyo. He was buried in the cemetery
of the Shokozan Tokei Soji Zenji
Temple in Kamakura, Japan. His tombstone is next
to that of D. T. Suzuki.
Biographical
References
Britain
and Japan: Biographical Portraits. By Adrian Pinnington.
Folkestone, Japan Library.
Includes a bibliography.
A Haiku Path. Excellent information about the history of haiku in English.
The
Genius of Haiku: Readings from R. H. Blyth on Poetry, Life, & Zen.
With an introduction by
James Kirkup; which includes an informative short
biography of Blyth (pp. 3-11).
Original
Dwelling Place. By Robert Aitken. Washington, D.C., Counterpoint,
1996. "Remembering
Blyth Sensei," pages: 23-26.
Zen
to Haiku: The Life of R. H. Blyth. By Yoshimura Ikuyo. In Japanese.
Tokyo, Dohosha
Suppan, 1996. 222 pages. LC: 98458746. This
title is in Japanese: R. H. Buraisu no Shogai:
Zen to Haiku o Aishite.
Help!!
I saw a biographical study of R. H. Blyth in a bookstore in Portland a few years
ago, but I did
not purchase it or make a bibliographic note.
If any readers of this webpage know about a biography
of R. H. Blyth, please
send me the information. Thank
you.
I Welcome Your Comments, Ideas,
Contributions, and Suggestions
A
haiku is the expression of a temporary enlightenment,
in which we see into
the life of things.
A
haiku is not a poem, it is not literature; it is a hand beconing,
a door
half-opened, a mirror wiped clean. It is a way of returning
to nature,
to our moon nature, our cherry blossom nature, our
falling leaf nature, in
short, to our Buddha nature. It is a way in
which the cold winter rain,
the swallows of evening, even the very
day in its hotness, and the length
of the night, become truly
alive, share in our humanity, speak thery own
silent
and expressive lanugage.
- Haiku, Volume One,
p. 243.
Thus
we see that the all important thing is not killing or giving life,
drinking
or not drinking, living in the town or the country, being
unlucky or lucky,
winning or losing. It is how we win, how we lose,
how we live or die,
finally, how we choose.
It
is not merely the brevity by which the haiku isolates a particular
group of
phenomena from all the rest; nor its suggestiveness, through
which it reveals
a whole world of experience. It is not only in its
remarkable use of
the season word, by which it gives us a feeling of
a quarter of the year;
nor its faint all-pervading humour. Its peculiar
quality is its self-effacing,
self-annihilative nature, by which it enables
us, more than any other form
of literature, to grasp the thing-in-itself.
- Haiku, Volume
Four, p. 980.
- Refer to Richard Gilbert's article, From 5-7-5 to 8-8-8
Art
is frozen Zen.
- Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics,
p.3
The
importance and unimportance of the self
cannot be exaggerated.
If
all men lead mechanical, unpoetical lives,
this is the real nihilism, the
real undoing of the world.
These
are some of the characteristics of the state of mind
which the creation and
appreciation of haiku demand:
Selflessness, Loneliness, Grateful Acceptance,
Wordlessness,
Non-intellectuality, Contradictoriness, Humor, Freedom,
Non-morality, Simplicity, Materiality, Love, and Courage.
- Haiku,
Volume One, p. 154
The
love of nature is religion, and that religion is poetry;
these three things
are one thing. This is the
unspoken creed of haiku poets.
-
History of Haiku, Vol. One, Introduction, 8.5
The
object of our lives is to look at, listen to, touch, taste things.
Without
them, - these sticks, stones, feathers, shells, -
there is no Deity.
-
Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics, p. 144.
The
sun shines, snow falls, mountains rise and valleys sink,
night deepens and
pales into day, but it is only very seldom
that we attend to such things ...
When we are grasping the
inexpressible meaning of these things, this is life,
this is living.
To do this twenty-four hours a day is the Way of Haiku.
It is having life more abundantly.
- Haiku, Volume One, p.
11
An
earthquake, a toothache, a mad dog, a telephone message--
and all our house
of peace falls like a pack of cards.
