People love and willingly create short songs - concise poetic formulas, where there is not a single extra word. From folk poetry, these songs move into literary poetry, continue to develop in it and give rise to new poetic forms.
This is how national poetic forms were born in Japan: pentaverse - tank and tercet - haiku.
Haiku (haiku) is a lyrical poem characterized by extreme brevity and unique poetics. It depicts the life of nature and human life against the backdrop of the cycle of seasons.
Japanese poetry is syllabic, i.e. Its rhythm is based on the alternation of a certain number of syllables. There is no rhyme: the sound and rhythmic organization of the tercet is a subject of great concern to Japanese poets.
Haiku has a stable meter. Each verse has a certain number of syllables: five in the first, seven in the second and five in the third - a total of seventeen syllables. This does not exclude poetic license, especially among such bold and innovative poets as Matsuo Basho(1644-1694). He sometimes did not take into account the meter, striving to achieve the greatest poetic expressiveness.
The dimensions of haiku are so small that in comparison with it a European sonnet seems like a large poem. It contains only a few words, and yet its capacity is relatively large. The art of writing haiku is, first of all, the ability to say a lot in a few words.
Brevity makes haiku similar to folk proverbs. Some tercets have gained currency in popular speech as proverbs, such as the poem by Basho:
I'll say the word -
Lips freeze.
Autumn whirlwind!
As a proverb, it means that “caution sometimes forces one to remain silent.”
But most often, haiku differs from a proverb in its genre characteristics. This is not a didactic saying, short parable or a well-aimed wit, but a poetic picture sketched in one or two strokes. The poet’s task is to infect the reader with lyrical excitement, to awaken his imagination, and for this it is not necessary to paint a picture in all its details.
Chekhov wrote in one of his letters to his brother Alexander: “... you will get a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam a piece of glass flashed like a bright star from broken bottle and the black shadow of a dog or wolf rolled in a ball..."
This method of depiction requires maximum activity from the reader, draws him into creative process, gives impetus to his thoughts. You cannot skim through a collection of haiku, flipping through page after page. If the reader is passive and not attentive enough, he will not perceive the impulse sent to him by the poet. Japanese poetics takes into account the counter-work of the reader's thoughts. Thus, the blow of the bow and the response of the string trembling together give birth to music.
Haiku is small in size, but this does not detract from the poetic or philosophical meaning, which the poet is able to give to him, does not limit the scope of his thoughts. However, the poet, of course, cannot give a multifaceted image and at length, to fully develop his thought within the framework of haiku. In every phenomenon he seeks only its culmination.
Giving preference to the small, haiku sometimes painted a picture of a large scale:
The sea is raging!
Far away, to Sado Island,
The Milky Way is spreading.
This poem by Basho is a kind of peephole. Leaning our eyes towards it, we will see a large space. The Sea of Japan will open before us on a windy but clear autumn night: the sparkle of stars, white breakers, and in the distance, at the edge of the sky, the black silhouette of Sado Island.
Or take another Basho poem:
On a high embankment there are pine trees,
And between them the cherries are visible, and the palace
In the depths of flowering trees...
In three lines there are three perspective plans.
Haiku is akin to the art of painting. They were often painted on the subjects of paintings and, in turn, inspired artists; sometimes they turned into a component of the painting in the form of a calligraphic inscription on it. Sometimes poets resorted to methods of depiction akin to the art of painting. This is, for example, Buson’s tercet:
Crescent flowers around.
The sun is going out in the west.
The moon is rising in the east.
Wide fields covered yellow flowers rapeseeds, they seem especially bright in the rays of sunset. The pale moon rising in the east contrasts with the fiery ball of the setting sun. The poet does not tell us in detail what kind of lighting effect is created, what colors are on his palette. He only offers a new look at the picture that everyone has seen, perhaps, dozens of times... Grouping and selection of pictorial details is the main task of the poet. He has only two or three arrows in his quiver: not one should fly past.
Often the poet creates not visual, but sound images. The howl of the wind, the chirping of cicadas, the cries of a pheasant, the singing of a nightingale and a lark, the voice of a cuckoo - each sound is filled with a special meaning, giving rise to certain moods and feelings.
The lark sings
With a resounding blow in the thicket
The pheasant echoes him
The Japanese poet does not unfold before the reader the entire panorama of possible ideas and associations that arise in connection with a given object or phenomenon. It only awakens the reader’s thought and gives it a certain direction.
On a bare branch
Raven sits alone.
Autumn evening.
