A World Map: Developments in World Haiku

ARACELI TINAJERO
Yale University

Haiku in Twentieth Century Latin America

One hundred and one years ago, the young Mexican poet, José Juan Tablada (1871-1945), travelled to Japan in order to write chronicles on different aspects of that country's culture to his readers of the magazine, Revista Moderna. Tablada was a member of Modernismo, a late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century poetic movement. Modernismo was extremely important, not only because it was the first Spanish American literary movement, but because, as Roberto González Echevarría has stated, some of his members wrote "the best poetry in Spanish language since the poets of the Golden Age in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries"[1].
When Tablada visited Japan, he was introduced to classical haiku and other major artists of that country. In his chronicles, he wrote for the first time about Hokusai, Hiroshigue, Basho and Murasaki Shikibu. [2] His trip to Japan was decisive, because later he decided to devote the rest of his life to the study of Japanese art, religion and philosophy.

Besides being a poet, a literary critic and journalist, Tablada was an art critic whose determination was to disseminate the work of Latin American Artists in the United States by publishing in magazines such as "International Studio, Theatre Arts Monthly" and "The Arts".[3] He also did the opposite by promotingforeign artistic tendencies in Spanish America. [4] As an eager collector of Japanese art, -- particularly stamps -- in 1914 he published a groundbreaking study on the life and work of the famous printmaker Hiroshigué entitled Hiroshigué. El pintor de la nieve y de la lluvia, de la noche y de la luna. In order to write this work, Tablada read, studied and collected thousands of his woodblock prints. He thoroughly studied the work of European impressionistas, who collected Japanese prints as well, themselves. Tablada was not only a poet, but a fine painter, as he showed in his illustrated book, Un día, which was published at a later date.

In 1914, the year he published Hiroshigué, he was forced to leave Mexico because of his political beliefs. His monumental work on the Japanese artist has received very little critical attention, but as I have published elsewhere, Tablada would not had written haiku in Spanish if he had not written this essay. In Hiroshigue…, he not only introduced the reader to the art of the Nara, Heian, Kamakura, Muromachi and Momoyama Periods but by focusing on the art and poetry of the Tokugawa Period (1615-1868), he "translated" to his best abilities, the subtle correlations between art, poetry and religion in Japan. He also translated Basho, warning his readers: "you won't like [this type of poetry] if you cannot read Japanese".[5] Inspired by one of Hiroshigue's prints resembling a Mexican landscape and an Aztec hieroglyphic, Tablada started to write a book in which he tried to bridge ancient Japanese and Mexican mythologies. He planned to entitle it Aztecas y japoneses. Sadly, wandering from place to place in exile, he was never able to finish the manuscript. Instead, in 1919, at Caracas, Venezuela, he published a poetry book composed of three-line poems entitled Un día… Poemas sintéticos. In this way, he introduced haiku to Latin America. Following José Juan Tablada, several Latin American writers have since written haiku: from world known writers such as the Argentinean, Jorge Luis Borges, or the Mexican, Octavio Paz, to those less known such as Guatemalan Flavio Herrera, Cuban Eduardo Benet y Castellón, Ecuatorian Jorge Carrera Andrade, the Peruvians José Umaña Bernal and Ricardo Peña, and the Uruguayan Roberto Fernández, just to name a few. Nevertheless, Mexico has produced more haiku poets than any other Latin American country.[6]

While Tablada's own first haiku seem to move away from classic themes and structure of classical haiku, his poetry actually was as close to it as it could be. In his book Un día … Poemas sintéticos (1919) [Synthetic Poems], he does not call his poems "haiku", but rather, "haikai" or "hokku", dedicating this book to the "beloved shadows of the poetess Shiyo [Chiyo] and the poet Basho."[7] Later, in his 'Manifesto', El jarro de flores. Disociaciones líricas[8] [A Vase of Flowers]. I will not have space here to compare his haiku to those written by other Latin American haiku writers but even his closest disciple, the Mexican Francisco Monterde, was not able to exceed Tablada's mastery.

