On the morning of Dec. 6th, five Hailstones, one guest poet, an MBS reporter and a TV cameraman gathered in front of Yasu Station. The guest was Judy Kendall, who had once lived in Kanazawa but was now on a visit from the UK. Yasu in Shiga Prefecture (Omi Country) is the birthplace of Kitamura Kigin (1624-1705), the teacher of Basho, and is famous for eye-catching Mt. Mikami (432 m). This name is an honorific for its god.  “I was pleased because  Mt. Mikami looked like  Mt. Fuji…”, Basho once wrote in his famous haibun, ‘Record of the Illusion-dwelling Hut’ (Genjuan no ki). The mountain is also known as Omi Fuji.

Omi Fuji’s base

red leaves under the green

centipede curling

(Judy Kendall)

The mountain has another name – ‘Mukade-yama’, Centipede Mountain! A tenth century folktale tells us that there once was a giant centipede inhabiting the mountain that harrassed people nearby. It wound itself round Omi Fuji seven-and-a-half times before being killed by the warrior Tawara-no-Hyota. The monster was presumed to have been the vengeful spirit of the deceased general, Taira-no-Masakado. Dreadful!

Before climbing, we visited Mikami Shrine to pray, as a courtesy, for a safe climb.  That morning, a wedding ceremony was being held.

priest’s invocation

for the bride and groom -

winter morning birdsong

(Hisashi Miyazaki)

The trail to the mountain-top was gated against the wild boar that might otherwise raid the village fields. Once past, our path climbed through dark cedar forest.

creaking trees

above, to left and right ―

beneath, a sapling sprout

（Sayoko Ozaki）

Under the coloured trees

poets discuss their poems -

birds singing high up

(Toshi Ida)

We came across a flat place where a temple called Myokendo had once stood. The only remaining wooden structure had completely collapsed.

In amongst the tiles

of the ruined temple,

eulalia

and Ribobitan D

(Tito)

The trail become steeper and steeper as a view gradually spread out.

how many climbers

have grasped this root for aid

shining still like teak

(John McAteer)

top to bottom: a British Basho, a Japanese Wordsworth and an American Zeami?

At the top was a large sacred rock where Amenomikage (grandson of Amaterasu and diety of Mikami Shrine), had descended to earth. To have lunch on the rock would have been truly ‘awesome’ (but we refrained)! Instead, we rested on an outcrop just outside the consecrated zone. Wonderful was the view from the mountain out across the plain of Goshu (another name for Omi): withered winter paddies in sunshine, a hazy Hiei and Hira (mountains) across Biwa Lake.

right to left: SO, JK, HM, TI, Ms Nakao ( MBS reporter), SG, JM

Descending the mountain…

The steepened rock, pressed

so kindly into foot-shaped steps

by past travellers’ feet

(Judy Kendal)

At Wareiwa Rock, someone made a detour…

Caught in a giant rock –

the moment of fear before

kissing it

(Tito)

I thought I would try a hand at creating a version of this well-known ku by Bashō.  I used a three different sources for literal word-for-word translations of the Japanese text and came up with something I think I am pleased with.

Eva Wojcik: Limantour Beach, Point Reyes (published 2009)

the sea grows dark,

a wild duck call

faint white

The original Japanese text (Romanised):

umi kurete kamo no koe honokani shiroshi

This is of course, a famous example of mixing senses, in this case, sound and sight.

For some reason, I associate this poem with Brian Eno’s lonely “Dunwich Beach, Autumn 1960” (from his album On Land), though seasonally, Bashō’s poem is set in winter.

]]> http://hokku.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/popping-coals-and-painted-pines/ Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:19:22 +0000 hokku http://hokku.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/popping-coals-and-painted-pines/

I have already said that Issa’s hokku reflect a scarred and sad childhood.  That is why he tended to project his emotions onto other creatures and things:

Asabare ni   pachipachi sumi no   kigen kana
Morning-clear at pop-pop charcoal ’s good-spirits kana

This bright morning,
Pop! pop! goes the charcoal
In good spirits.

This reminds one immediately of Hans Christian Andersen, who similarly had a difficult childhood and constantly projected human thoughts and emotions onto creatures and things. “Crick! Crack! said the furniture” — that sort of thing.

This is a very old way of behaving, in which what is unconscious in a human, instead of being made conscious, is projected onto the outside world.  Do you remember childhood pictures in which the sun and moon have human faces, flowers have voices, and so on?  It is the same kind of attitude.

Personally, I do not like it in hokku.  I prefer things as they are, free of the projections of the writer.  That demands a more mature attitude from the reader.

In Issa’s verse, it is not the charcoal that is in good spirits; it is Issa.  So very often Issa is not really writing about sparrows or snails or other things — he is writing about Issa, projected onto those things.  That is why much of his verse is so unsatisfactory as hokku, though it greatly appeals to sentimentalists.

Bashō wrote:

Kinbyōbu  matsu no furubi ya   fuyugomori
Gold-screen pine ’s   aging ya winter-seclusion

The pine
On the golden screen ages;
Winter seclusion.