- Zen and Zen Classics:
Selections from R.H. Blyth, p. 68
In the autumn of l964, Dr. Blyth was taken to hospital, and he did not survive this final illness that may have been a brain tumor. He had composed the following haiku, knowing it would become his death poem:
I
leave my heart
to the sasanqua flower
on the day of this journey.
—Reginald Horace Blyth (1964)
Note: The sasanqua is a camellia that blooms heavily and for long periods in autumn and early winter.
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Basho -
Comments by D. T. Suzuki.
Basho's Haiku:
Three Interpretations. Contrasting
translations by R. H. Blyth, Lucien Stryck,
and Beilenson.
Reginald Horace Blyth
(1898-1964)
A brief chronology of his life, links, bibliography, quotes by
and about
R. H. Blyth. 45K+.
Blyth and Beyond
Translators
By David Lanoue.
Discussion about
R. H. Blyth.
PMJS Archive, 11/2000. 29K. A very good critical discussion
of Blyth's
contributions and limitations.
Encomium for R.H.
Blyth.
By Timothy Ferris.
Essentially Oriental:
R. H. Blyth Selection. Edited by Kuniyoshi Munakata and Michael Guest.
From 5-7-5 to 8-8-8:
An Investigation of Japanese Haiku Metrics and Implications for English Haiku.
By Richard Gilbert and Judy Yoneoka. 136K. Refer also to other fine
scholarly articles at Quiet Site.
A Ginko
in Kamakura.
By Carmen Sterba. 17K.
The Great Cloud
of Witnesses. R.
H. Blyth writes to James W. Hackett. With comments by Susumu
Takiguchi.
Includes a drawing
of Blyth.
Haiku
Translations by R.H. Blyth. Comments by Leslie L. Seamans.
Haiku Masters. Translations
by R. H. Blyth
Haiku Poetry: Links, References
and Guides. By
Michael P. Garofalo. 210K+.
A Haiku Way of Life.
By Tom Clausen. (43K)
The Hsin Hsin Ming
by Seng-t`san with commentary by R. H. Blyth Another Version.
Hsinhsinming
95K. Zen and Zen Classics, Volume 1.
James W. Hackett.
A poet influenced by R. H. Blyth. 16K.
The Japanese Haiku Masters:
Basho, Buson, Ikkyu, Issa, and Shiki. Links and references.
25K+.
In the Moonlight a Worm:
The Nature of English Haiku
Korean Studies Newsgroup thread on R. H. Blyth: Biographical
A, Biographical
B.
More
Regarding Blyth.
By Hiromi Inoue.
Mountain Water School of Haiku. This haiku school is led by David Coomler.
This school
is "rooted in the monumental work of R. H. Blyth, in the classic
haiku of Japan, and ultimately in the
Zen/Ch'an and Taoist-based poetry of
old Japan and China." Hokku-Inn is the public
forum, a
general posting site for haiku and discussion among intermediate
level school members. Refer
also to Hokku-Way, a collection
of over 260 notes and short essays about writing haiku by
David Coomler.
Mountain-Water is for deeper discussion of haiku-related matters among
selected long-time and committed students. Quiet-Pond is for selected
advanced students
who might from time to time prefer student-teacher interaction
only.
One Hand Clapping:
Blyth in Cyberspace
Selections from the book Essentially Oriental.
A photo of
Blyth in seated meditation. Review of
book.
On
Western Haiku.
Cor van den Heuvel.
Portrait of
R. H. Blyth by
Susuma Takiguchi.
Review of Haiku:
Eastern Culture, Volume 1.
By Kim Allen.
Sabi in Haiku. By
H. F. Noyes.
Shokozan Tokei Soji Zenji
Buddhist Temple in Kamakura, Japan.
The Thing, the Moment, the
Spirit.
By Cicely Hill.
Zen and the Art of Haiku.
By Ken
Jones.
Zen and Zen Classics,
Volume One,
by R. H. Blyth. The Hsinhsinming. (95K)
Zen Poetry. Links
and bibliography, selected quotes, notes, and special webpages on noted Zen
scholars and translators, e.g., R. H. Blyth, L. Stryk. 400K+
By Mike Garofalo.
