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Rules of Form and Freedom of Spirit in Haiku
The Keynote Speech for WHF2000, London-Oxford Conference

Ian Codrescu
Romania

 

Why does haiku draw the ever-growing attention of the Western reader who is familiar with other types of poetical discourse? The tradition of Japanese poetry is quite different from the European one. The figures of speech commonly used in European poetry are practically non-existent in haiku.

Loneliness –
Sinking into the rocks,
A cicada’s cry. Basho

Hidden behind the simplicity and strictness of haiku is an entire aesthetics of expression that avoids repetition, aphorism and abstraction. He who reads haiku for the first time, knowing nothing about its poetics, could be disappointed or indifferent to those few words that make up the structure of a poem.

the potato thieves
exclaim in low voices
at the falling star

Dee Evetts

How could we call a “breath of words” poetry when it avoids using metaphor and simile, as well as withholding the author’s interpretation?

deep in the woods
this one raindrop still
on a pine needle

George Ralph

Despite all these things, haiku is poetry. Léopold Sédar Senghor (a contemporary African poet from Senegal) called it “the most beautiful poem in the world”. < To suggest a landscape, a picture or a moment – to juxtapose two or three images in a few words, means to master a writing technique that is hard to acquire. Roland Barthes writes in The Empire of Signs, that “haiku seems to give to the West something that its own literature does not provide” -- because this poem does not describe, does not interpret an impression or certain state of mind or emotion; rather, it presents it directly, as it is “here and now”, avoiding the abstractions, the metaphors, the similes and the epithets. Poetry must be beyond the poem. When someone thinks that poetry is found only in library books, or that we can feel the poetry by taking a book from the shelf or reciting verses and stressing their rhythms and rhymes, he is making a mistake. To discover poetry in the ordinary moments, to believe that everything has the right to become poetic, to express that special feeling of illumination called by Westerners, “the haiku moment”, only in a few words --this is the greatest thing a haijin can experience.

house for sale –
the apricot tree in bloom
as never before

Ian Codrescu

Although haiku is perhaps the shortest poem in world literature, with such a simple form which gives one the impression that anyone can write it – and which, on first reading, leaves many people disappointed because they do not find the familiar elements of Western poetry – the reality is quite different.  Behind this simplicity, there is an aesthetic principle that can only be noticed by those who believe that poetry is something other than what anthropocentric Europe has taught us; in other words, that man is the centre of the universe. Here are the words of Santoka about his own poems:

“Who says my poems are poems?
        My poems are not poems.
After you know that my poems are not poems,
     Then we can begin to discuss poetry”.

Paraphrasing him, we can say that only after we forget what we have learned about poetry in school will we be able to consider haiku real poetry -- only then will we be able to understand and appreciate it -- only then will we be able to enjoy its unique spirit. In this Hollywood-like world, full of slogans and advertisements, which violates not only our eyes and ears but also the harmless landscape, haiku is an invitation to rediscover a way to communicate with nature.  In haiku, the poetic discourse is not as long as classical and modern European poetry, but on the contrary, reveals only the moment that illuminates us. The reader’s attention is directed toward common things, toward details that seem familiar to us, but in reality are not.

when the spade turns
the earth in our garden –
how different it is!

Ion Codrescu

If we look carefully around ourselves, perhaps we will notice other things also.  A dewdrop crossed by a sunbeam, a distant sound, a certain movement of an insect, or even the bark of a tree deserves our attention as much as the “events” presented so stridently by the mass-media.

birch bark –
columns of ants
crossing the stripes

Ion Codescru

In this paper I would like to present two elements that, in the writing of haiku, interest me very much: its form and spirit. When I read haiku for the first time -- this happened in 1974 -- I was captivated by its miniature form and fascinated by its unique spirit. I can say that its spirit still fascinates and excites me, that it allows me to discover its most hidden meanings that cannot be understood without the experience of writing haiku. To read and write haiku becomes a spiritual exercise. Garry Gay, a haiku friend from California, says, “the discipline of becoming aware is called haiku”. I am often asked why I write haiku. I asked myself such a question many years ago, when I began to write haiku. I wanted to know if I had the right to compose this Japanese poem. Even after twenty-five years of practising haiku, I still do not know the true answer.