(Basho)
The poem looks like a monochrome ink drawing. Nothing extra, everything is extremely simple. With the help of a few skillfully chosen details, a picture of late autumn is created. You can feel the absence of wind, nature seems frozen in sad stillness. The poetic image, it would seem, is slightly outlined, but it has great capacity and, bewitching, leads you along. It seems that you are looking into the waters of a river, the bottom of which is very deep. And at the same time, he is extremely specific. The poet depicted a real landscape near the hut and through it - his state of mind. He is not talking about the raven’s loneliness, but about his own.
It is no wonder that over the centuries of its existence, ancient haiku has acquired layers of commentary. The richer the subtext, the higher the poetic skill of haiku. It shows rather than suggests. Hint, hint, reticence become additional means of poetic expressiveness. Longing for his dead child, the poet Issa said:
Our life is a dewdrop
Let just a drop of dew
Our life - and yet...
Dew is a common metaphor for the frailty of life, just like a flash of lightning, foam on water, or quickly falling cherry blossoms. Buddhism teaches that human life is short and ephemeral, and therefore has no special value. But it’s not easy for a father to come to terms with the loss of his beloved child. Issa says “and yet...” and puts down the brush. But his very silence becomes more eloquent than words.
It is quite understandable that there is some confusion in haiku. The poem consists of only three verses. Each verse is very short. Most often in verse two meaningful words, not counting formal elements and exclamatory particles. All excess is wrung out and eliminated; there is nothing left that serves only for decoration. Even the grammar in haiku is special: there are few grammatical forms, and each carries a maximum load, sometimes combining several meanings. Facilities poetic speech are selected extremely sparingly: haiku avoids epithet or metaphor if it can do without them.
Sometimes the whole haiku is an extended metaphor, but it direct meaning usually hidden in subtext.
From the heart of a peony
A bee slowly crawls out...
Oh, with what reluctance!
Basho composed this poem while leaving the hospitable home of his friend.
It would be a mistake, however, to look for such a double meaning in every haiku. Most often, haiku is a concrete image of the real world that does not require or allow any other interpretation.
An “ideal” landscape, freed from all roughness - this is how old classical poetry painted nature. In haiku, poetry regained its sight. A man in haiku is not static, he is in motion: here is a street peddler wandering through snow whirlwind, and here is a worker turning a grinding mill. The gulf that already in the tenth century lay between literary poetry and folk song, has become less wide. A raven pecking a snail in a rice field with its nose is an image found in both haiku and folk songs.
Haiku teaches you to look for hidden beauty in the simple, inconspicuous, everyday. Not only the famous, many times sung cherry blossoms are beautiful, but also the modest, imperceptible at first glance, colza flowers, shepherd's purse.
Take a close look!
Shepherd's purse flowers
You will see under the fence.
(Basho)
In another poem by Basho, the face of a fisherman at dawn resembles a blooming poppy, and both are equally beautiful. Beauty can strike like lightning:
I've barely gotten around to it
Exhausted, until the night...
And suddenly - wisteria flowers!
(Basho)
Beauty can be deeply hidden. The feeling of beauty in nature and in human life is akin to a sudden comprehension of the truth, the eternal principle, which, according to Buddhist teaching, is invisibly present in all phenomena of existence. In haiku we find a new rethinking of this truth - the affirmation of beauty in the unnoticed, ordinary:
They scare them and drive them out of the fields!
The sparrows will fly up and hide
Under the protection of tea bushes.
(Basho)
Trembling on the horse's tail
Spring webs...
Tavern at noon.
(Izen)
Some features of haiku can only be understood by becoming familiar with its history.
Over time, the tanka (pentamental verse) began to be clearly divided into two stanzas: a tercet and a couplet. It happened that one poet composed the first stanza, the second - the subsequent one. Later, in the twelfth century, chain verses appeared, consisting of alternating tercets and couplets. This form was called "renga" (literally "strung stanzas"); The first tercist was called the "initial stanza", in Japanese "haiku". The renga poem did not have a thematic unity, but its motifs and images were most often associated with a description of nature, and with an obligatory indication of the season.
Renga reached its greatest flowering in the fifteenth century. For it, precise boundaries of the seasons were developed and the seasonality of one or another natural phenomenon was clearly defined. Even standard “seasonal words” appeared, which conventionally denoted always the same season of the year and were no longer used in poems describing other seasons.
The opening stanza (haiku) was often the best stanza in the rengi. This is how separate collections of exemplary haiku began to appear.