“Winter seclusion” was a common topic in old winter hokku.  It is remaining inside for long periods of time because of the inhospitable weather outside.  It is somewhat like the old farm families in the United States being snowbound.  With no place to go and very little to do, one turns inward.

That is what happened to Bashō.  As the minutes and hours passed, he looked at an old gold-leafed screen on which a pine tree was cleverly painted, and in the slow passage of time he felt the pine on the screen aging along with everything else, though it was painted and not living.  That is basic Buddhism.  Everything passes, everything changes, nothing remains forever, whether a pine painted on a screen, a pine growing on a rocky crag, or even the crag upon which it grows.  Bashō is experiencing the transience that is so much a part of hokku.

David

We all know that Shiki was the individual who began the revisionism that has proved so disastrous for hokku — so damaging, in fact, that in the 20th century most people did not even realize that Bashō and all the others up to Shiki wrote hokku, not haiku, let alone having any inkling of the aesthetic principles necessary for the reading and writing of hokku.

And keep in mind, revisionist though he was, Shiki was still on the conservative end of things, if we look at the history of haiku overall.  Most haiku written today have as little in common with what Shiki called haiku as they do with hokku, and are in fact quite new kinds of verse.

But let’s go back to the beginning of the trouble.  Shiki had a predilection for art, which is no doubt what attracted him so to Buson; Buson was the most painterly of hokku writers, and his verses often show his “artistic” intent, usually not for the better.  Then too, Shiki was influenced by Western open-air painting, and he came up with the notion that a “haiku” — his revisionist version of hokku — should be a kind of nature sketch in words.

We can see that in one of his “winter” verses (remember that Shiki, unlike most Western haiku enthusiasts, still held season to be an essential element):

Akaki mi    hitotsu koborenu   shimo no niwa
Red   berry   single  fallen         frost    ’s    garden

A red berry,
Spilled on the frost
Of the garden.

I often talk about how Shiki’s verse tends toward mere illustration, and this is an excellent example.  We could, in fact, turn it into a block print using only two kinds of ink — red and white.  A red berry seen against the white frost background.  One could make it of construction paper, a red dot on a white page.

It is, in a way, an experience abstracted from nature.  It reminds one inevitably of William Carlos Williams’

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Aside from the extraneous “so much depends upon,” that too is essentially just a color assemblage, though slightly more advanced than that of Shiki.

Shiki’s verse is a tiny, circular spot of bright red set on a field of white.  It could be simply an abstract painting  – “Red Dot on White Field.”  It has its virtues for what it is, but it is a step away from what hokku should be.

Shiki takes the first step toward abstraction by not telling us what kind of berry it was.  That leaves us with the spot of red.  Thoreau would not have done such a thing.  To Thoreau a berry was not a mere spot of red; it was a winterberry, or perhaps a tree cranberry, or some other specific thing.  To Thoreau, as for hokku in general, Nature was not in the abstraction but in the specific particular.  So in hokku, when we write about a red berry, we want to know specifically what kind of berry, because then it will immediately appear before our inner vision as itself, not as an abstraction.

Bashō wrote:

Higoro nikuki    karasu mo yuki no    ashita kana
Usually hateful  crow    too  snow ’s    morning kana

Usually hateful,
The crow too
This snowy morning.

That is a bit cryptic in English, because in Japanese one was expected to “intuit” what the writer meant, which was simply

The usually hateful crow is also something pleasant this snowy morning.

And of course one was to know automatically the reason for this, which is that the crow, being so black, looks quite pleasant when seen against the pure white background of snow.

Now we can see that Bashō’s hokku too would make an interesting block print — simply a black crow against a white background — but Bashō has not abstracted the crow into a generic black bird, as Shiki has done with the berry, and of course with the crow there is life; one sees it stalking about in the cold whiteness, turning its head.

Such differences seem small, but it is by failing to understand such things that one fails to grasp the essential nature of hokku as different from other kinds of verse, including much of haiku.

David

Thermos porridge was a success!

Cooking time – the time it takes to flip the button on the kettle, make tea, and empty some oats into bag.
Meal Location: Bamboo thicket below the Dragons Back, Sheko Country Park, hong Kong.
Accessories: One banana, “On Love and barley – Haiku of Basho,” translated by Lucien Stryk a small runners size book of poems), and a bumbag to carry it all in.

I would like to say that I employed a slow cooking approach that lasted the length of a subway ride from Tin Hau Station to Shau Kei Wan and minibus to Shek-O Country Park ( all up about 40 minutes), but it wouldn’t be true. The dry oats were in a brown paper bag in my shorts-pockets, under a pair of light waterproof running trousers, for I wanted to run , then drink tea first before I began to brew porridge. The first cup i took at vertabrae T5 along the Dragon’ back in a misty rain carried on a blasting southerly from across the South China.
Alone on this ridge top , wind stunted vegetation leading steeply down to water on both sides, blue dawn mountains behind my back, I leapt boulders to the trails end shouting Matsuo Aida’s zen koan -When it’s rainy, I am in the rain. When it’s windy I am in the wind, to nobody but the sky and an eagle flying above who might have felt the same way.