Haiku and its spirit belong to the larger genre of Imagist poetry. The technique of “catching” an image in a poem is similar to the art of a photographer who registers things and records the gift nature has provided in that single moment, without drawing any kind of conclusions. In its classic period, Japanese haiku was written in 5-7-5 pattern, and it had to follow many strict rules: to mirror nature, to concentrate upon a “snapshot” or the characteristic feature of an event, to be a dialogue between the ephemeral (ryuko) and the eternal (fueki) and so on. If we look carefully at the pattern of the poems written in the classic period, we can find numerous haiku composed in different number of syllables (onji). Here are two examples. The first has 8-7-5 and the second, 10-7-5:

basho no wake shite
tarai ni ame o
kiku yo kana Bashô

ro no koe nami o utte
harawate koru
yo ya namida

Bashô

Nowadays, even some Japanese poets have given up the rigid form, and focus their attention on the spirit of this poem.  Here is a Japanese haiku by Ozaki Hosai that does not respect the traditional form of 5-7-5 onji:

i-chi ni-chi                         mo-no I-wa-zu cho-o no ka-ge sa-su

all day long saying nothing butterfly’s shadow casting

The poem in Japanese (roma-ji) shows you that Ozaki Hosai was a supporter of free form in haiku. . . this poem is made up of 4-5-7 syllables. Being influenced by Ogiwara Seisensui, the creator of free-style in haiku, Ozaki Hosai gave up the 5-7-5 form and wrote haiku through momentary inspiration instead of being governed by traditional rules. Speaking about Ozaki’s poems, Alain Kervern, a French scholar of haiku, says, “He writes down rough, incisive, spontaneous impressions in which one can find influences such as symbolism, Zen Buddhism and free-form haiku”. Of course, there are still poets who write in the traditional style, but the scholars of this genre explain that the use of this rule in the Japanese language is due to its phonetic particularities.

Since any kind of artistic form is governed by the same rules of the universe, I would like to concentrate on the dichotomy of form and spirit in haiku, as this is both its substance and spirit. The form of haiku is not an accidental embodiment of words, but a configuration that reveals a certain content where the spirit takes form. Even if haiku seems to be the most ascetic lyrical genre, it aspires to reach the pure zones of poetry -- to become profound and make sense in just a few words. The spirit in haiku is created by words. There is a perfect interrelationship between the words.  Edgar Degas used to say, “The drawing is not the form. It is the way of perceiving the form”. We could say the same thing about the words that make up the form of a haiku: they are not the form, but the way of perceiving the form. The form of each haiku is unique and has its own particular value.  A person who enjoys a poem comes closer to perceiving its spirit through its form; the form contains an equilibrium created by words. The spoken words create sonority and musicality. The relationship between the form and spirit is the relationship between the signifier and the signified. Firstly, we notice the signifier, which is represented by the conceptual element of the linguistic sign.

Alexandru Muşina, a young theorist of poetry in Romania, writes that the classic poem is a closed form, and the modern poem is an open form. As soon as the form of the classic poem is fixed in a culture or in a unitary cultural area, the poet has only “to act inside the given form”.  Let me give you as an example, one of the most well known lyrical genres in the West: the sonnet.  It is a fixed form of poetry made up of two quatrains and two tercets. The measure varies in the verse/line: hendecasyllabic verse in Italian and Romanian; Alexandrine verse in French; and decasyllabic verse in English. For the contemporary poet, the form of a haiku is a convention, a way of expressing his own thoughts and feelings. The spirit of a poem can exist only through the form in which the words are structured. Thus, in contemporary haiku, we can find both the traditional form of 5-7-5 syllables and various free forms. There are haiku in one, two, three, four and five lines. We can also speak about the vertical haiku, one word on each line. After this theoretical introduction, let’s come back to the poems. I will give some poems to illustrate the various forms of haiku.