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Bibliography
Works
By R. H. Blyth
R.
H. Blyth had many books published that are not listed below. These were
primers and text books
used by Korean and Japanese students learning the
English language, and books for teaching European
and English literature to
Asian students. The NACSIS Webcat provides over
45 bibliographic
references to works by Reginald Horace Blyth.
Buddhist Sermons on Christian Texts. By R. H. Blyth. Tokyo, Kokudosha, 1952. 93 pages.
Dorothy Wordsworth's Journals. With introduction and footnotes by R. H. Blyth.
Edo Satirical Verse Anthologies. By R.H. Blyth. Tokyo, The Hokuseido Press, 1961, 1977. 312 pages.
Essentially Oriental: R. H. Blyth Selections. Edited by Kuniyoshi
Munakata and Michael Guest.
Tokyo, The Hokuseido Press, 1994.
Foreward
A Few Flies and I; Haiku by Kobayashi Issa. Selected by Jean Merrill
and Ronni Solbert from
translations by R. H. Blyth and Nobuyuki Yuasa. Illustrated
by Ronni Solbert. New York,
Pantheon Books, 1969. 96 pages.
A First Book of Korean. By Lee Eun and R. H. Blyth.
2nd Edition. Toyko, Hokuseido Press,
1962. 175 pages.
Games Zen Masters Play: The Writings of R. H. Blyth. Selected,
edited, and with an introduction
by Robert Sohl and Audrey Carr. New
York, New American Library, 1976. 169 pages.
The Genius
of Haiku: Readings from R. H. Blyth on Poetry, Life, & Zen.
Edited by the staff of
the British Haiku Society. With an introduction
by James Kirkup; which includes an informative
biography of Blyth.
Tokyo, The Hokuseido Press, 1995. 146 pages. ISBN: 4590009889.
Haiku.
By R. H. Blyth.
Tokyo, The Hokuseido Press, 1949-1952, 1960, 1968,
1970, 1982, 1997.
A landmark study in Four Volumes:
[In
the spring of 2000, I purchased a new paperback version of this four volume set
from Powell's books in Portland,
Oregon. Each volume cost $28.00 retail.
Used hardbound copies, depending upon the condition of the book
and the market
area, will cost between $25 and $100.]
Eastern Culture. Volume I. Tokyo, The Hokuseido Press, 1949.
Various appendices and index.
26 illustrations. 422 pages.
[Still available from The Hokuseido Press, 1997 Reissue. 350 pages.
ISBN: 4590005727. Trade paperback.] Dedicated to Sakuo
Hashimoto.
Haiku: Spring. Volume II. Tokyo, The Hokuseido Press, 1950.
382 pages. 9 illustrations.
[Still available from The Hokuseido
Press, 1997 Reissue. 300 pages. ISBN: 4590005735.
Trade paperback.]
Dedicated to Sakuo Hashimoto.
Haiku: Summer - Autumn. Volume III. Tokyo, The Hokuseido
Press, 1951. 443 pages.
[Still available from The Hokuseido Press,
1997 Reissue. 340 pages. ISBN: 4590005743.]
Dedicated to
Naoto Ichimada, Governor of the Bank of Japan.
Haiku: Autumn - Winter. Includes Index. Volume IV. Tokyo,
The Hokuseido Press, 1952, 1968.
Index, xlii, 396 pages. 19 illustrations.
[Still available from The Hokuseido Press, 1997 Reissue.
330
pages. ISBN: 4590005751. Trade paperback.]
A History of Haiku. By R. H. Blyth. Tokyo, The Hokuseido Press, 1963-1964. Two Volumes.
How to Read English Poetry.
Humour in English literature; A Chronological Anthology.
By R. H. Blyth. Folcroft,
Pennsylvania, Folcroft Press, 1970.
250 pages.
Japanese
Life and Character in Senryu. By R. H. Blyth. Tokyo, The
Hokuseido
Press, 1960. 630 pages.