This is a wonderful koan when its not too windy and not too rainy, whence-forth I am sprinting down goat tracks seeking shelter, which in this case I found in a bamboo thicket along with a new Zen Master to replace Aida.
I poured another tea from the thermos, then added the oats from my pocket into the half emptied thermos giving them and myself a good Ratu Bagus shake around, leaving them then to sit and porridgefy a moment whilst I read a poem from Basho whose haiku I had brought along for the bus ride.

“Learn about a bamboo stalk from a bamboo stalk” he instructed his disciples.

To write good Haiku I had to become the bamboo stalk, let the bamboo’s poetry speak through me explained Basho’s transalator Lucien Stryk.

As thermos porridge brewed, I visualized myself as one more stalk of bamboo in this sheltering grove, the wind playing with the tips of my leaves, rustling me in the wind against all my brother and sister stalks, all of us danceing free up high in our branches, more gently down low, our roots solid in the earth below.

And then the porridge undergoing a similar experience began speaking its haiku through me:
Married with tea
This thermos so hot. Shaking.
Ah. Freedom,
Light at the end of the tunnel
bamboo, -sky , – cup . Oh no.
Mouth, gullet. intestine.
Yum, coffee,
Ooh. a banana.
freak..lemon water,
euw. last nights dinner
Oh shit.

Basho eventually became a recluse, I read.

I left the bamboo and caught the number 9 bus to Sheko, then the 720 express to Wanchai, thinking that i must google thermos cooking when I get back to my computer.

Yesterday we discussed emotion in hokku, and how it is better not to present it openly but rather indirectly, through the objective elements of a hokku.

There are certain old hokku, however, where direct mention of an emotion is found, for example in Rōka’s

Kanashisa ya   shigure ni somaru   haka no moji
Sadness     ya winter-rain at/by dyes    gravestone ’s written-characters

We may translate as:

Sadness;
Winter rain dyes the letters
On the tombstone.

Even though the emotion “sadness” is stated directly, this is a far more reserved and objective verse overall than the overlong and overdramatic verse of Bashō,

A night of  the sound of oars striking waves,
And of freezing bowels;
Tears.

What do we learn from all this?  That in hokku emotion should either be indicated by use of certain objective elements in a hokku, or else it should simply be stated directly and objectively, simply and undramatically, as in Rōka’s hokku — which is far better as hokku than the awkward example of Bashō given here.

One further thing to notice in Rōka’s verse.  We talk much about Yin and Yang here, because they are important to the aesthetics of hokku.  You will remember that winter is the most yin season, and that water is yin as well, as are cold and darkness as opposed to light.  Look again at Rōka’s hokku:

Sadness;
Winter rain dyes the letters
On the tombstone.

The winter rain, the darkening of the letters, both of these are yin and in harmony with one another, as is the lifelessness of the tombstone.  It is this overwhelming yin effect that contributes to the sadness.

David

As I have said before, only a fraction of the hokku of Bashō are worthwhile, roughly about a fifth of them or less.  This verse is not one of his best:

Ro no koe nami o utte   harawata koru   yo ya   namida
oar ’s voice waves 0 strike bowels freeze night ya tears

First of all, the verse is awkwardly long in Japanese and even worse in English.  Second, it sounds too literary, as though Bashō had been reading old Chinese verses (which of course were part of his literary background).  Third, it is a bit too dramatic for hokku, which again relates to its literary appearance.

Putting it into English is a bit awkward because of its length, and one has to move elements about, but what it means is essentially

A sound-of-oars-striking-waves-freezing-bowels night; tears.

We could attempt to put it into more normal English as perhaps

A night of  the sound of oars striking waves,
And of freezing bowels;
Tears.

Visually it is really unbalanced and no matter how one translates it, it is still unsatisfactory as a hokku.  We could try to improve it, but inevitably the addition of “tears” would spoil it by making it too emotional for good hokku.  Hokku are not and should not be about emotions; they are about sensory experience.  Perhaps that sensory experience might bring tears, but to say so goes too far, and takes us back into the realm of Chinese lyric poetry — a kind of devolution of hokku — in spite of the fact that Bashō, as in this verse, sometimes attempted it.  So Bashō here says too much both by using too many words and by adding emotional excess.

It should be a lesson to us neither to make hokku awkwardly long nor too obviously emotional.

David

An old winter hokku by Sōgi, who lived long before Bashō:

In the freezing night,
The ceaseless flapping
Of duck wings.

We can easily see its form.  It is:

Setting:  In the freezing night.
Subject: duck wings
Action:  the ceaseless flapping of

In other words, we have what is common to many hokku — a setting, a subject, and an action — a movement, something moving or changing.

Bashō wrote:

Shigururu ya   ta no arakabu no   kuromu hodo
Winter rain ya field ’s stubble ’s blacken up-to

Winter rain –
Enough to blacken the stubble
In the fields.

We can see that the pattern of this is different.  ”Winter rain” is both the setting and the subject.  First the writer presents it to us, so we can see and feel it, and then he expands on it it with a further qualification — “enough to blacken the stubble in the fields.”  It is a different approach, not the normal “standard” hokku with setting, subject and action, but it is very effective nonetheless.