James W. Hackett has a remarkable poem written in 5-7-5 syllables:

A bitter morning:
sparrows sitting together
without any necks.

Robert Spiess, editor of the well-known magazine, “Modern Haiku”, writes haiku in various forms.  Out of his poems, I selected two haiku written in five and seven lines:

forbearing
to take a branch
in flower,
I bring you songs
of wild plum

braver
.....this winter
than I –
.....the sparrows
that seemed
.....so ch

In California, living in the small town of Gualala, Jane Reichhold has written many poems in a vertical form, one word on each line:

the
tin
cabin
listening
to
pine
wind
its
very
own
planks

In his well-known book, The Haiku Anthology, Cor van den Heuvel published only one word in the middle of a large page -- this word representing a haiku:  

 

 

tundra

 

 

Try to imagine the connotations and concreteness of this poem that springs from the page.

As editor of the bilingual journal, Albatross (Romanian and English), I have received many different types of haiku. Those poems which prove to have the spirit of this lyrical genre are accepted, even if their form is different. Here is Janice Bostok’s opinion about haiku as expressed in one of her letters: “The one-lined haiku must be a haiku just as a three-lined or a two-lined one is. I believe it should have the three segments, which we now only approximate in 5-7-5 pattern. One segment should be slightly separated or juxtaposed, and the other two should read on, but still have the two segments. To me, there is no difference between a one-lined haiku and a three-lined haiku” Here is one of her one-lined haiku sent to Albatross:

Winter solstice.....warmth comes.....to our dark bed

I have presented only a few examples of forms in haiku, as my intention is not to dwell on this element. The poet chooses a suitable form according to the topic he wishes to present. There are poets who use various forms of haiku and their fantasy is expressed in each poem.  Therefore, we can say that there are a variety of possibilities concerning the form of a haiku. If a certain form better illustrates the spirit of haiku, then this will be noticed not only by readers, but also by literary critics and historians who will study this poem in the future.

I said previously that artistic form submits to the same laws of the universe; it is born, develops and has a direction. Haiku had a classical form that was closed, but its form became open due to the creative needs of modern and contemporary poets. The haiku scholars should not neglect the new experimental forms that writers are now engaged in making. The author’s creativity materializes the structural possibilities of these poems, creating their content and spirit. The fewer words we use in a poem, the more complex and profound its connotations will be, because haiku does not describe, but presents the ephemeral moment with all the things that are eternal in it. “You cannot step twice in the same river”, said Herakleitos. Montaigne pointed out the idea, “I do not draw the human being. I draw the passing”. The ephemeral, the passing moment that never comes back, seems to be the major theme of haiku.

It is the presence of words in a haiku that creates the fullness and the emptiness; the concrete and the transcendent; the supple or dynamic tension; the light or heavy contrast; certain analogies and connotations; symmetry and asymmetry; sound and silence. There is a permanent interchange between the materiality of haiku form and its spirit. Even if haiku rejects ornaments, or certain figures of speech, its spirit springs from its austereness -- from the concreteness and juxtaposition of images. “There are no ideas, but in things”, wrote William Carlos Williams.

Sometimes the receptivity of its spirit comes up against certain difficulties. A poet from South Africa couldn’t publish his haiku at a well-known publishing house in his country because his editor considered haiku an intellectual exercise that was not familiar to the majority of poetry readers. Things are not that different in other parts of the world, either. There are still poets who do not accept haiku as poetry. There are literary magazines that reject this lyrical species, literary critics who refuse to write about haiku, and world literary historians and dictionaries that ignore this micropoem.  We should find an explanation for this state of things.

