Haiku

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Haiku ( Japanese 俳 句 ; plural: haiku, also: haikus) is a traditional Japanese form of poetry that is now widespread worldwide. The (or the) haiku is considered to be the shortest form of poetry in the world.

The most important haiku poets include Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), Yosa Buson (1716–1783), Kobayashi Issa (1763–1827) and Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902). Bashō renewed the Haikai poetry with his students and made it possible for it to be recognized as serious literature. Shiki is considered to be the founder of modern haiku. It was he who coined the term haiku (compared to the older haikai or hokku ).

Japanese haiku mostly consist of three word groups of 5 - 7 - 5 sound units ( moras ), whereby the words in the word groups are lined up vertically. However, there are critical voices about the distribution of syllables like Vicente Haya or Jaime Lorente. Indispensable components of haiku are concreteness and the reference to the present. Traditional haiku in particular indicate a season with the kigo . The incomplete, open texts, which are only completed in the experience of the reader, are also considered to be an essential feature. Not everything is said in the text; feelings are rarely mentioned. They should only be revealed through the specific things listed and the context.

Some of the Haijin (haiku authors) distinguish between Haiku and Senryū . The other part sees the umbrella term in haiku. Both are formally identical, as their characteristics are brevity, concreteness, presence and openness. The haiku that are more personal and emotional are called senryū.

In German, haiku are usually written in three lines. Until the turn of the millennium, the requirement of 5-7-5 syllables was also in effect. However, most German-speaking Haijin have moved away from this. They indicate that Japanese sound units are all the same length and carry less information than syllables in European languages. “Stockholm” has two syllables, but six moras. 17 Japanese sound units roughly correspond to the information content of 10-14 German syllables. That is why it has meanwhile become common practice among many haiku writers in European languages ​​to get by with fewer than 17 syllables without losing the train of thought or the image shown.

Modern haiku schools around the world also question not only traditional forms, but also some rules of text design, and try to break new ground.

construction

Japanese poetry is not syllable but quantizing. A traditional haiku consists of a verse to three word groups with five, seven and five Japanese mores: 5-7-5. When translated or reproduced in European languages, the haiku appears as a three-line line according to these word groups .

A Japanese syllable has a mora if the vowel is short and the syllable ends openly. A long vowel has two moras. An n at the end of a syllable or a doubled consonant (sokuon, literally "tense sound") also has a mora. Most purely Japanese words are made up of syllables with a mora. Syllables with several mores are mostly of Sino-Japanese origin.

An example:

Nippon wa is the first line of a haiku and consists of five mora as follows:

Hiragana
Rōmaji Ni p po n wa

General

The following quote comes from the preface of the Kokinshu (collection of old and new poems) from the year 905:

“Japanese poetry has the human heart as its seed, and innumerable leaves of words spring from it. Many things take hold of people in this life: they then try to express their feelings through images that they take from what they see and hear. "

Dietrich Krusche names principles that usually apply to traditional haiku: A haiku is concrete. The subject of the haiku is a natural object outside of human nature. A one-off situation or a one-off event is depicted. This situation or event is represented as present. There is a reference to the seasons in the haiku.

Kigo , special words or phrases that are generally associated with a certain season in Japan, are used to refer to the season .

The things shown are representatives of the moments experienced and the feelings associated with them. Nature reflects the soul. Objects are used representative and symbolically. A picture as an example: falling leaves, association: autumn, feeling: melancholy. In addition, some authors of the literature refer to a more extensive, even more culture-specific symbolism. In her opinion, certain objects are representative of religious, social and philosophical topics. Bodmershof mentions the falling rain as a symbol of death and the house as a symbol of the earthly body. Japanese samurai and Zen monks wrote death poems ( jisei no ku ), sometimes in the form of haiku.