In all of these hokku we see again that a hokku is essentially two parts presented (in English) in three lines.  In Sogi’s verse the two parts are:

In the freezing night,
The ceaseless flapping of duck wings.

In Bashō’s verse the two parts are:

Winter rain –
Enough to blacken the stubble in the fields.

In both of these the shorter part functions as the setting, something very common in hokku.

Bashō’s verses were sometimes good, more often not so memorable.  We must remember that only a fraction of his hokku are really worthwhile.  He wrote another winter verse:

Fuyu no hi ya   bajō ni kōru    kagebōshi
Winter ’s day ya horse on freezes  shadow

The winter day;
A shadow freezing
On the horse’s back.

We get what he was after, but it does not quite work.  What he really meant was that HE was freezing on the horse’s back, and when he transfers that sensory experience to a visual shadow, he is pulling us in two different directions, which does not work well in hokku.

We have to remember that Bashō was not any kind of Superman of hokku, he was just a writer who sometimes succeeded, sometimes not.  What Bashō did do was to live what he wrote about.

Kikaku, whose hokku are usually suspect, did write a rather good winter verse:

Kono kido ya   jō no sasarete   fuyu no tsuki
This brush-gate ya lock’s fixed   winter ’s moon.

This brushwood gate,
Locked up tight;
The winter moon.

We feel the motionlessness, the stillness, the un-move-able-ness of the cold of winter, and the white light of the moon only adds to the chill.  Blyth translated the second line as “Is bolted and barred,” which not only emphasizes the effect but is also euphonic.

And last, for today, a verse by Tantan:

Hatsuyuki ya   nami no todakanu   iwa no ue
First-snow ya wave ’s reach-not     rock ’s on

We have to rearrange the elements to make it come out right in English:

On a rock
The waves cannot reach –
The first snow.

It is not a high rock, but just enough above the rough water so that the waves cannot wash away the first snow that has fallen upon the blackish mass of stone.

After reading these hokku, you will probably feel like putting on a sweater or heating a nice warm cup of herbal tea!  But I hope you will also pay attention to how each of these verses manages (or fails, in one case) to let Nature speak.

David

I looked over to my stack of books and saw that I have a very diverse reading list at the moment. I thought it would be fun to list the books and share a favorite quote.

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

This is this first book by Stegner that I’m reading. Actually all the books that I’m reading at the moment are written by the authors who I’m reading for the first time. Crossing to Safety is my book group’s pick from last month which I wasn’t able to finish. (I had a good excuse with the new job. Yes I usually finish the book before we meet!) Here’s a favorite passage from the sections I’ve read already:

“In fact, if you forget mortality, and that used to be easier here than in most places, you could really believe that time is circular, and not linear and progressive as our culture is bent on proving. Seen in geological perspective, we are fossils in the making, to be buried and eventually exposed again for the puzzlement of creatures of later eras. Seen in either geological or biological terms, we don’t warrant attention as individuals. One of us doesn’t differ that much from another, each generation repeats its parents, the works we build to outlast us are not much more enduring than anthills, and much less so than coral reefs. Here everything returns upon itself, repeats and renews itself, and present can hardly be told from past.” pg 4

The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches by Matsuo Basho
Translated and introduced by Nobuyuki Yuasa

I’ve read Basho’s work before, but never this one which is of his most renown works. And when I was in the bookstore browsing, the thorough introduction by Nobuyuki Yuaka caught my eye. He places Basho in historic perspective and explains his significant part in the development of the Haiku.

Here’s one of Basho’s haikus at the beginning of a Travel Sketch entitled “The Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton”

In a way
It was fun
Not to see Mount Fuji
In foggy rain

Vertigo by W.G. Sebald (More on Sebald in The Guardian)
Translated by Michael Hulse

I’ve had this book for several years, so I’m not sure where it came from. I’m guessing I read about W.G Sebald and nabbed it somewhere along the way and hadn’t found time to read it yet. He’s one of those authors I’ve been meaning to discover for a while and even though he is German, I’m reading him in English translation.

“  There they stayed for several days, visiting the famed underground galleries of the Hallein salt mines, where one of the miners made Mme Gherardi a present of a twig which was encrusted with thousands of crystals. When they returned to the surface of the earth once again, Beyle writes, the rays of the sun set off in it a manifold glittering such as he had only seen flashing from diamonds as ladies revolved with their partners in a ballroom blazing with light.
The protracted crystallisation process, which had transformed the dead twig into a truly miraculous object, appeared to Beyle, by his own account, as an allegory for the growth of love in the salt mines of the soul. He expounded this idea at length to Mme Gherardi. She for her part, however, was not prepared to sacrifice the childish bliss that filled her that day in order to explore with Beyle the deeper meaning of what was doubtless a very pretty allegory as she sardonically put it.” pgs.25-26

Code 2.0 by Lawrence Lessig

I bought this book last March at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas where Lessig spoke. Lessing now at Harvard, was a Stanford Law professor and the founder of their Center for the Internet and Society, gave a masterful presentation and I wanted to dig deeper into his thinking. This is the next book I’m going to read. The blurb on the back says: “this foundational book as become a classic in its field” and “In this remarkably clear and elegantly written book [Lessig] takes apart many myths about cyberspace and analyzes its underlying architechture.”-Wired.