Oriental Humour. By R. H. Blyth. Tokyo, The Hokuseido
Press, 1959, 1963.
582 pages. Comments.
Senryu:
Japanese Satirical Verses. Translated and explained by R. H.
Blyth. Tokyo,
The Hokuseido Press, 1949. 230 pages.
Includes hundreds of black and white sketches
and some colored plates.
A Survey of English Literature.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack River. By Henry David
Thoreau. Edited with an
introduction and notes by R. H. Blyth.
Zen and Zen Classics. By R. H. Blyth. Tokyo, The Hokuseido Press [1960-1970], 5 Volumes.
Volume Four. Mumonkan. The Hokuseido Press, 1966. 340 pages, index. 12 illustrations.
Zen and Zen Classics: Selections from R. H. Blyth. Compiled and
with drawings
by Frederick Franck. New York, Vintage Books, 1978.
289 pages.
Zen
in English Literature and Oriental Classics. By R. H. Blyth.
Tokyo, The Hokuseido
Press, 1942, 1996 printing. Index, 446 pages.
ASIN: 0893460028. Dedicated to Roshi
Myoshinji Betsu-In, and to Imamura
Juzo. Review by Kiley John
Clark.
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Bibliography
Works
About R. H. Blyth
The
Genius of Haiku: Readings from R. H. Blyth on Poetry, Life, & Zen.
With an introduction
by James Kirkup; which includes an informative short
biography of Blyth (pp. 3-11).
Spring
Thunder: A Renaissance of the Works of R. H. Blyth. By Ikuyo Yoshimura.
(Biographical information about
Ikuyo Yoshimura.)
Zen
to Haiku: The Life of R. H. Blyth. By Ikuyo Yoshimura. In Japanese.
Tokyo,
Dohosha Suppan, 1996. 222 pages. LC: 98458746. This
title is in Japanese:
R. H. Buraisu no Shogai: Zen to Haiku o Aishite.
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Praise and Appreciation
for R.H. Blyth
For
translations, the best books are still those by R. H. Blyth ...
- Michael
Dylan Welch, Want Fries with Those Haiku,
2000
Blyth
is sometimes perilous, naturally, since he's a high-handed
old poem himself,
but he's also sublime - and who goes to
poetry for safety anyway.
-
J. D. Salinger
To
those of us who knew him, he was first and foremost
a poet with a wonderfully
keen and sensitive perception.
- D. T. Suzuki
Though
not named as such, the spirit of haiku – its techniques, poetics – exists
in the epiphanies and best moments of every literature I’ve studied; it appears
to be imbedded everywhere. Maybe that perspective makes me a pan- haikuist?
R. H. Blyth’s Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics was one of
the
most important books I read in college.
- Michael McClintock,
Interview
Two
men who may be called pillars of the Western haiku movement,
Harold G. Henderson
and R. H. Blyth ...
- Elizabeth Searle Lamb, A Haiku Path,
p. 5
Yet
most academic philosophers now deride the babbling of mystics
and metaphysicians
as mere poetry, whereas I feel increasingly with
R. H. Blyth and
Paul Reps that reality is poetry.
- Alan Watts, Cloud-Hidden,
Whereabouts Unknown, 1968, p. 144
Zen
in English Literature and Oriental Classics set my life on the
course
I still maintain, and I trace my orientation to culture -
to literature,
rhetoric, art and music - to that single book.
- Robert Aitken, Original Dwelling
Place, p.24
And
it is impossible for an English speaker with an open mind
and any heart to
read Blyth and not come away with
several new enthusiasms.
-
Terry
Moore, 1996
Blyth
is also unusual in having more or less single-handedly inspired
a new genre
of poetry in English - the English haiku. Richard Bowring
calls
his influence 'extraordinary', but when we look at the reason for
this influence,
I think that we have little doubt that the answer is that
he was a translator
of genius. The impact which Blyth's books had,
quite independently,
on a variety of writers is one testament to their
literary quality as English.
- Adrian Pinnington
R.
H. Blyth 'more than any other is responsible for spreading
the doctrine that
haiku is about nature, senryu about human nature.'