Many haiku are represented in calligraphic form. In Japanese , the Mores number results in a speaking act that is reminiscent of the same as rhymes in German.

history

Memorial to the “frog haiku” by Matsuo Bashō in Tokyo's Kiyosumi Garden
Frog Getsuju

Haiku is related to the five-part tanka with traditionally 5-7-5-7-7 moras and the renga as a chain of tanka. Originally, several poets wrote Tanka on social occasions in joint improvisation. The first poet created the Hokku (upper gallery, 5-7-5), the second the Matsuku (lower gallery, 7-7). This form of joint poetry was also known as waka (answer poem). Whole chain poems were later written in larger societies, for example the 36-stanza Kasen . It was characterized by clear guidelines for the content of individual verses.

The first documented detachment of Hokku as an independent lyrical form can be found in the 13th century. In the following period, the Hokku was popular as a joke and joke poem among courtiers and samurai. From the 15th century, the Hokku began to establish itself alongside the Tanka as an independent form of verse. It was still primarily about playing with words and images.

In the 16th century with the beginning of the Edo period, the shape that we call classic haiku today was created. The prerequisite for this were some peculiarities of the Edo period. Society was shaped by a feudal class and status system. In addition, Japan closed itself off almost completely from the outside world. This created a self-contained, seemingly unchangeable world. Through this precisely defined system of values ​​and symbols, poets and recipients had a common, clearly delineated background for centuries. Changes only took place in detail.

Today Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) is considered the first great haiku poet. His frog haiku is arguably the most cited haiku in the world.

Japanese transcription translation Translation variant

古 池 や
蛙 飛 び 込 む
水 の 音

furu ike ya
kawazu tobi komu
mizu no oto

The old pond:
a frog leaps into it.
Oh! The sound of the water.

Ancient pond.
A frog jumps into it.
Plop.

Buson and Kobayashi Issa were also great haiku poets . Issa broke with the conventional 5-7-5 form at times. His works, which rejected the increasing sophistication of haiku, seem to be based on a deep love for humans and creatures, which was often spiced with humor:


But what kind of
face is the frog on the lily pad ?

It is unclear exactly when the term haiku was coined. It is probably formed from the hai of Haikai no Renga and the ku of the term hokku . It received general circulation through the innovator of haiku poetry, Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902).

According to Masaoka Shiki, haiku poetry split in two directions. His two most important students, Takahama Kyoshi (1874–1959) and Kawahigashi Hekigotō (1873–1937), gave Japanese haiku divergent impulses that continue to have an effect today. Hekigotō continued Shiki's reforms and experimented with the shape. Kyoshi invented the "traditional haiku" as a countermovement to these experiments. The considerable influence of Kyoshi can still be seen today in the widespread use of “traditional haiku” in Japan. Many respected poets outgrew his school ( Mizuhara Shuōshi (1892–1981)). The free form of haiku developed from Hekigotō's movement. Important haiku poets such as Ippekiro Nakatsuka (1887–1946), Ogiwara Seisensui (1884–1976), Ozaki Hōsai (1885–1926) and above all Taneda Santōka (1882–1940), who is one of the most widely read haiku authors in Japan, come from this line.

Contemporary ( gendai ) Japanese haiku also has one of its roots here. It emerged as a liberal haiku movement after World War II, due to the experience of Japanese ultra-nationalism. The haiku poets of the shinkō haiku undō (newly formed haiku movement), who no longer adhered to the specifications of the “traditional haiku” according to Takahama Kyoshi, were persecuted, arrested and tortured and their magazines banned. Takahama Kyoshi himself was seen as the main culprit after the war. He was president of the Haiku department of the "Patriotic Society for Japanese Literature" ( Nihon bungaku hōkoku kai ), a state propaganda organization subordinate to the intelligence service to control cultural activities.

In today's Gendai Haiku movement there are different poetic positions that tolerate each other. Some poets cling to the 5-7-5 pattern, others just stick to the season word, and still others reject both.

Influence of Buddhism

Chan Buddhism ( Zen Buddhism in Japan ), which came to Japan from China , also influenced haiku poetry. Some haiku, which at first glance only seem to describe natural or everyday occurrences, also reveal a religious meaning at second glance. A ryokan haiku refers e.g. B. in addition to the experience of a full moon night also on Zen Buddhism:

Blankets on the grass,
one night without a house -
rich only from the moon.