The tercet was firmly established in Japanese poetry and acquired true capacity in the second half of the seventeenth century. It was raised to unsurpassed artistic heights by the great poet of Japan Matsuo Basho, the creator of not only haiku poetry, but also the entire aesthetic school of Japanese poetics. Poems by Basho even now, after three centuries, every cultured Japanese knows by heart. A huge research literature has been created about them.
The lyrical hero of Basho's poetry has specific characteristics. This is a poet and philosopher, in love with the nature of his native country, and at the same time - a poor man from the outskirts of a big city. And he is inseparable from his era and people. In every little haiku of Basho one can feel the breath of a vast world.
Basho was born in castle town Ueno, Iga province, in the family of the poor samurai Matsuo Yozaemon. He was the third child in the family. Basho is a literary pseudonym, but it displaced all other names and nicknames of the poet from the memory of descendants.
The province of Iga was located in the very cradle of the old Japanese culture, in the center of the main island - Honshu. Many places in Basho's homeland are known for their beauty, and folk memory has preserved songs, legends and ancient customs there in abundance. Basho loved his homeland and often visited it in his declining years.
Wandering Raven, look!
Where is your old nest?
Plum trees are in bloom everywhere.
Everything that once seemed familiar suddenly transforms, like an old tree in spring. The joy of recognition, the sudden comprehension of beauty, so familiar that you no longer notice it, is one of the most significant themes in Basho’s poems.
The poet's relatives were educated people, which presupposed, first of all, knowledge of Chinese classics. Both father and elder brother made a living by teaching calligraphy.
Since childhood, a friend of the prince's son, a great lover of poetry, Basho himself began to write poetry. After the early death of his young master, he went to the city and took monastic vows, thereby freeing himself from serving his feudal lord. However, Basho did not become a real monk. He lived in a small house in the poor suburb of Fukagawa, near the city of Edo. This hut with all the modest landscape surrounding it - banana trees and a small pond in the yard - is described in his poems. Basho had a lover. He dedicated a laconic elegy to her memory:
Oh don't think you're one of those people
Who left no trace in the world!
Remembrance day...
Basho walked along the roads of Japan as an ambassador of poetry itself, kindling in people a love for it and introducing them to true art. He knew how to find and awaken the creative gift even in a professional beggar. Basho sometimes penetrated into the very depths of the mountains, where “no one will pick up a fallen wild chestnut fruit from the ground,” but, valuing solitude, he was never a hermit. In his travels, he did not run away from people, but became close to them. In his poems, peasants pass in a long line behind field work, horse drivers, fishermen, tea leaf pickers.
Boy perched
On the saddle, and the horse is waiting.
Collect radishes.
In 1682, Basho's hut burned down in a great fire. From that time on, he began his many years of wandering around the country, the idea of which had been in his mind for a long time. Following the long literary tradition of China and Japan, Basho visits places glorified in the poems of ancient poets, peers into daily life in all its details.
During one of his travels, Basho died. Before his death, he created the "Death Song":
I got sick on the way,
And everything runs, my dream circles
Through scorched meadows.
Basho's poetry is distinguished by a sublime system of feelings and at the same time amazing simplicity and truth of life. There were no base things for him. Poverty, hard work, the life of Japan with its bazaars, taverns on the roads and beggars - all this was reflected in his poems. But the world remains beautiful for him. There may be a wise man hidden in every beggar.
For Basho, poetry was not a game, not amusement, not a means of subsistence, as for many contemporary poets, but the calling of his whole life. He said that poetry elevates and ennobles a person.
As Basho's fame grew, students of all ranks began to flock to him, wherever he lived, wherever he stopped on his travels. By the end of his life he had many students throughout Japan. But Basho’s school was not just a school of a master and students humbly listening to him, usual for that time. On the contrary, Basho, who himself was in continuous spiritual movement, encouraged those who came to him to find their own path. Shofu(Basho style), or true style in haiku poetry, was born in controversy. These are disputes between people devoted to their high craft. That is why so many talented poets came out of Basho’s school. Boncho, Kyorai, Joso, Ransetsu, Shiko and others - their names are not lost in the powerful light of Basho's poetry. Each had his own handwriting, sometimes very different from the handwriting of the teacher. This is one of his first students, his old friend Takarai Kikaku, the most educated resident of Edo, a carefree reveler who glorified the streets and rich shopping shops hometown, an exquisite, subtle poet of nature.
In 1691, Mukai Kyorai and Nozawa Boncho compiled the anthology The Monkey's Straw Cloak (Sarumino), an outstanding monument to the poetry of the "true style".