On setting out on a journey, Bashō wrote:

Tabibito to   waga na yobaren   hatsushigure
Traveler to my      name shall-be   first-winter-rain

“Traveler”
Shall be my name;
The first rain of winter.

If that last line looks a bit long in comparison to the others, that is because Japanese translated into English does not always take up the same relative amounts of space.  Old hokku were in a pattern of 5-7-5 phonetic units generally, but in spite of that they really fall into two parts.

We can see that in Bashō’s hokku:

“Traveler” shall be my name;
The first rain of winter.

We could write hokku that way — in two lines — but generally three lines are more aesthetically pleasing.

The setting of the hokku is the third line, “The first rain of winter.”  That is the context in which Bashō sets forth as a traveller.

We are are travelers through life — through time — but when one reads the life of Bashō, one has the feeling that he never realized the truth of the words of the Daodejing:

Without stepping outside one’s doors,
One can know what is happening in the world,
Without looking out of one’s windows,
One can see the Tao of heaven.

The farther one pursues knowledge,
The less one knows.
Therefore the Sage knows without running about,
Understands without seeing,
Accomplishes without doing.

(Lin Yutang translation)

In traveling one may accumulate knowledge, but knowledge is not the same as wisdom, not the same as insight.

David

2) La solitude

Un autre aspect de l’état Zen est la solitude. Le rythme sous-jacent de la pensée plus que la pensée même des lignes suivantes dans In Utrumque Paratus exprime le sentiment de cet état de Matthew Arnold :

Les pics solennels ne sont connus que des étoiles,
Que des étoiles et des froids rayons lunaires ;
Solitaire le soleil se lève, et solitaires
Jaillissent les grands fleuves.

À un moment de notre vie nous devons arriver à savoir, avec Sue :

Je suis une des Vierges éternelles, servante du feu éternel

(St Mawr).

et à sentir avec le Christ élevé :

Comme il est bon d’avoir rempli ma mission et d’être au-delà.
Maintenant je peux être seul et laisser les choses à elles-mêmes, et le figuier peut être stérile s’il le veut, et le riche peut être riche. Mon chemin est mien, seul.

(The Man who Died).

Ceci est la véritable solitude, mais on doit encore aller un pas au-delà de ce

Noli me tangere,

au royaume de :

Et cependant je ne suis pas seul, parce que le Père est avec moi.

On ferait bien ici de remarquer l’utilisation des mots dans le Zen, la manière par laquelle le silence et la parole sont unis. Dans tous vrais langage et conversation Zen, c’est-à-dire à chaque fois que deux esprits sont véritablement en communion, n’importe quel mot sous-entend son opposé logique également. Ainsi, si l’on dit « désintéressement », cela implique, conjointement l’ “égoïsme”. « La solitude » est aussi un état d’interpénétration avec tout le reste également. Ainsi Bashô, aspirant à cet état dit :

Uki ware wo sabishi garaseyo kankodori

Ah, kankodori,
Tu approfondis
Ma solitude.

Le kankodori est un oiseau qui vit dans les montagnes, loin des habitats, de sorte que sa véritable apparence est pratiquement inconnue. Sa voix ressemble à celle du pigeon ramier, et on l’entend toujours de loin. On dit qu’il annonce par son chant la venue de la pluie ou son arrêt prochain. Dans le haïku, la saison est d’été.
Sabishisa, la solitude, est l’équivalent dans le haïku de Mu dans le Zen, un état de pauvreté spirituelle absolue, dans lequel, n’ayant rien, nous possédons tout. C’est un état dans lequel nous

nous réjouissons avec ceux qui se réjouissent, et pleurons avec ceux qui pleurent,

nous réjouissons avec la joie du meurtrier et pleurons avec la famille de la victime. Ce n’est pas un état dans lequel nous choisissons ce pourquoi nous nous réjouissons et pleurons. Ce n’est pas un état d’indifférence olympienne dans lequel les sentiments positifs et négatifs s’annulent. Prenez les célèbres lignes qui suivent :

Alors les deux frères et leur victime
Passèrent la belle Florence où le fleuve Arno
Gargouille entre des berges droites…
… Ils franchirent le cours d’eau
jusqu’à une forêt tranquille pour le crime.

(Isabella, XXVI)

Tous les hommes sont des hommes morts, et moi, qui écris ceci. Et dans la mesure où nous sommes unis avec Dieu, non seulement nous acquiesçons à ce meurtre, mais sommes aussi les frères meurtriers d’Isabella, et son amant assassiné.
Il y a cependant un danger, ici, quand nous prenons des exemples dans la poésie ou le drame, c’est celui de pouvoir nous persuader que nous sympathisons non pas avec le meurtre lui-même, mais avec les éléments artistiques de l’ensemble. Les remarques suivantes de Stevenson, dans A Gossip on Romance, nous donnent un aperçu de la manière dont nous devons voir les choses :

Chacun et tous, pour le moins, dans nos fantasmes particuliers, lisions des histoires pour enfants, non pour l’éloquence ou les personnes ou la pensée, mais pour une quelconque qualité d’incidence brutale. Pas simplement un bain de sang ou un émerveillement. Bien que chacun de ses éléments fût le bienvenu, le charme par lequel nous lisions dépendait d’autre chose encore… Crusoe apeuré par la trace de pas, Achille vociférant contre les Troyens, Ulysse bandant son grand arc, Christian courant avec ses doigts dans ses oreilles, ceux-ci sont tous des moments culminants de la légende.