The moon (as a full moon) symbolically stands as an empty circle for Zen Buddhism and lingering under the open sky without a house indicates the so-called homeless status of a Buddhist monk. The influence of Wang Wei's poems , who turned to Chan Buddhism, as a model for a Haiku by Joseki is also clear.

I want to play on her
now that the moon and I are
all alone.

By "her" is meant a large, thirteen-string Japanese zither called a koto . Here the moon stands again as a symbol for Zen Buddhism, whereby being alone stands as sitting in meditation ( zazen ). There is a very similar poem by Wang Wei with the same meaning:

Sitting alone in the deeply dark bamboo grove,
beating the zither with warbling singing,
People don't know about this deep forest,
Only the full moon comes with its shine

Playing the zither has a meditative meaning for Chinese artists and offers an opportunity to immerse yourself in and become one with the Dao .

In the US haiku scene in particular in the 1970s, haiku and zen were often seen as inseparable. Richard Gilbert says in an interview with Udo Wenzel:

“I think the question of Zen in haiku, or about meditation and poetry (and the arts) is a sensitive question and slips into ethereal heights, in the process it loses its soul. I don't think there is a 'zen haiku' as such, only people who believe it is what they are. There are haiku that are directly related to the Zen experience, just as there are baseball and tennis haiku. Nonetheless, there is a long and venerable history of Zen interpretation, or 'Zen reading' or 'Zen contemplation' of haiku, albeit generally not outside of Zen institutions.

A somewhat similar interpretation can be found in RH Blyth , whose multi-volume work had a direct influence on the ' Beat poets ' (as described in Jack Kerouac's novel ' The Dharma Bums '.

Because of this focus of interpretation, historically, at least in North America, a gesture that resembles Zen seems to have been overemphasized at times, to the point that the main purpose, yes, the greatness of haiku as a literary art form has been suppressed and severely misinterpreted. Blyth himself, despite his brilliance and knowledge of Zen, was not a Zen practitioner in the traditional Japanese sense when we mean someone who practices meditation within a school and lineage under the guidance of a teacher who is generally recognized for doing the To have completed Zen practice. Neither did a large part of the Western commentators who applied zen-like interpretations to haiku. "

Famous haiku poets (overview)

Openness to different readings

Japanese haiku are occasionally written in hiragana , that is, in pure phonetic transcription without the meaning of specifying word characters . For example, a famous haiku by Kobayashi Issa reads:

Japanese transcription

ひ る か ら は
ち と か げ も あ り
く も の み ね

hi ru ka ra wa
chi to ka ge mo a ri
ku mo no mi ne

In addition, in Japanese, haiku are usually not put in several lines, so this haiku is simply written as follows:

ひ る か ら は ち と か げ も あ リ く も の み ね

Due to the high number of homonyms in Japanese, this poem can be understood in two completely different ways, which would be defined in a spelling with Kanji as demonstrated below , but which are usually deliberately left open by not using them:

Reading Japanese transcription translation
1st reading

昼 か ら は
ち と 影 も 在 り
雲 の 峰

hiru kara wa
chito kage mo ari
kumo no mine

From lunchtime
it is a little more shady;
a cloudy sky

2nd reading

ヒ ル 蚊 ら 蜂
と か げ も 蟻
蜘蛛 蚤 ね

hiru ka-ra hachi
tokage mo ari
kumo nomi ne

Leeches, mosquitoes, bees,
lizards, also ants,
spiders and fleas, right?

The appeal of such ambiguities can almost only be reproduced in the Japanese language, an adequate rewrite is hardly possible.

