 |
DAVID
G. LANOUE, PHD
Xavier University, Louisiana, USA
Treasures from Issa |
1st Installment:
Random Clicks
With a canon of over 20,000
verses, Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827) is one of the most prolific of the haiku
poets of Japan. The immensity of his lifelong production offers sheer delight to
those readers worldwide who admire his comic wit and philosophical depth: no
matter how many of his poems that one reads, there are hundreds, thousands more
to look forward to. For English readers, this continuing process of discovery
depends on the work of translators, of which I happen to be one. My website, as
of this morning presents 3,516 haiku, nearly 18% of Issa's total work:
http://webusers.xula.edu/dlanoue/issa/
Thanks to the computer wizardry
of my son, Bryan Godfrey-Lanoue, and a colleague at Xavier University of
Louisiana, Bart Everson, this large and growing archive of poems can be read in
several ways. If you wish to read all 3,516 at once, set the the keyword option
to "All." This method, of course, is intended for folks with lots of
time on their hands; I doubt that most visitors will read several thousands of
haiku at a sitting!
An alternative approach is to
pick a keyword and run a search; any word that pops into your head will do:
"nightingale," "heaven," "happy,"
"snot," "Buddha," "worm," "fart"; just
type it in, hit "Search," and see what comes up. This option yields a
smaller, more manageable, and more readable result, but there's a problem: if,
over time, you fail to search for the right word, a significant portion of
Issa's work will remain forever off-screen, and forever unknown, to you. How can
we read Issa, explore Issa, enjoy Issa, and, above all, be surprised by him
while using the digital technology of webpages and search engines?
A possible answer is something
that Bart and I came up with earlier this year: our *Random Haiku* button. When
you click this button, located on the main page of the website, a window pops up
with a randomly picked haiku along with its date and the rômaji version of the
Japanese text.
This nonlinear,
nonchronological, randomized way of reading Issa represents, I believe, a new
and exciting mode of delving into his work. Each *Random Haiku* session creates,
instantly, a custom-made series of poems that never again will appear together,
affording each visitor a unique view of Issa's one-breath art; surprising,
intriguing, and (I hope) motivating that individual to return, when the spirit
moves him or her, to sample more and more of Issa...a click at a time. To
illustrate, I'd like to share a random trip that I took through the archive just
today (Saturday, May 18, 2002). Ten clicks later, this series of ten
haiku--poems that I never would have edited together by conscious
design--appeared one by one on my screen:
1819 mi-botoke ya nete
gozatte mo hana to zeni
the Buddha--
even while sleeping showered
with blossoms and coins
1808 katasumuri nani wo kasegu zo aki no kure
oh snail,
how do you make your living?
autumn evening
1803 natsu yama ya hito ashi zutsu ni umi miyuru
summer mountain--
with each step watching
the sea
1814 kagerô ni gui-gui neko no ibiki kana
in the heat shimmers
the cat snores
deeply
1813 dedemushi ya mushiro no ue no jû monji
snail on the straw mat
has written
"10"!
1802 kadomatsu ya hitorishi kiku wa yoru no ame
New Year's pine decoration--
alone, listening
to the night rain
1822 niwatori ni fumarete sodatsu ka no ko kana
growing up
in the thick of chickens...
a fawn
1808 ôkami no kezure no kusa no saki ni keri
in grass where the wolf
shed his fur...
wildflowers
1815 yûdachi wo kane no shita kara mitari keri
watching the downpour
under a temple
bell
1824 hônen no koe wo age keri kusa no hae
"It's a good year!"
they clamor...
flies in the grass
Wasn't that fun? If you'd like
to enjoy your own personalized journey into the world of Issa's haiku, try the
*Random Haiku* button and see where it takes you. Let me know what you discover
and what you think of this "beyond paper and ink" way of presenting a
haiku poet's work. I'd appreciate hearing from you. My email address:
dlanoue@xula.edu
Enjoy the journey!