Ces « moments culminants » sont des points coupant la ligne de Mu ; ce sont des moments de « Solitude », de désintéressement, de vie universelle dans laquelle cependant l’individu n’est pas submergé, mais se dresse, encore, clairement et distinctement.
Comment atteindre cet état de solitude ? Comment cet état ordinaire de tristesse solitaire, dans lequel Bashô se trouva aussi, peut-il se changer en celui dans lequel on peut dire, de tout et de tous, comme Virgile dit à Minos :

N’entrave pas sa destinée :
Ainsi est-elle voulue, où peut se faire
Ce qui est voulu ; et ne demande rien de plus.

Bashô nous dit que pour lui, c’est le kankodori, son roucoulement dans le lointain, qui peuvent produire ce miracle de grâce dans son cœur. Wordsworth dit la même chose :

Bien que babillant seulement au Vallon
De soleil et d’averses,
Tu m’apportes un conte
D’heures visionnaires.

Trois fois bienvenue, chéri du Printemps !
Bien que tu ne me sois
Aucun oiseau, mais, invisible,
Une voix, un mystère !

La Nature dit de Lucy :

Les nuages flottants lui prêteront
Leur état ; le saule ploiera pour elle ;
Elle ne manquera pas de voir non plus
Même dans les mouvements de la Tempête
La grâce qui donnera forme à la Vierge
Par sympathie silencieuse.

Dans son Journal, en 1840, Thoreau parle de lui-même et d’une goutte de pluie :

Tandis que ces nuages et cette pluie enferment tout,
Nous nous rapprochons et apprenons à nous connaître.

L’expression poétique chinoise de solitude peut trouver son exemple dans ce poème d’Hakurakuten :

PAIX DU SOIR

Des cigales précoces terminent leurs trilles ;
Des points lumineux, nouvelles lucioles, volent çà et là.
Le cierge brûle clair et sans fumée ;
Des perles de rosée lumineuse pendent sur le tapis de bambou.
Je n’entrerai pas encore dans la maison pour dormir,
Mais marcherai un moment sous les auvents.
Les rayons de la lune se penchent jusque sous la basse véranda :
La brise fraîche emplit les grands arbres.
Laissant aller les sentiments, la vie coule aisément ;
La scène entra profondément dans mon cœur.
Quel est le secret de cet état ?
Ne rien avoir de petit dans l’esprit.

Hakurakuten fait ici l’erreur wordsworthienne d’en dire trop. C’est ici que le génie du haïku intervient, avec son apparente pauvreté de forme et de matériau. Les haïkus sont solitaires dans leur apparence même et il leur manque la richesse du ton et du rythme.

Ushi tsunde wataru kobune ya yû-shigure

Un taureau à son bord,
Un petit bateau franchit la rivière
Dans la pluie du soir.

Shiki.

La solitude et la pauvreté – la pauvreté de « Bienheureux les pauvres d’esprit » – sont presque synonymes. C’est pour cette raison que Socrate, rapporta-t-on, dit (et le prouva par sa vie et par sa mort) :

Ceux qui veulent le moins posséder sont les plus près des dieux.

Saint-Jean de la Croix (mort en 1591), dans L’Ascension du Mont Carmel, donne des instructions sur les manières de se mortifier et de calmer les quatre passions naturelles : la joie, l’espoir, la peur et la douleur :

Aspire toujours, non à ce qui est le plus facile, mais à ce qui est le plus difficile.
Non à ce qui fait le plus plaisir, mais à ce qui est le plus déplaisant.
Non à ce qui procure du plaisir, mais à ce qui n’en donne aucun.
Non à ce qui console, mais à ce qui afflige.
Non à ce qui mène au repos, mais à ce qui conduit au labeur.
Non aux grandes choses, mais aux petites.
Non à ce qui est élevé et précieux, mais à ce qui est bas et méprisé.
Aspire, non pas à tout désirer, mais plutôt à ne rien désirer.

La solitude du haïku n’est pas celle du poète en tant que reclus, pas celle de lieux déserts et d’hommes oubliés, bien que cela puisse être induit par ceux-ci, ou en résonance avec eux :

Nashi saku ya ikusa no ato no kuzure-ie

Près d’une maison en ruine
Un poirier est en fleur ;
Ici eut lieu une bataille.

Shiki.

Elle se trouve dans l’absence des choses qui jamais ne furent :

Na-no-hana ya kujira mo yorazu umi kurenu

Fleurs de colza :
Aucune baleine n’approche ;
La mer s’assombrit.

Buson.

Elle se trouve dans les choses douloureuses qui surgissent quand nous sommes heureux, dans les évènements heureux qui arrivent quand nous sommes attristés :

Ku no shaba ya sakura ga sakeba saita tote

Un monde de douleur et de souffrance :
Les fleurs éclosent
Même alors…

Issa.