Western reading styles

Roland Barthes differentiates between the different possibilities of shark reading. He considers a Western reading of haiku that interprets it symbolically and thereby assumes a sense that tends towards the metaphysical to be inappropriately Eurocentric . Such a reading would contradict the intention of the haiku that "word and thing fall into one". Barthes compares the haiku with the satori of Zen Buddhism and sees an essential analogy in simply flashing a truth :

"The West soaks all things with meaning ... we systematically subject the utterances (by hastily plugging the gaps in which the emptiness of our language could become visible) to one or the other of these two significations (the active production of signs): symbol and conclusion, Metaphor and syllogism. The haiku, whose sentences are simple and fluent - in a word, acceptable (as they say in linguistics ) - is assigned to one of these two realms of meaning. "

- Roland Barthes : The collapse of meaning. In: Roland Barthes: The realm of signs . Frankfurt am Main 1981, pp. 65, 96.

Attempts at interpretation of the western kind, "whether deciphering , formalization or tautology ... which are intended to penetrate the meaning , that is to break into it, [could] only miss the haiku, because the reading work that is connected with it lies in it to keep the language in suspension, and not to provoke it. ”On the other hand, it is more a matter of“ shaking the mind and letting it fall out like the tooth of the absurdity bite that the Zen student should be in the face of a koan . "

Barthes' characterization, however, refers at best to one of many currents within haiku poetry. Their Zen orientation in particular is viewed critically.

Haiku outside of Japan

It was not until the beginning of the 20th century that haiku gained importance in the western world. It first spread in France and in the English-speaking world. An important pioneer was the Englishman Reginald Horace Blyth , who temporarily worked as a teacher at the Japanese court and from 1949 to 1952 published a four-volume anthology entitled "Haiku".

German-speaking haiku

Haiku has gained a foothold in German-speaking countries since the 1920s. Here are Rainer Maria Rilke , Franz Blei , Yvan Goll , Peter Altenberg , alfred mombert and Arno Holz called. From the late 1930s onwards, the haiku collection, its yellow chrysanthemums , had a great influence ! by Anna von Rottauscher and the Haiku by Imma von Bodmershof . The Nuremberg writer Fitzgerald Kusz wrote numerous haikus in Middle Franconian dialect.

The view held by the German Haiku Society until the beginning of the 21st century that haiku were purely natural poems is now outdated. Andreas Wittbrodt attributes this widespread orientation to the fact that authors and translators from Inner Emigration were style-forming for German-speaking Haijin.

In the middle of the 20th century, the syllable pattern 5-7-5, spread over three lines, was mostly used. It is still described as school-fair or traditional, but it is controversial. Many authors now write in the so-called free style, among other things because syllables in the German language can be formed much more freely than Moren in Japanese and therefore do not necessarily result in a rhythm.

The modern German-speaking haiku remains a snapshot. An event is closely observed and a mood is expressed. Often there is a leap in thought or a new level while reading the haiku.

For a long time confined to a small community of shark writers, a lively scene has developed in recent years. It is partly represented in the German Haiku Society, whose homepage has a page with current authors. The quarterly publication of the DHG is called Sommergras .

literature

Among others by Ian Fleming , a haiku becomes the central title element in the novel You Only Live Twice .