-
Frogpond 11:2 1988
See also: Marlene Mountain: From
the Mountain - Backward
To
my mind, R. H. Blyth is destined to become the indispensable
interpreter of,
and initiator into, Zen for the Western mind. His
writings, until now
far too inaccessible to the Western reader,
seem to me the catalyst needed
for a profound integration of
Eastern and Western spirituality.
-
Frederick Franck, Zen and Zen Classics, 1978, p. xii.
Blyth's
four volume Haiku became especially popular at this time [1950's]
because his translations were based on the assumption that the haiku was
the poetic expression of Zen. Not surprisingly, his books attracted the
attention of the Beat school, most notably writers such as Allen Ginsberg,
Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac, all of whom had a prior interest in Zen.
-
George Swede, Haiku in English
in North America
The
first book in English based on the saijiki is R. H. Blyth's Haiku,
published in four volumes from 1949 to 1952. After the first,
background volume, the remaining three consist of a collection
of Japanese
haiku with translations, all organized by season,
and within the seasons
by traditional categories and about
three hundred seasonal topics.
- William
J. Higginson, The Haiku Seasons, 1996, p. 119 [saijiki]
R. H. Blyth: I have just come from Korea, where I studied Zen
with Kayama
Taigi Roshi of Myoshinji Betsuin.
D. T. Suzuki: Is that so? Tell me, what is Zen?
R. H. Blyth: As I understand it, there is no such thing.
D. T. Suzuki: I can see you know something of Zen.
- As told by Robert Aitken,
Original Dwelling Place, p. 27
On
the very short shelf of my very favorite books are the four volumes of R.
H. Blyth's Haiku. Published by the Hokuseido Press in Tokyo right after
the
war, Blyth's set presents many of the best haiku in Japanese characters,
in
transliteration, and in his own spare, elegant translations. He also includes
reproductions of paintings in the haibun tradition. Blyth was an opinionated,
passionate reader, whose great tradition in English runs Chaucer, Shakespeare,
Milton, Wordsworth, Hopkins, Lawrence. He's also very appreciative of
Emerson, Dickinson, and, especially, Thoreau. (You can see why I like him.)
Blyth's main thesis in Haiku is that the haiku-tradition is the culmination of
an
Asian wisdom-lineage that is rooted in Taoism and Buddhism and achieves
its
flowering in the arts.
- John Elder
Then
along came R. H. Blyth and his four-volume Haiku, published in 1949-52.
This monumental study not only translated haiku in a sensible way--with crisp,
unrhyming, succinct, and evocative verses; it conveyed haiku spirit: how
the
poet encounters Nature and self-in-Nature utterly open to the wonders
of the
ordinary, the now-moment unadorned and unadulturated. Blyth's
work with its
Zen focus and flavor was widely read in the fifties, and
so completed the task
begun by Hearn and Yone. A new generation
of readers learned how to receive
haiku. Jack Kerouac read Blyth;
Richard Wright read Blyth; and within a decade
both of these writers
and hundreds of their contemporaries worldwide were
trying their hand
at composing their own haiku.
- David Lanoue, Blyth and Beyond
Haiku
entered into American consciousness with R.H. Blyth's
monumental, post-War,
four-volume work, Haiku,
published between 1949 and 1952.
-
Jack Foley, The Alsop Review
I
will always be grateful to R. H. Blyth for his little books
of commentary
and translation, and I continue to
read them for the sheer intelligence of
the prose.
- Sam Hamill, Sitting Zen, Working Zen, Feminist
Zen
As
a translator I may be blessed in not working in English,
thus being able
to read Blyth as a source, not an idol. But as a
source of zeal he sure
is a paragon, whatever his shortcomings.
- Kai Nieminen
I
think that for many native English-speakers (of the 50s-80s anyway),
Blyth's translations "are" Japanese haiku. It is a mark of Blyth's stylistic
modernity that we continue to find his poetic style largely
contemporary,
60 years later.
- Richard Gilbert, e-mail 9 March 2002, Quiet
Site
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