Elle se trouve avant tout dans un royaume innomé où l’humain et l’inhumain, l’amour et la loi, se rencontrent et s’unissent :

Aki no kure hi ya tomosan to toi ni kuru

Soir d’automne ;
Elle vient et demande :
« dois-je allumer la lampe ? »

Etsujin.

Comparez avec le cas de Tokusan :

Tokusan était assis dehors en zazen. Ryutan lui demanda pourquoi il ne rentrait pas. Tokusan répondit : « Parce qu’il fait noir. » Ryutan alluma alors une bougie et la lui tendit. Alors que Tokusan allait la prendre, Ryutan souffla dessus. Tokusan (Teh-shan, 779-865) se prosterna.

L’illumination d’Etsujin est faible, diffuse, temporaire, concerne une partie de l’être seulement, mais est cependant une perception de la vérité dans sa forme vivante, non-abstraite, sans mots, inexprimable mais évidente. C’est une entrée dans la Solitude à travers la solitude du soir, la solitude automnale. Fournissons une explication au haïku – non que cela donne l’expérience poétique à qui ne l’a pas eue.
Le poète est assis en train de regarder le jour qui décroît rapidement, le dernier des jours, qui passe si rapidement, si lentement. Le soir d’automne tombe, et la femme du poète vient lui demander si elle doit apporter une lampe ; elle ne l’a pas avec elle, mais vient seulement demander. Elle se courbe, et comme elle relève la tête et le regarde avec ses yeux doux, il pense à la lampe et à sa faible lumière en perspective. Les légères gentillesse et tendresse quotidiennes de sa femme, l’irrévocabilité de la chute du jour se perçoivent dans la lumière de la flamme pas encore là, mais qui va l’être. Elle est également chaude, et cependant éloignée, et dans la lumière qui illumine son esprit, le poète ressent, comme une chose unique, l’inévitabilité de la nature, et la bonté aimante de l’humain.
La solitude habituelle ou d’agrément que nous ressentons tous n’est pas complètement différente de la « solitude » que nous avons illustrée ici. Elle peut être un prélude à l’autre ; elle peut en être la cause ; elle peut être l’autre, quand l’énergie de la vie poétique et religieuse l’imprègne.

Et Jésus lui dit :
« Les renards ont des terriers et les oiseaux ont des nids, mais le Fils de l’Homme n’a nulle part où poser sa tête. »

Kono michi ya iku hito nashi ni aki no kure

Le long de cette route
Ne va personne
Ce soir d’automne

Bashô.

3) L’Acceptation Reconnaissante.

On trouve dans une épigramme attribuée à Sénèque une très belle réflexion sur la simplicité (Pierre Laurens, Anthologie de l’épigramme de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance, Poésie/Gallimard, 2007) :

Toujours parée, toujours, Basilissa, coquette,

Et toujours les cheveux avec art disposés,

Et toujours maquillée et toujours parfumée,

Et toujours d’une main habile préparée,

Cela m’irrite : j’aime un peu de négligé,

Une simplicité sans art, voilà ce qui me charme.

Qui se pare toujours se défie de l’amour ;

Plus la beauté se cèle et plus elle est visible.

 

Ce texte, qui est un art d’aimer, j’aimerais le voir aussi comme un art poétique. L’amour et la poésie ne vont jamais qu’ensemble à Rome. L’épigramme a en effet quelque chose d’un haïku – Roland Barthes n’avait d’ailleurs pas manqué de rapprocher ces deux formes.

Cet art qui a pour principe la simplicité même, l’effacement, le bruissement, le chuchotement, et qui ne peut que nous être salutaire. L’art du haïku consiste en effet, dans toute sa délicatesse, à “nommer un chat un chat”. Ici, peu de métaphores, peu d’images, peu de ces leurres qui déguisent le réel, qui le masquent, qui le transforment en objet de langage, en “Poésie” majuscule. Le haïkiste n’écrit qu’à demi-mots. Comme la courtisane de Sénèque, il aime que son poème ne se pare pas trop du langage :

Champs et montagnes

mouillés de pluie

une aube fraîche

Shiki (Roger Munier, Haïkus, Fayard, 1978 – tous les poèmes cités dans ce post sont issus de cette très belle anthologie)

 

Le champ, la montagne, la pluie, l’aube : ce sont autant de mots simples, facile à saisir, donnés à chacun. Car il y a dans l’écriture une brisure : l’instant où la feuille blanche, encore pure couleur, pur toucher, encore insignifiance, est couverte de mots. Elle devient alors un média, un objet, elle se pare d’une signifiance, d’une utilité. Le haïku, dans tout le silence qui l’environne, tâche de conserver, malgré l’obligatoire recours au langage, ce rien, ce vide, cette nudité.

Tachetés de boue

par la rosée

les melons ont un air frais

Bashô

Boue et rosée : ce sont les images de cette pureté trahie qu’évoque ici Bashô. Car c’est une entrebâillement que le haïku, une hésitation, un équilibre.