Since antiquity, Europeans have been nourished by Protagoras’ aphorism, “Man is the measure of all things”. This anthropocentrism (putting man at the centre of the universe), promoted by one of Pericles’ fellow philosophers, has penetrated the European culture for two thousand years, estranging it from the Oriental cosmocentrism (the universe being the centre of things).  It is not only important to notice the differences and similarities, but we have to take into account the spirit that animated the artistic forms both in the East and the West. In his essay, “The Poet and the Monk” (published in Round the Pond by Muntenia Publishing House, Romania), Sean Dunne points out the fact that some centuries ago, the Irish monks, like the Chinese and Japanese poets, considered the pilgrimage and journeying very important. The journey became a true form of literature.  In the margins of the books written by Irish monks, one can see figurative notations inspired by nature. Their simple phrases, without stylistic connotations, remind us of Japanese poets and their concise haiku.

Now let’s speak about Romania and Ion Pillat, one of the greatest Romanian poets who published his one-lined poems between 1935-1936. This experiment in poetry anticipated the one-lined haiku, which would be written throughout the coming decades. Being aware of the fact that “it is not the words, but the silences behind them that makes a song”, Ion Pillat used a highly concentrated expression, opposing the ephemeral and the eternal, considering the form as a stage of the latter.

A lonely sycamore maple on the bank, a lonely star in the river

A red leaf is climbing up the branches, other leaves are falling off

When we read these poems, we are inclined to believe that their author was familiar with the Japanese micropoem that came to the West at the end of the 19^th century. The dialogue of the moment with eternity, the atmosphere of solitude, the conciseness, simplicity and austere beauty make Ion Pillat’s one-lined poems come very close to the spirit and essence of haiku.  Let’s linger a little bit more in the atmosphere of his poems:

The shy deer walking on the autumn carpet

The sweet smell of quince in an old room

It’s snowed in the mountains. A sunbeam quivered in the park.

Haiku has been written by well-known poets of our century such as Paul Claudel, George Seferis, Antonio Machado, Octavio Paz, Rainer Maria Rilke and Jack Kerouac, and composed in more than seventy countries all over the world. In some countries, haiku is studied in schools, read on the radio and television, analysed in national and international congresses and festivals, and it has specialised publishing houses. This lyrical form is not as well known as it should be, compared with other poetic genres. It has not gained its deserved place among readers yet. There are still people who believe that only the Japanese must write haiku, as if the sonnet was created only by and for Italians, and the Psalms only by and for the Jewish people. Where does this interdiction come from?

Poetry is like a free bird that knows no boundary, like seeds that are carried along by the wind, that grow, bloom and bear fruit where they find good soil, without asking anyone’s permission. Who can forbid Seiji Ozawa or Zubin Mehta to conduct Bach, Mozart, Chopin or Tchaikovsky; or the Chinese opera singer to perform operas composed by Bellini, Rossini and Donizzetti? Some years ago, I watched on television, a choreographic miniature by Maurice Béjart that was inspired by a Romanian folk melody. At first, I was surprised to see that the movements of the ballet dancers were quite different from those of the Romanian dancers, but soon I realized that the choreographic expression and the emotional state that they created corresponded to the message and spirit of the Romanian music. Therefore, if we find our bearings in a form of art, if its spirit answers our questions, if in practicing it we release our creativity, then we must leave it free and we must create in that form, but we have to recognize ourselves in it and the space where we are living.

The presence of haiku in the work of many non-Japanese 20^th century poets demonstrates that the spirit of this poem has passed the geographical borders, and that it has defined not only the time, but also the limits of the language in which it is now created. Sono Uchida, a well-known personality in the world of contemporary Japanese haiku, said in an interview, published in a Romanian book, that “haiku is a suitable form of poetry not only for the Japanese people, but also for anybody”. Also, Nobel prize-winning poet, Czeslaw Milosz, when asked about his view of the current state of poetry and where he sees it moving, replied, “Poetry in the English language, at the present moment, is probably the most interesting, and I see a great influence of Oriental poetry. I am very interested, for example, in the haiku moment”.

 

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