HAIKU is a literary form that many Westerners are only vaguely familiar with, if at all. Western students of literature are aware of haiku as a poetry form, of course, but they rarely can appreciate its simplicity or beauty since they must read the poems in translation
Scholars are not certain when the first Japanese poem was written, but it probably was in the sixth or seventh century. At first there were long poems that existed along with shorter
ones. The longer poems, choka, sometimes had between 50 and 100 lines. The important rule
was that lines of five and seven syllables must alternate and that the last line must have seven
syllables. By the ninth century the shorter form, tanka, had become more popular. Tanka was
composed of five lines with a total of thirty-one syllables in a 5-7-5-7-7 sequence.
During the Heian period, poetry was a part of life in the royal court, where people had time to compose poems daily. Those of high rank were expected to write witty and beautiful poems. In the eleventh century poetry contests were held. These produced renga: One person
would provide the last two lines of a poem, then another person had to compose the first three
lines. When put together, all five lines had to make a meaningful thirty-one-syllable poem.
It was from renga that haikai, the predecessor of haiku, was born. Haikai consisted of the first
three lines of the thirty-one-syllable renga poems. Haikai become popular during the Edo
period. During the Meiji Era this poetry form was modernized and became even more popular.
Thus haiku came into existence.
What is haiku? There are four general rules, although they are not always followed. The first is that the poem must have seventeen syllables in a 5-7-5 sequence. The second is that the
poem must make some reference to nature This reference can be an implied allusion instead of
a direct statement. The third rule is that the poem must refer to something concrete, not to
an abstraction or generalization. And the last rule is that the reference must be to something
that exists now, not something from the past.
The aim of haiku is to make the reader feel what the writer has felt. Special words and
phrases are used as references to nature, to set the tone to provide keys to deeper meanings.
The moon, for example, represents autumn and the month of September. Other favorite subjects
of haiku are flowers, birds, snow, falling leaves, love, and life's brief duration.
There is no Western poetry form that is as strictly defined and structured as haiku. The
form that comes closest is probably the epigram, a short, terse poem that has one single thought,
often expressed in a witty, satirical way. The limerick in English has a structure of five lines
with a fixed rhythm and rhyme pattern. But the limerick is usually a light, humorous verse.
Haiku is a unique verse form. As such it has attracted the attention and interest of those
outside Japan. But in trying to write haiku in English, certain problems are encountered. For
one thing it is difficult to retain the seventeen syllable pattern. One reason is that the syllable,
as a unit, is defined differently in English and in Japanese. Another is that certain words can
be used for punctuation in Japanese haiku, but this device cannot be employed in English
haiku . These problems aside, English haiku poets disagree on the use of rhyme and on the
necessity of using words and phrases that allude to nature. These difficulties suggest that
it may be impossible to limit English haiku to the rules that define the original Japanese form.
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