Kyorai, Hattori Toho, Shiko, and Koriku conveyed to us the teacher’s thoughts about art in their books.
The impact of Basho's work, his ideas, and his very personality on subsequent Japanese poetry was enormous. You could say it was decisive. And although at the beginning of the eighteenth century the art of haiku came into decline, already in the middle of this century a poet of very great talent appeared, who gave him new life, - Yosa Buson. He was equally gifted as a poet and as an artist. (His illustrations for Basho’s travel diary are wonderful "On the paths of the north".) His poems during his lifetime were almost unknown, they were appreciated only in the nineteenth century, and real understanding came to Buson’s poetry only in our century.
Buson's poetry is romantic. Often in three lines of a poem he could tell a whole short story. So, in the poem “Changing clothes with the onset of summer” he writes:
They hid from the master's sword...
Oh, how happy the young spouses are
Change your winter dress to a light one.
According to feudal orders, the master could punish his servants with death for “sinful love.” But the lovers managed to escape. The seasonal words “a change of warm clothes” convey a joyful feeling of liberation on the threshold of a new life.
In Busson’s poems the world of fairy tales and legends comes to life:
As a young nobleman
The fox turned around...
Spring evening.
Foggy evening in spring. The moon shines dimly through the haze, cherry trees are blooming, and in the semi-darkness fairy-tale creatures appear among people. Buson only draws the outlines of the picture, but the reader is confronted with a romantic image of a handsome young man in an ancient court attire.
Buson often resurrected images of antiquity in poetry:
Hall for overseas guests
It smells like mascara...
White plums in bloom.
This haiku takes us deep into history, into the eighth century. Special buildings were then built to receive “overseas guests.” One can imagine a poetry tournament in a beautiful old pavilion. Guests arriving from China write Chinese poems with fragrant ink, and Japanese poets compete with them in poetry in their native language. It is as if a scroll with an ancient picture is unfolding before the reader’s eyes.
Busson knew how to by simple means create poems of great lyrical power:
They passed days of spring,
When distant sounds sounded
Nightingale voices.
Kobayashi Issa created his poems at the end of the eighteenth - beginning of the nineteenth centuries, at the dawn of modern times. He came from a village. Most He spent his life among the urban poor, but retained his love for his native places and peasant labor, from which he was cut off:
With all my heart I honor
Resting in the midday heat,
People in the fields.
The biography of this outstanding master is tragic. All his life he struggled with poverty. His beloved child died. The poet spoke about his fate in poems full of aching pain, but a stream of folk humor also breaks through them. His poetry speaks of love for people, and not only for people, but also for all small creatures, helpless and offended. Watching a funny fight between frogs, he exclaims:
Hey, don't give in
Skinny frog!
Issa for you.
But at times the poet knew how to be harsh and merciless: he was disgusted by any injustice, and he created caustic, prickly epigrams.
Issa was the last major poet of feudal Japan. Haiku lost its importance for many decades. The revival of this form at the end of the nineteenth century already belongs to the history of modern poetry.
Matsuo Basho. Engraving by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi from the series “101 Views of the Moon.” 1891 The Library of Congress
Genre haiku originated from another classical genre - pentaverse tank in 31 syllables, known since the 8th century. There was a caesura in the tanka, at this point it “broke” into two parts, resulting in a tercet of 17 syllables and a couplet of 14 syllables - a kind of dialogue, which was often composed by two authors. This original tercet was called haiku, which literally means "initial stanzas". Then, when the tercet received independent meaning, became a genre with its own complex laws, it began to be called haiku.
The Japanese genius finds himself in brevity. Haiku tercet is the most laconic genre of Japanese poetry: only 17 syllables of 5-7-5 mor. Mora- a unit of measurement for the number (longitude) of a foot. Mora is the time required to pronounce a short syllable. in line. There are only three or four significant words in a 17-syllable poem. In Japanese, a haiku is written in one line from top to bottom. In European languages, haiku is written in three lines. Japanese poetry does not know rhymes; phonetics had developed by the 9th century Japanese language, including only 5 vowels (a, i, u, e, o) and 10 consonants (except for voiced ones). With such phonetic poverty, no interesting rhyme is possible. Formally, the poem is based on the count of syllables.
Until the 17th century, haiku writing was viewed as a game. Hai-ku became a serious genre with the appearance of the poet Matsuo Basho on the literary scene. In 1681, he wrote the famous poem about the crow and completely changed the world of haiku:
On a dead branch
The raven turns black.