Dans les fleurs tardives de cerisier

le printemps qui s’en va

hésite

Buson

Cette hésitation, c’est aussi celle de l’écrivain, sachant que, cédant à sa tâche de parole, il brise l’instant, ce bref entrebâillement de la feuille blanche. Retrouver, après le poème, la pureté du papier sans tache, voilà le rêve de tout poète, voilà le seul présent qui vaille d’être reçu.

Mais je termine en paraphrasant cette autre épigramme latine, de Martial cette fois-ci :

Ce n’est pas un mince présent

D’un poète que ce papier blanc.

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There once was a curious frog

Who sat by a pond on a log

And, to see what resulted,

In the pond catapulted

With a water-noise heard round the bog..

(Translated from Basho’s haiku by Alfred H. Marks: see previous post)

. . .

Is nothing sacred?  Basho must be rolling around in his grave from this limerickizing of his famous haiku , although I suspect  it is laughter he is rolling around with…

In 1979,  Norman Cousins bestselling  book Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient anecdotally documented his contention that a patient’s attitude can combat a serious  illness; this was one of the first books on the subject.   Among other things, Cousins would watch Marx Brothers movies to get a belly laugh:

I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep.

Here is a Marx Brothers clip from Youtube:

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5lU52aWTJo&feature=related,.

..

and here is a new limerick:

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A doctor was asked by Descartes

Why his thinking had fallen apart –

Upon looking inside

The doctor replied

Dear Rene–  You must think with your heart! ..

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Links:

Humor and Health

Norman Cousins

The immune system, diabetes, and laughter

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Nicht immer sind die Haiku und die Ereignisse so einfach zu verstehen. Eines der berühmtesten Gedichte ist ohne historisches Hintergrundwissen unverständlich. Als er den Shirane – Gipfel besteigt, notiert Basho dazu:

Ishiyama no – ishi yori shiroshi – aki no kaze

Weißer als der Stein
auf dem Steinberg ist alles weiß:
bei diesem Herbstwind – weiß

Die Farbe “weiß” steht für eine abgeklärte Emotionslosigkeit, die Farblosigkeit. Zu ihr gehört der Herbst mit seinem Wind, der die letzten farbigen Blätter von den Bäumen fegt, aber auch der Herbst des Lebens, wenn die Haare weiß werden.

http://www.mairie-albi.fr/vie_culturelle/musees/images/

View post

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Listen! a frog
Jumping into the stillness
Of an ancient pond!

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There is a certain serenity and simplicity to haiku that is very soulful and very healing.

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Joel Wiehaus, in The Healing Spirt of Haiku, writes

Haiku fits well with Carl Jung’s psychotherapeutic teaching of active imagination in which meditation leads to letting go so the unconscious can emerge and be integrated with the conscious in a transcendent function… When we speak of healing we are not concerned with overcoming illness but becoming whole …

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Medical prescription for the heart:

take one haiku daily

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..

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Surprise! a heart

beating in rhythm:

silence, not silence!

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Haiku Links

The Healing Spirit of Haiku

Matsuo Basho: Frog Haiku

Famous Haiku Poetry

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source of image

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..That island in the River Ota was also used as a resting place by cormorants. Unlike herons, cormorants are ferocious birds and dive into water to catch fish. They can stay underwater for a long time. It is always interesting to predict where they will appear again, for our guesses are seldom right. When they are tired of diving, cormorants perch on the rocks and spread their wings to dry. On these occasions, there is something comical about their appearance.

..Cormorants are also tamed and used for cormorant fishing. I first saw a cormorant show at Miyoshi, where three rivers merge to form the Gonokawa, a big river that runs into the Sea of Japan. Here, even today, we can catch one-foot-long ayu fish. What is so good about the cormorant fishing in this river is that we can get very close to the master fisherman’s boat to watch the show from there. I have seen cormorant fishing at other places, for example, at Gifu and Iwakuni – but I could never get close enough to enjoy the show. Basho wrote the following poem about his experience.
….Enjoyable at first,
….But eventually saddening–
….Cormorant fishing.
..I am not quite sure what was the cause of Basho’s sadness. Is he referring to the end of this magnificent show when torches are extinguished and everything is swallowed up in darkness, or is he thinking about the sad fate of the ayu fish caught by the cormorants, or the plight of the birds kept on a leash? Whatever, cormorants come up to the water’s surface with an ayu caught horizontally in their beaks, and then throw it up into the air before swallowing it down with their neck held vertically. This is nothing short of an acrobatic feat, and gave rise to our expression unomi ni suru, which means to ‘gulp something down like a cormorant without chewing’. The special delicacy of Miyoshi is ayu zushi, strained lees of bean-curd stuffed into the cleaned bellies of ayu fish. I have not had the pleasure of tasting this delicacy for a long time now.
When I travelled to Guilin several years ago, I saw Chinese cormorant-fishing masters. One of them was enjoying a nap with his cormorants perched on his raft. I thought it was very brave of him to entrust himself to the fast-flowing River Li. Compared with elegant herons, cormorants look very fierce, probably because of their pitch-dark feathers.
….Black as a monk’s robe,
….The cormorant has red eyes
….Burning with hell fire.