As we all know, classical Japanese haiku "consists of 17 syllables (5-7-5) and contains at least some reference to nature; it refers to a particular event, and presents that event as happening "now".[9] To begin with, in terms of external form, it is extremely hard to adjust to the Japanese count; this is particularly true when writing in Spanish. In addition, as Antonio Cabezas has elucidated in his article, "Manyoshu y cantos populares españoles," Spanish resembles Japanese phonetics, and the length of sentences,

"the 31 syllables of a waka poem in Japanese translated give in English, a poem of 25 (average), in French 27, in Spanish, 29 and in Italian, 31 exactly! Spanish can also reproduce sonorous effects of Japanese language, without loosing the meaning of the poem"

An example that Cabezas gives us is the following:

Ama kumo ni
hane uchitsukete
tobu tazu no
tazutazu shi ka mo
kimi shi masaneba

La nubes del cielo
veloz aletea,
vuela la grulla,
y a mi me aturulla[10]

Moreover, in terms of syllabic rhythmic structure, Carlos Fleitas reminds us, in his article, "Musicality in Haiku Written in Spanish: A Platonism?", that the poetic form called seguidilla has the same syllabic pattern of the haiku. He offers us a wonderful example written by Manuel Machado, and concludes the following:

"Thus, the 5-7-5 syllable pattern may be kept in Spanish as a rhythmic resource, in that there is a traditional stanza poetic form and genre that makes use of it, as well as the long tradition of meter in Spanish poetry. At the same time, I must say that according to the haiku written by Ibero-American poets which I have read, the 5-7-5 syllable pattern is not kept by the majority of them. Why is this so? I have not a definite opinion, but I think that perhaps a free meter haiku is found by them to be more suitable than the 5-7-5 pattern in the actual practice. The 5-7-5 format may, if kept rigorously, somehow force the haiku, i.e. using words, somehow artificially, to keep the pattern. Yet it could be seen as a lack of exercising haiku writing in 5-7-5 until it becomes a more familiar form. We must also be aware that in the West, the metrical form of poetry is more an exception than an everyday habit. In the last century, meter as a requirement for writing poetry was broken, and free verse became the writing technique that almost every poet adopted. So nowadays when Western poets write haiku, the paradigm is the one of free verse, not the one of traditional meter. Anyway, the subject is currently open to debate and exploration."[11]

Even though titles are not used in classical haiku, many poets have used them in order to create an extra image. Without this strategy it is sometimes difficult to understand the emotion of the moment which the poet wants to portray. However, this was not Tablada's case. Let's see the following examples of Tablada and Seisensui:
LAS ABEJAS

Sin cesar gotea
miel del colmenar
cada gota es una abeja…[12]

BEES

Dripping, dripping
honey from the apiary
each drop…a bee

[Translated by Araceli Tinajero]

KODAMA
<<Ooi>> / to / sabishii / hito
<<Ooi>> / to / sabishii / yama [13]

ALACRÁN.................................

Sale de algún rincón
en medio de un paréntesis
y una interrogación…[14]

SCORPION

Pops up from any corner
between a parenthesis
and a question mark…

[Translated by Araceli Tinajero]

Yet another element that is not used all the time in Spanish is the kigo. For instance, the seasonal associations so intimately related to nature which became archetypes in Japanese culture. The same can be said about kireji or cut words which function as punctuation and even though they have no direct meaning except to indicate a pause or final stop, yet posses sounds. Tablada and many others used postpositions like question marks, elliptical dots to indicate a pause, semicolons, commas, hyphens, and dots to indicate pause devices. For example, the following haiku:

LUCIERNAGAS.............................
Luciérnagas en un árbo
¿Navidad o verano?.....................

FIREFLIES

Fireflies on a tree
Christmas or Summer?

[Translated by Araceli Tinajero]

Lastly, another crucial formal element that is not often used when composing haiku in Spanish is the rhyme and Tablada was not the exception. In fact, several Latin American writers do not use the rhyme since they find it unsuitable when writing haiku. This of course, has to do with musicality.
Even though the use of imagery and mood harmony along with the structural elements I enumerated above were crucial in classical haiku and as we have seen, haiku written in Spanish was not able to follow them, Tablada's haiku somehow rescues the haiku spirit either through the use of nature or through a subtle simplicity. Moreover, in his haiku we are able to find an equilibrium between themes and techniques of classical haiku. For instance, his haiku are about flowers, small animals like frogs, insects, leaves or a tree branch. These miniature subjects are often combined with seasonal elements such as the daze, the mist, a cloud, the twilight. As Octavio Paz pointed out, Tablada discovered in Japanese poetry verbal economy, humor, colloquial language, and love for the exact and singular image.[15] I would add that in that respect his poetry was very close to that of the Imagists in the sense that they practiced free verse, the simplification of expression and the elaboration of a style that could present impressions with precision.[16] One of Tablada's best haiku was the following:

EL SAUZ

Tierno saúz
casi oro, casi ámbar,
casi luz…[17]

WILLOW

Young willow
almost golden, almost amber
almost light…

Even though the structure is not perfect, the image presented make us "see" the splendid branches of the willow changing the color in the Spring. This is not surprising that the willow (or yanagi in Japanese) is precisely a kigo for Spring. Tablada's image remind us of that used by Chora, a disciple of Buson:

The stars
Seen through its branches---
How lonely the willow![18]

In both haiku the color blends with movement while there is an equilibrium with the light in order to illuminate in a sudden moment the experience. Tablada was the poet that combined synthesis, integration, rhythm, and metrics. The alliteration (which is not used in classical haiku) invite to experience color and movement in the branches of the tree. This is the same in his following piece:

Peces voladores
al golpe del oro solar
estalla en astillas el vidrio del mar.[19]

Golden sun, one stroke
the sea glass shatters into chips
flying fish.

[Translated by Araceli Tinajero]

Even though Tablada uses metaphor such as glass, golden, and chips, the oppositions and contrast articulate semantic poles: universe and colors. The images take shape. Like in the following piece:

LA LUNA

Es mar la noche negra
la nube es una concha,
la luna es una perla.

THE MOON..

The sea, a black night
the cloud, a shell
a pearl is the sea.

[Translated by Araceli Tinajero]

The night, the moon and the sea merge: the immensity of the night and the sea are transformed into a tiny pearl; the contrast intensifies the glitter and opacity. Many of the themes used in traditional Japanese haiku were used by Tablada. A perfect example would be the butterfly (not even to mention the frog, the pines, the insects, a kakemono, a cherry blossom):

MARIPOSA NOCTURNA

Devuelve a la desnuda rama,
nocturna mariposa
las hojas secas de tus alas.[20]

This poem is very close to the famous one by Noritake:

Fallen petals rise
back to the branch-- I watch:
Oh! … butterflies[21]

The effective dynamism comes from the natural environment and its relationship with mankind. The movement and synthesis, articulated in Tablada's haiku, rescues the spirit of the haiku by Moritake. The Mexican poet could not follow the norms of the Japanese traditional haiku, but he tried the best he could to capture its essence. He knew that to become a good haiku writer, the haijin should live with nature. He also called upon other poets, advising them that they should take lessons from artists like Hiroshigue and Hokusai. By doing that, he said, the poet might be able to portray what he sees while "dissociating the panorama, the view"[22] This is probably why, in the prologue to his first haiku book, which by the way, he dedicated to two Japanese haijin, he wrote:

"it all depends of the concept one has about art. Some people think that art is static and permanent; I believe that art is in constant state of flux.".[23]

[Translated by Araceli Tinajero]

Admiring the Japanese poets, he said,

"aunque sediento, el haijin deja intacta su taza de té, un pasmo porque mira que la luna en ella se refleja" [Even when he is thirsty, the haijin leaves intact his coup of tea, what an astonishment, he sees the moon's reflection in the water"][24]

Tablada also recognized the importance of travelling in the way Basho did it. This is why, thinking about the Japanese master, he wrote:

"A good haijin sings an instant of bliss next to a flower, next to a stone, next to an animal."[25]

He learned all this from haiku poets and artists. He knew they travelled extensively in order to see new sides of nature's sensations and to write on their manifestations of the theme, which sees mankind as a traveler on the road of life.