expenditure

  • Reginald H. Blyth: Haiku. Hokuseido Press, Tokyo 1982 ff., ISBN 4-590-00572-7 .
    1. Eastern culture. Pp. 2-343.
    2. Jump. Pp. 345-640.
    3. Summer, autumn. Pp. 641-976.
    4. Winter. Pp. 977-1300.
  • Manfred Hausmann (transferred.): Love, death and full moon nights. Japanese poems . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1951.
  • Dietrich Krusche (Ed.): Haiku. Japanese poems . Dtv, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-423-12478-4 .
  • Ekkehard May (Ed.): Shômon. Dieterich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Mainz 2000.
    1. The gate of the hermitage to the banana tree, haiku by Bashô's master students Kikaku, Kyorai, Ransetsu. 2000, ISBN 3-87162-050-5 .
    2. Haiku by Bashô's master students Jôsô, Izen, Bonchô, Kyoriku, Sampû, Shikô, Yaba. 2002, ISBN 3-87162-057-2 .
    3. CHÛKÔ - The new blossom. 2006, ISBN 3-87162-063-7 .
  • Jan Ulenbrook (Ed.): Haiku. Japanese three-liner. Reclam, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-15-050048-6 .
  • Robert F. Wittkamp: Santôka. Haiku, hiking, sake. German Society for Nature and Ethnology of East Asia (OAG), Tôkyô 1996, ISBN 4-87238-007-X .
  • Yoel Hoffmann: Japanese Death Poems written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death. Charles E. Tuttle Company, Rutland / Vermont / Tokyo, Japan International Standard Book 1992, ISBN 0-8048-1505-4 .
  • Gerolf Coudenhove : Japanese Seasons. Tanka and haiku from thirteen centuries. Manesse, 1963/2015. ISBN 978-3-7175-4088-5 .
    • Full moon and cicadas - Japanese verses and colors. Sigbert Mohn Verlag, C. Bertelsmann, 1955.
  • Erika Wübbena (Ed.): Haiku with a head. Hamburger Haiku Verlag, 2003, ISBN 3-937257-04-7 .
  • Durs Grünbein: Praise of the typhoon (travel diaries in Haikus). ( Insel-Bücherei 1308). Insel Verlag, Leipzig / Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-458-19308-1 .
  • Toshimitsu Hasumi: Zen in the Art of Poetry. Otto Wilhelm Barth Verlag, 1987, ISBN 3-502-64271-0 .
  • Jonathan Clements: The Moon in the Pines. The Art Institute of Chicago, 2000, ISBN 0-7112-1587-1 .
  • Haiku Today: Haiku Yearbook. Cloud Path Publishing House, Tübingen. Published annually since 2003.
  • The frog haiku and the Asian mindset. edition vernissage , Heidelberg 2009, ISBN 978-3-941812-00-0 .
  • Heinrich Heil: In a flash of the perfect. Works by James Lee Byars and 100 HAIKU for now. Piet Meyer Verlag, Bern 2010, ISBN 978-3-905799-08-8 .
  • Josef Guggenmos : Rounded silence. Selected Haiku 1982-2002. Haiku Verlag, Hamburg, ISBN 3-937257-09-8 .
  • Rainer Stolz, Udo Wenzel (Ed.): Haiku here and today. dtv, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-423-14102-4 .
  • Armin Darvishia: Haiku, Bonn 2014, ISBN 1-5031-5743-1 , ISBN 978-1-5031-5743-9 .
  • Ute Guzzoni and Michiko Yoneda (ed. And translation): Between two worlds. 300 Haiku on rivers and fog and sea ... Japanese originals and German translation. Publishing house Karl Alber, Freiburg i. Br. / Munich. ISBN 978-3-495-48716-7

Secondary literature

  • Reginald H. Blyth: A History of Haiku. Hokuseido Press, Tokyo 1976-1977.
    1. From the beginnings up to Issa . 1976.
    2. From Issa to the present . 1977.
  • Andreas Wittbrodt: Hototogisu is not a nightingale. Traditional Japanese poetry forms in German-language poetry (1849–1999). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89971-257-9 .
  • Annika Reich : What is Haiku? On the construction of the Japanese nation between Orient and Occident (= spectrum, volume 73, Berlin series on society, economy and politics in developing countries). Lit, Münster / Hamburg / London 2000, ISBN 3-8258-4905-8 .
  • Günter Wohlfart : Zen and Haiku. Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-15-009647-2 .
  • Arata Takeda : Exuberance through excess. Problems translating a form - using the example of haiku. A theoretical consideration and a practical suggestion. In: arcadia . 42/1 (2007), pp. 20-44. Reprinted in: Summer Grass. XXI, 83 (2008), pp. 4–33 (online: Summer grass. PDF, 177 kB).
  • Brigitte Regel-Bellinger : Haiku. Approaches to a Japanese short poem . Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2007, ISBN 978-3-8334-7254-1 ; E-book: 2011, ISBN 978-3-8423-2445-9 .