Autumn evening. Translation by Konstantin Balmont.
Let us note that the Russian symbolist of the older generation, Konstantin Balmont, in this translation replaced the “dry” branch with a “dead” one, excessively, according to the laws of Japanese versification, dramatizing this poem. The translation turns out to violate the rule of avoiding evaluative words, definitions in general, except for the most ordinary ones. "Words of Haiku" ( haigo) should be distinguished by deliberate, precisely calibrated simplicity, difficult to achieve, but clearly felt insipidity. Nevertheless, this translation correctly conveys the atmosphere created by Basho in this haiku, which has become a classic, the melancholy of loneliness, the universal sadness.
There is another translation of this poem:
Here the translator added the word “lonely,” which is not in the Japanese text, but its inclusion is nevertheless justified, since “sad loneliness on an autumn evening” is the main theme of this haiku. Both translations are rated very highly by critics.
However, it is obvious that the poem is even simpler than the translators presented. If you give its literal translation and place it in one line, as the Japanese write haiku, you will get the following extremely short statement:
枯れ枝にからすのとまりけるや秋の暮れ
On a dry branch / a raven sits / autumn twilight
As we can see, the word “black” is missing in the original, it is only implied. The image of a “chilled raven on a bare tree” is Chinese in origin. "Autumn Twilight" ( aki no kure) can also be interpreted as “ late autumn", and like "autumn evening". Monochrome is a quality highly valued in the art of haiku; depicts the time of day and year, erasing all colors.
Haiku is least of all a description. It is necessary not to describe, the classics said, but to name things (literally “to give names to things” - to the hole) extremely in simple words and as if you were calling them for the first time.
Raven on a winter branch. Engraving by Watanabe Seitei. Around 1900 ukiyo-e.org Haiku are not miniatures, as they were long called in Europe. Greatest haiku poet late XIX- the beginning of the twentieth century, Masaoka Shiki, who died early from tuberculosis, wrote that haiku contains the whole world: a raging ocean, earthquakes, typhoons, the sky and stars - the whole earth with the highest peaks and the deepest sea depressions. The space of haiku is immense, infinite. In addition, haiku tends to be combined into cycles, into poetic diaries - and often life-long, so that the brevity of haiku can turn into its opposite: into long works - collections of poems (though of a discrete, intermittent nature ).
But the passage of time, past and future X does not depict aiku, haiku is a brief moment of the present - and nothing more. Here is an example of a haiku by Issa, perhaps the most beloved poet in Japan:
How the cherry blossomed!
She drove off her horse
And a proud prince.
Transience is an immanent property of life in the Japanese understanding; without it, life has no value or meaning. Fleetingness is both beautiful and sad because its nature is fickle and changeable.
An important place in haiku poetry is the connection with the four seasons - autumn, winter, spring and summer. The sages said: “He who has seen the seasons has seen everything.” That is, I saw birth, growing up, love, rebirth and death. Therefore, in classical haiku necessary element- this is a “seasonal word” ( kigo), which connects the poem with the season. Sometimes these words are difficult for foreigners to recognize, but the Japanese know them all. Detailed kigo databases, some of thousands of words, are now being searched on Japanese networks.
In the above haiku about the crow, the seasonal word is very simple - "autumn." The coloring of this poem is very dark, emphasized by the atmosphere of an autumn evening, literally “autumn twilight,” that is, black against the background of deepening twilight.
Look how gracefully Basho introduces obligatory sign season into a poem about separation:
For a spike of barley
I grabbed, looking for support...
How difficult is the moment of separation!
“A spike of barley” directly indicates the end of summer.
Or in the tragic poem of the poetess Chiyo-ni on the death of her little son:
O my dragonfly catcher!
Where in an unknown country
Did you run in today?
"Dragonfly" is a seasonal word for summer.
Another “summer” poem by Basho:
Summer herbs!
Here they are, the fallen warriors
Dreams of glory...
Basho is called the poet of wanderings: he wandered a lot around Japan in search of true haiku, and, when setting off, he did not care about food, lodging, tramps, or the vicissitudes of the path in the remote mountains. On the way, he was accompanied by the fear of death. A sign of this fear was the image of “Bones Whitening in the Field” - this was the name of the first book of his poetic diary, written in the genre haibun(“prose in haiku style”):
Maybe my bones
The wind will whiten... It's in the heart
It breathed cold on me.
After Basho, the theme of “death on the way” became canonical. Here is his last poem, “The Dying Song”:
I got sick on the way,
And everything runs and circles my dream
Through scorched fields.