Tablada wrote his first haiku when Modernism, the movement to which he belonged, began to disintegrate. As Cathy Jrade says,

"modernista discourse matured, acquired a sense of self-worth, and became simpler, more direct [like Tablada's haiku]. These stylistic shifts, which were often seen as departures from modernismo, are part of the evolution of the movement."[26]

Therefore, Tablada was a poet of his time who dared to write haiku the best he could. His followers have committed the same mistakes. But, are they mistakes? Then, how can we write haiku in a language other than Japanese? In his essay, "Como escribir un haiku en español", ["How to Write Haiku in Spanish"] Carlos Fleitas quotes Antonio Cabezas who states: "YES."[27] Yet, I confess, I do not have an answer nor a suggestion. However, I must say that thanks to Tablada's legacy; many others have ventured to follow his steps. This year we presented an exhibition at Yale University, "De viento y nube" ["Of Wind and Cloud"] by Uruguayan, Roberto Fernández Ibáñez in which he combines haiku and photography. Fernández Ibáñez wrote:

[According to an old proverb], “one can see one's self if one looks in serene waters.”

But, if the waters remain still for a long period, we can fall into narcissistic temptations. In this paradoxical interaction of stillness and movement, through experience, one comprehends that in the turbulence of life's rhythms, there still exists a space for the movement of thought. And when thoughts rest, when water acquires transparency, when everything appears to lead to a placid quietude, the activity of pure contemplation is born, without preconceived notions, without aspirations or goals, even artistic ones. Then, photography and haiku come to light. The result, like transparent water, can be insipid, nothing special and even “without content.” Nevertheless, I accepted its lack of surprise or originality because I intimately felt that the content itself was capable of being captured without subsequent interpretation. In those moments, I could simply say, “This is it!”[28]

Fernández Ibáñez' haiku and photographs, like the drawings and haiku made by Tablada are unique and show their true essence: they are original and eclectic and embrace the essence of the Japanese masters. These are some of Fernandez's haiku presented at the exhibition and translated into English by Sylvia Baer:

# 1

Wind currents and clouds--
in them, written subtly,
our life's brief essence

# 4

Now disappearing--
the puddle and the image
reflected inside

# 5

Here, inside this mist
the disappearance also
of all my musings--

# 7

Artwork of the wind:
designing calligraphy--
fleeting creation

# 8...........................................                                                                "Look, we can show you
the direction of the wind,"
announce the branches

# 9

A furtive reader
rifling through my open books--
is that Southern wind

.# 12

Fallen, lost pine cone,
winds have reunited us
far from the forest

# 13

Insomnia, wind,
keeping solidarity--
my clock does not sleep

# 22

Unrelenting wind--
the silences are sheltered
here in this forest

# 23

To where do they fly
those scattered tracks of footprints
etched over the dunes?

# 25

At the end of life:
Time now to ask of your self
"From where, from where, where?"

And finally, I would like to share that not long ago, I came across a book entitled Haikus peruanos. I also found a book written by Mexican children of the countryside, Abriendo la jaula [Opening the Cage]. While their haiku are not perfect, the gift which this type of Japanese poetry has given them has already opened "the cage" -- and their eyes to other parts of the world.

Bibliography

Arredondo, Brígido, ed. Abriendo la jaula. Campeche, Mexico: Casa Maya De la Poesía, 1997.

Beltrán Peña, José, ed. Haikus peruanos. Lima: San Marcos, 1999.

Blyth, R. H. A History of Haiku. 2 Vols. 3rd. ed. Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1968.

Boni de la Vega, Alfredo. "Hojas del cerezo. Primera antología del hai-kai Hispano", Abside, XV 3-4 (1951), 411-348; 571-593.

González Echevarría, Roberto. Latin American Short Stories. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Jrade, Cathy L. Modernismo, Modernity, and the Development of Spanish American Literature. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998.

Hugues, Glenn, Imagism and the Imagists. Palo Alto: Stanford University          Press, 1931.

Méndez Plancarte, Alfonso. "Primor y primavera del haik-kai." Abside, XIV (Oct-Dec), México, 1950, 431-495.

Monterde, García Icazbalceta, Francisco. Itinerario contemplativo. México, 1923.

Sandoval, Adriana. "José Juan Tablada y el arte." Encuentros y desencuentros de culturas: siglos XIX y XX. Actas de la Asociación

Internacional de Hispanistas. Universidad de California, Berkeley: Actas Irvine, 2992.

Tablada, José Juan. Hiroshigué. El pintor de la noche y de la luna de la nieve y de la espuma. México: Monografías Japonesas, 1914.