Web links

  • Link catalog on Haiku at curlie.org (formerly DMOZ )
  • German Haiku Society , website; accessed December 2, 2015
  • Richard Gilbert: Gendai Haiku . Interview material (videos) and presentations on six contemporary Japanese haiku poets. Originally published as: Cross-cultural Studies in Gendai Haiku: Tsubouchi Nenten , Gendai Haiku Online Archive (2007), Kumamoto University , Japan; accessed December 2, 2015
  • Richard Gilbert: Haiku Research (English), Haiku research, essays, reviews; accessed December 3, 2015
  • Udo Wenzel: texts on haiku poetry , essays, interviews and translations of articles on haiku topics; accessed December 3, 2015

Individual evidence

  1. · Haya Segovia, Vicente, Aware , Barcelona, ​​Kairós, 2013. ISBN 978-84-9988-245-1
  2. · Lorente, Jaime. Shasei.Introducción al haiku, Toledo, Lastura y Juglar, Colección "Punto de Mira", 2018. ISBN 978-84-948512-9-2
  3. a b German Haiku Society : Basic Concepts: Haiku
  4. Japanese Literature: An Introduction for Western Readers. Zurich 1962.
  5. ^ Dietrich Krusche: Essay. Explanations of a foreign literary genre. In: Krusche: Haiku, Japanese poems . dtv, Munich 1997.
  6. ^ Wilhelm von Bodmershof: Study of the Haiku. In: Imma von Bodmershof: Haiku. dtv, Munich 2002.
  7. ^ Yoel Hoffmann: Japanese Death Poems written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death. Charles E. Tuttle Company, Rutland / Vermont / Tokyo 1990, ISBN 0-8048-1505-4 .
  8. In the translation by Roland Barthes : The realm of signs . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-518-11077-2 .
  9. Alan Watts: The Way of Zen. Zero, Rheinberg 1981, ISBN 3-922253-07-5 .
  10. Wang Wei: Beyond the White Clouds. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-423-13816-1 .
  11. Bamboo Rain - Haiku and woodcuts from the Kagebōshishū . Insel-Bücherei, 1995, ISBN 3-458-19124-0 .
  12. Wang Wei: Beyond the White Clouds. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-423-13816-1 .
  13. Sommergras, quarterly publication of the German Haiku Society , June 2007 [1] (PDF; 235 kB)
  14. The example with its different readings comes from Marion Grein: Introduction to the history of the development of Japanese writing. Mainz 1994, ISBN 3-88308-063-2 , p. 69 f .; For her part, Grein refers to Haruhiko Kindaichi: The Japanese Language. 2nd Edition. Rutland et al. a. 1985, p. 112.
  15. Bettina Krüger: Longing for something completely different. Roland Barthes' L'Empire des signes - a trip to Japan? In: parapluie no.2 (summer 1997). ISSN  1439-1163
  16. Roland Barthes refers in this context at the end of L'Effraction du sens. ( The collapse of meaning. ) On the haiku by Matsuo Bashō : How admirable it is, / Who does not think: “Life is transient” / When he sees lightning.
  17. Roland Barthes: The break in of the sense. In: Roland Barthes: The realm of signs. Frankfurt am Main 1981, p. 98.
  18. Richard Gilbert in Sommergras, quarterly journal of the German Haiku Society , June 2007 [2] (PDF; 235 kB)
  19. ^ Sabine Sommerkamp: The German Haiku Poetry. (online) .
  20. Anna von Rottauscher: You yellow chrysanthemums! Japanese wisdom. Re-poems of Japanese haiku. Scheurmann, Vienna 1939.
  21. Andreas Wittbrodt: The blue glow of the delphinium. The founding phase of German-language haiku literature (1953–1962). (on-line)
  22. Andreas Wittbrodt: The blue glow of the delphinium. The founding phase of German-language haiku literature (1953–1962). (on-line)
  23. Volker Friebel: On the haiku. (on-line)
  24. ^ Website of the German Haiku Society
  25. ^ Members of the German Haiku Society.
  26. Summer grass website .