Imitating Basho, haiku poets always composed “last stanzas” before they died.
"True" ( Makoto-no) the poems of Basho, Buson, Issa are close to our contemporaries. The historical distance is, as it were, removed in them due to the immutability of the haiku language, its formulaic nature, which has been preserved throughout the history of the genre from the 15th century to the present day.
The main thing in the worldview of a haikaist is an acute personal interest in the form of things, their essence, and connections. Let us remember the words of Basho: “Learn from the pine tree what pine is, learn from bamboo what bamboo is.” Japanese poets cultivated meditative contemplation of nature, peering into the objects surrounding a person in the world, into the endless cycle of things in nature, into its bodily, sensual features. The poet's goal is to observe nature and intuitively discern its connections with the human world; haikaists rejected ugliness, pointlessness, utilitarianism, and abstraction.
Basho created not only haiku poetry and haibun prose, but also the image of a poet-wanderer - a noble man, outwardly ascetic, in a poor dress, far from everything worldly, but also aware of the sad involvement in everything happening in the world, preaching conscious “simplification”. The haiku poet is characterized by an obsession with wandering, the Zen Buddhist ability to embody the great in the small, awareness of the frailty of the world, the fragility and changeability of life, the loneliness of man in the universe, the tart bitterness of existence, a sense of the inseparability of nature and man, hypersensitivity to all natural phenomena and the change of seasons .
The ideal of such a person is poverty, simplicity, sincerity, a state of spiritual concentration necessary to comprehend things, but also lightness, transparency of verse, the ability to depict the eternal in the current.
At the end of these notes, we present two poems by Issa, a poet who treated with tenderness everything small, fragile, and defenseless:
Quietly, quietly crawl,
Snail, on the slope of Fuji,
Up to the very heights!Hiding under the bridge,
Sleeping on a snowy winter night
Homeless child.
Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry. It is based on three lines. According to its rules, after three lines of text there is a clear break, which in the Russian translation is sometimes reinforced with the help of an ellipsis.
How to write haiku in Russian? First of all, you should decide on a topic. Typically this type of Japanese poetry is used to describe nature, everyday things and situations. Therefore, we can take everything that surrounds us as the basis for haiku.
To write haiku we will need:
- Dictionary,
- Notebook,
- Preferably a computer with a text editor.
Instructions for writing haiku
- Reflect on the main subject of your short literary work. Write down words that are associated with it in a notepad.
- Break all your thoughts into three parts - three lines. First, define the scene, then expand the description by adding your feelings and observations. Add movement. Keep it extremely simple - this is one of the main rules of writing haiku.
- Now polish your haiku tercets: the first and third lines should consist of five syllables, the second - seven. When answering the question of how to write haiku, the most important thing is to have a sufficient vocabulary (in your head or use dictionaries). By replacing words that are similar in meaning but different in length, you will get the correct form.
Tips and warnings for haiku writers:
- Express only one mood or emotion in haiku. Express a common opinion or new perspective on a subject.
- Some authors add pauses to their haiku. They indicate them using ellipses, semicolons, dashes, and even circles. This helps you express your thoughts better.
A classic theme for haiku writing is nature. Many traditional Japanese tercets contain words denoting the seasons or characterizing their phenomena (snowfall, fireflies, blooming crocuses, gusts of wind, etc.).
Haiku is one of the best known and most widespread genres of Japanese poetry. True, not everyone can comprehend the meaning of short three-line poems, since they contain a deep connection between nature and man. Only very sensual and sophisticated natures, who, moreover, are characterized by observation, can appreciate how beautiful and sublime these poems are. After all, haiku is just one moment of life, captured in words. And if a person has never paid attention to the sunrise, the sound of the surf or the night song of a cricket, then it will be very difficult for him to be imbued with the beauty and brevity of haiku.
There are no analogues to haiku poems in any poetry in the world. This is explained by the fact that the Japanese have a special worldview, a very authentic and original culture, and different principles of education. By nature, representatives of this nation are philosophers and contemplators. At the moments of their highest elation, such people produce poems known throughout the world as haiku.
The principle of their creation is quite simple and, at the same time, complex. The poem consists of three short lines, the first of which contains initial information about the place, time and essence of the event. In turn, the second line reveals the meaning of the first, filling the moment with special charm. The third line represents conclusions that very often reflect the author’s attitude to what is happening, and therefore can be very unexpected and original. Thus, the first two lines of the poem are descriptive, and the last one conveys the feelings that what he saw inspired the person.
