Scent of Apples

48" x 37"

Kitahara Hakushu, a poet of the Romantic School of the early 20th century, wrote the following Tanka:

“She is leaving…

thrashing snow on the pavement.

O snow, the falling snow,

embrace her, please,

with the scent of apples!”

Hakushu was known for his sensuous and rhythmical verses. This poem is no exception. Without using too many words, it tells us of the emotion and the movement of two lovers who spent a night together.

Morning came. The woman is leaving the house. During the night, snow started to fall… persistently and cheerfully it keeps falling, and the world stands still. He listens to her footsteps breaking into the fresh snow, and thinks of the sweet, refreshing smell of apples… and tells the snow to embrace his lover with the fragrance.

The unexpected combination of snow and apples stimulates my imagination. I sense that their rendezvous was a heart-warming one. In “Scent of Apples,” I wanted to express such a romantic, blissful feeling framed by the fresh morning snow.

Courtesy of the Princeton Review, New York.