---.    Obras completas. Ed. Guillermo Sheridan. 5 vols. México: UNAM, 1991-1994.

[23] Quoted by Paz in Las peras del olmo, 64

[24] Monterde, Itinerario, 16

[25] Ibid, 17

[26] Jrade, 138

[1] Please see Introduction to Latin American Short Stories and bibliography in Modernismo, Modernity, and the Development of Spanish American Literature by Cathy Jrade.

[2] His chronicles appear in the book, En el país del sol. Please see pages 100, and 145 where he paraphrases Basho. He also translates some of Murasaki Shikibu's verses oin page 137.

[3] In Adriana Sandoval's article pp. 156-164.

[4] Ibid, 156

[5] In Hiroshigue…. P. 37 Basho's poem:

Una nube de flores!
Es la campana de Ueno
O la de Asakusa?

[6] The haiku of these poets can be found in the following texts:

Borges, Jorge Luis. Obras completas. Tomo III.

Paz, Octavio. Libertad bajo palabra

Benet y Castellón, Eduardo. Ensayo de haikai antillano; el haikai se escribe en una hoja de cerezo.

Porras Sánchez, Juan. Pajaritos de yerba y la genética del hai-kai.

Carrera Andrade, Jorge. Microgramas.

Duvalier, Armando. Mariposas de laca.

Monterde, Francisco. Itinerario contemplativo.

-----. Netsuke.

-----. Sakura.

Haro y Tamiz Agustín. Rocío. Versos.

Fernández, Roberto. "De viento y nube" Exhibition of photography and haiku

[7] "Un Día… Poemas sintéticos" in Obras completas I, 363.

[8] El jarro de flores. Disociaciones líricas. Escritores Sindicados: New York, 1922.

[9] Henderson, 14.

[10] Quoted by Carlos Fleitas in "Musicality in Haiku Written in Spanish: A Platonism?" in "World Haiku Review", November, 2001

[11] Ibid.

[12] Tablada, Obras I, 369

[13] Blyth, R. H. A History of Haiku, 194.

[14] In Méndez Plancarte, p. 515

[15] Paz, Signos en rotación, 243.

[16] Hugues, 143

[17] Tablada, Obras - I, p. 387

[18] Blyth, p. 215

[19] Tablada, Obras - I, 379

[20] Tablada, Obras - I, 383

[21] Henderson, 11

[22] In Monterde's Itinerario, 16

[23] Quoted by Paz in Las peras del olmo, 64

[24] Monterde, Itinerario, 16

[25] Ibid, 17

[26] Jrade, 138

[27] Escribir haiku, es un orientalismo imposible? Pues quien comienza a escribir haiku en español se hace además de ésta, otras dos preguntas: ¿es posible transplantar a la mentalidad ibero-americana y a su lengua, un género poético nacido en el entorno cultural del Japón del siglo XVII tan ajeno e inaccesible a nuestras culturas? Y, es posible mantener el esquema métrico 5-7-5 y el kigo o palabra de la estación? La respuesta a las dos preguntas es sorprendentemente, sí. Y más sorprendente es, que de todas las lenguas y culturas, el español es la que está más cerca desde el punto de vista poético y linguístico al Japón del haiku, que cualquier otra. Antonio Cabezas en un magistral artículo, retoma el notable descubrimiento de Arthur Waley, el erudito inglés que fue uno de los primeros occidentales en traducir a una lengua occidental, la antigua poesía china y japonesa. Waley encontró un marcado paralelismo entre los poemas de la primera compilación de poesía japonesa, el Manyoshu (Colección de las Diez Mil Hojas -760 DC-), y las coplas populares del sur de España. Y agrega el erudito español que "de los nueve idiomas modernos más difundidos el español es, después del italiano, el que más se parece al japonés en fonética y longitud de vocablos y frases"* Y Cabezas, luego de proseguir su esmerado análisis de las semejanzas linguisticas, poéticas y estéticas del Manyoshu con la poesía popular española, concluye: "los antiguos japoneses, se parecían más a los españoles actuales que a sus propios biztataranientos"*.

www.conectate.com.uy/~carlosfleitas

[28] From the presentation in his Exhibition at La Casa Cultural Julia de Burgos "De viento y Nube" "of Wind and Cloud," February and March, 2002, Yale Unversity

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