In Japanese poetry, there are quite strict rules for writing haiku, which are based on principles such as rhythm, breathing technique and language features. Thus, authentic Japanese haiku are created according to the 5-7-5 principle. This means that the first and last lines must have exactly five syllables each, and the second line must have seven. In addition, the entire poem must consist of 17 words. Naturally, these rules can only be observed by people who not only have a rich imagination and an inner world devoid of conventions, but also an excellent literary style, as well as the ability to express their thoughts succinctly and colorfully.
It is worth noting that the 5-7-5 rule does not apply to haiku poems if they are created in other languages. This is due, first of all, to the linguistic features of Japanese speech, its rhythm and melodiousness. Therefore, haiku written in Russian can contain an arbitrary number of syllables in each line. The same goes for word count. Only the three-line form of the poem remains unchanged, in which there is no rhyme, but at the same time the phrases are constructed in such a way that they create a special rhythm, conveying to the listener a certain impulse that forces a person to mentally draw a picture of what he heard.
There is another rule of haiku, which, however, the authors adhere to at their own discretion. It lies in the contrast of phrases, when the living is adjacent to the dead, and the power of nature opposes the skill of man. However, it is worth noting that contrasting haiku have much more imagery and attractiveness, creating fanciful pictures of the universe in the imagination of the reader or listener.
Writing haiku does not require focused effort or concentration. The process of writing such poems does not occur at the will of consciousness, but is dictated by our subconscious. Only fleeting phrases inspired by what they saw can fully correspond to the concept of haiku and claim the title of literary masterpieces.
Japan is a country with a very unique culture. Its formation was greatly facilitated by the peculiarities of the geographical location and geological factors. The Japanese were able to settle in the valleys and coasts, but they constantly suffer from typhoons, earthquakes, and tsunamis. Therefore, it is not surprising that their national consciousness deifies natural forces, and poetic thought strives to penetrate to the very essence of things. This desire is embodied in laconic forms of art.
Features of Japanese poetry
Before considering examples of haiku, it is necessary to pay attention to the features of the art of the Land of the Rising Sun. This brevity is expressed in different ways. It is also characteristic of the Japanese garden with its empty space, and origami, and works of painting and poetry. The main principles in the art of the Land of the Rising Sun are naturalness, understatement, and minimalism.
IN Japanese words don't rhyme. Therefore in given language The poetry familiar to the average Russian citizen could not emerge. However, the Land of the Rising Sun gave the world no less beautiful works called haiku. Wisdom is hidden in them eastern people, his unsurpassed ability to understand through natural phenomena the meaning of existence and the essence of man himself.
Haiku - the poetic art of the Land of the Rising Sun
The careful attitude of the Japanese towards their past, towards the heritage of antiquity, as well as strict adherence to the rules and norms of versification, turned haiku into a genuine art form. In Japan, haiku is a separate type of skill - for example, like the art of calligraphy. It acquired its true capacity at the end of the 17th century. The famous Japanese poet Matsuo Basho managed to raise it to an unsurpassed height.
The person portrayed in the poem is always against the backdrop of nature. Haiku is intended to convey and show phenomena, but not to name them directly. These short poems are sometimes called "pictures of nature" in the art of poetry. It is no coincidence that artistic canvases were also created for haiku.
Size
Many readers wonder how to write haiku. Examples of these poems show: haiku is a short work that consists of only three lines. In this case, the first line should contain five syllables, the second - seven, the third - also five. For centuries, haiku has been the primary poetic form. Brevity, semantic capacity and mandatory appeal to nature are the main characteristics of this genre. In reality, there are many more rules for adding haiku. It’s hard to believe, but in Japan the art of composing such miniatures has been taught for decades. And painting lessons were also added to these activities.
The Japanese also understand haiku as a work consisting of three phrases of 5, 7, 5 syllables. The difference in the perception of these poems different peoples is that in other languages they are usually written in three lines. In Japanese they are written on one line. And before they could be seen written from top to bottom.
Haiku poems: examples for children
Often schoolchildren receive homework assignments to learn or compose haiku. These short poems are easy to read and quick to remember. This is demonstrated by the following example of haiku (2nd grade - too early time, to take Japanese poetry, but if necessary, students can refer to this tercet):
The sun is setting
And cobwebs too
Melting in the darkness...
The author of this laconic poem is Basho. Despite the capacity of the tercet, the reader must use his imagination and partially participate in the creative work of the Japanese poet. The following haiku is also written by Basho. In it, the poet depicts the carefree life of a little bird:
In free meadows
The lark bursts into song
Without work and worries...
