From the
materials prepared for the class, I had some thoughts:
On haikai, the first part on its origin during the
medieval era, meant to be an interaction between the vernacular and the
classical language through the inversion of traditional images, made me
remember Mikhail Bahktin’s observations about the carnivalesque. During this
era, artistic representation portrayed a certain dynamic between classic,
traditional, ‘high’ imagery and vernacular, popular, ‘lesser’ imagery, where we
could see the interactions between them as a symbiotic relationship where one
renews the other; something that can be also associated with hokku structure, by
placing classic seasonal words in the first part, and then having more contemporary
expressions in the second part, in order to “give new life” to this imagery.
On hokku, the description of its form brought
the introduction of a syntactic break, or cutting word, used to break the hokku
into two parts, interested me when it was mentioned
that English translations usually mark this moment visually with a dash. I
wondered whether that choice was made according to the Japanese (do they also
mark visually this moment in hokku? Or is it meant to be interpreted by the
reader?), or if that choice was made on grounds of interpretation aid for the
reader: do the translators of this genre consider that readers might not be
able to appreciate the break, the cutting, if not visually pointed out?
On Janine Beichman’s lecture, I learned quickly
that not only is haiku the shortest form of poetry in the world, but that it
has had throughout history different associations in Japan; with her choice of
examples, we can appreciate that some of the poems have a very surreal,
symbolic quality to the images they portray, while others carry a very
down-to-earth, simple tone to describe day-to-day life. As for the subject,
haiku can be written about external imagery or
stimuli, but they can also be autobiographical or auto-referential,
to speak about oneself. With this distinction about subject, Beichman’s comment
about Basho (through Shiki)’s relationship with haiku as a trance while being
wholly present, calling it ‘mindfulness’, that produces a poem which is not
completely done without the reader’s imagination.
Haiku is, then, an incomplete form that
requires participation from the reader, and, also, the translator; an example
of this is Janine’s reading of X. J. Kennedy’s translation on Basho’s haiku,
where we see the translator’s imagination on choices like ‘moon-moth’ for
butterfly. And it is in this incompleteness where Janine comments on the
permissiveness or generosity of haiku, because it allows for multiple
interpretations of the same poem, encouraging freedom through minimalism.
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