Kigo
Many readers are wondering how to write haiku in Russian. Examples of these tercets show that one of the main features of this genre of poetry is the correlation internal state person with the time of year. This rule can also be used when composing your own haiku. The rules of classical versification required the use of a special “seasonal” word - kigo. It is a word or phrase that indicates the season described in the poem.
For example, the word "snow" would indicate winter. The phrase “Hazy moon” may indicate the onset of spring. Mention of sakura (Japanese cherry tree) will also indicate spring. The word kinge - “goldfish” - will indicate that the poet depicts summer in his poem. This custom of using kigo came into the haiku genre from other forms. However, these words also help the poet choose laconic words and give the meaning of the work even greater depth.
The following haiku example will tell about summer:
The sun is shining.
The birds became quiet at noon.
Summer has come.
And after reading the following Japanese tercet, you can understand that the season being described is spring:
Cherry blossoms.
Dali was shrouded in fog.
Dawn has arrived.
Two parts in a tercet
One more characteristic feature haiku is the use of the "cutting word", or kireji. To do this, Japanese poets used various words - for example, ya, kana, keri. However, they are not translated into Russian because they have a very vague meaning. In essence, they represent a kind of semantic mark that divides the tercet into two parts. When translating into other languages, a dash or an exclamation point is usually placed instead of the kireji.
Deviation from the generally accepted norm
There are always artists or poets who strive to break the generally accepted classic rules. The same goes for writing haiku. If the standard for writing these tercets presupposes a 5-7-5 structure, the use of “cutting” and “seasonal” words, then at all times there have been innovators who in their creativity sought to ignore these instructions. There is an opinion that haiku, which do not have a seasonal word, should be classified as senryu - humorous tercets. However, such a categorization does not take into account the existence of flour - haiku, in which there is no indication of the season, and which simply does not need it to reveal its meaning.
Haiku without a seasonal word
Let's look at an example of haiku that can be classified in this group:
The cat is walking
Along the city street
The windows are open.
Here, the indication of what time of year the animal left home is not important - the reader can observe the picture of the cat leaving home, completing the complete picture in his imagination. Maybe something happened at home that the owners didn’t pay attention to. open window, and the cat slipped into it and went for a long walk. Maybe the owner of the house is anxiously waiting for her four-legged pet to return. IN in this example haiku does not necessarily need to indicate the season to describe feelings.
Is there always a hidden meaning in Japanese tercets?
Considering various examples haiku, you can see the simplicity of these tercets. Many of them lack hidden meaning. They describe ordinary natural phenomena perceived by the poet. The following example of haiku in Russian, authored by the famous Japanese poet Matsuo Basho, describes a picture of nature:
On a dead branch
The raven turns black.
Autumn evening.
This is how haiku differs from the Western poetic tradition. Many of them have no hidden meaning, but reflect the true principles of Zen Buddhism. In the West, it is customary to fill every thing with hidden symbolism. This meaning is not found in the following example of nature haiku, also written by Basho:
I'm walking along the path up the mountain.
ABOUT! How wonderful!
Violet!
General and specific in haiku
It is known that the Japanese people have a cult of nature. In the Land of the Rising Sun, the surrounding world is treated in a completely special way - for its inhabitants, nature is a separate spiritual world. In haiku, the motive of the universal connection of things is manifested. Specific things that are described in tercets are always connected with the general cycle; they become part of a series of endless changes. Even the four seasons of the year are divided by Japanese poets into shorter subseasons.
First drop
It fell from the sky onto my hand.
Autumn is approaching.
James Hackett, who was one of the most influential Western writers of haiku, believed that these tercets convey sensations “as they are.” And this is precisely what is characteristic of Basho’s poetry, which shows the immediacy of the current moment. Hackett gives the following tips to help you write your own haiku:
- The source of the poem must be life itself. They can and should describe daily events that at first glance seem ordinary.
- When composing haiku, one should contemplate nature in the immediate vicinity.
- It is necessary to identify yourself with what is described in the tercet.
- It is always better to think alone.
- It's better to use simple language.
- It is advisable to mention the time of year.
- Haiku should be simple and clear.
Hackett also said that anyone who wants to create beautiful haiku should remember the words of Basho: “Haiku is a finger that points to the moon.” If this finger is decorated with rings, then the attention of the audience will be focused on these jewelry, and not on the heavenly body. The finger does not need any decoration. In other words, various rhymes, metaphors, similes and other literary devices are unnecessary in haiku.
