The World Haiku Festival 2002
Yuwa-town, Akita 20-22 September
The influence of Japanese
lyrical writing, particularly that of the haiku, could be felt in Hungarian
poetry as early as the turn of the 19th century. Hungarian impressionists, who
at that time became acquainted with English and French haiku-translations, were
strongly impressed by the symbiosis of the exotic miniature pictures and the
phonetic effects, the spectacle and musicality in these poems. Thus, the
influence of Far-Eastern haiku came to Hungary from the West. The same poets who
idolized the poems of Baudelaire, Verlaine and Rimbaud now tried to naturalize
this tiny pearl, the haiku, into Hungarian literature. Hungarian haiku has
changed over the years into something autonomous with alterations in respect of
form and content. We will consider examples of haiku which are specifically
Hungarian from the point of view of both subject and form.
First, let us mention Dezso
Kosztolányi's haiku (1885-1936), who translated a tome of Chinese and Japanese
poetry. He pleased his readers with a series of tanka and haiku written under
the pen-name, Horigucsi Niko. He was the first poet whose translations and
lyrics made haiku widely-known among Hungarian-speaking readers.
Unlike the Japanese haiku,
which is mora-based, the Hungarian version of the poem rests on the alternation
of short and long syllables. In Kosztolányi's translations, as well as in his
original poetry, he disregards the 17-syllable rule (5+7+5); moreover, he
arranges the poem into four instead of three lines. As is typical for Hungarian
lyric poetry, he uses rhyme at the end of the lines, and gives a title to each
work. However, with these poems, he creates a similar atmosphere which we can
feel when reading Japanese haiku.
Necklace
Putting all my tears on a
string
I want to make a necklace.
This is for you my darling.
Kosztolányi demonstrates the
spirituality of haikus.
Another of the most outstanding
poets of the period beginning after WWI is the tragic-fated lyricist, Miklós
Radnóti (1909-1944), who died in a concentration camp. He is a master of formal
virtuosity. Although he did not call his two- or three-verse poems haiku, they
really were.
Cold? You are like
a snow-covered bush with a bird's lonely whistle.
Why do we call this poem a
haiku? The number of syllables is dissimilar to Japanese haiku; on the other
hand, the Hungarian rhyme at the end of the lines is not employed. Yet, from the
point of view of the subject, it can be considered a haiku, not only because
there is a 'season-word' in it, but because of its unusual, unexpected ending.
The tension between the beginning and the end, a feature of haiku, becomes
palpable here.
Starting from the 1980's,
haiku-poetry has become more and more popular. Several volumes of haiku
translations are published in quick succession, among them Haiku versnaptár
(Haiku Diary, 1981), translated by Dezso Tandori, István
Rácz's volume of translations, Fényes telihold (Bright Full Moon,
1988), then The most beautiful haiku by Matsuo Basho (1996). These
volumes were sold out from Hungarian bookshops in surprisingly short time.
More and more, Hungarian poets
are writing original haiku-poetry. They do not create exclusively under the
spell of classical haiku, which depicts the beauties of the four seasons. Modern
haiku has a large following in this country of ten-million inhabitants. An
anthology of haiku by 138 Hungarian poets will soon be published.
One of the basic genres of this
poetry is aphoristic haiku, which has a philosophical message. Hungarian
poets find, in the shortness of haiku, a trait similar to epigrams;
consequently, this gives their original haiku-poetry philosophic content. Let us
now consider an example of Béla Vihar's (1908-1978) oeuvre, in which lyric
elements are combined with aphoristic thoughts:
We are two at the birth
We are two in love, lonely
At the time of death
This example shows the
philosophic content in aphoristic haiku.
Next, the poet György Faludy
(b. 1910), who was forced to work in a Hungarian copper-mine during the
socialist regime, and later emigrated to West. He returned home only after 1990,
and is also a remarkable translator, as well as a great connoisseur and
interpreter of Japanese poetry. In his original haiku, he presents the poet's
own state of mind:
Empty days. Sitting in the
twilight
I am gripped by melancholy
And come to terms with the ephemera
What causes the present
popularity of haiku? Just as an apocalyptic atmosphere was felt at the end of
the 19th century, there was, at the turn of this millennium, a general sensation
of depression that penetrated people's lives. We would rather escape from our
time, marked by this end-of-the-world feeling. People like to flee from this
insecure, confused world in a hurry, with insolvable problems to an exotic,
far-away place. Haiku provides, at the same time, escape from the day-to-day
cruelties and natural disasters. It offers a hope that there is a place of
beauty and harmony somewhere. It is the sensation of serenity, permanence
and timelessness beaming from haiku that attracts Hungarian poets and gives them
refuge. In the 1990's, the sudden freedom of speech could at last liberate
writers and artists to explore in a new light. Yet, at the same time, poets
hiding from the insecurities of an early-stage capitalist attempt could also
find comfort in a far-away culture.
A tiny, pearl-sized poem, the
haiku meets the present expectations completely. One cannot think of something
more adequate for our time. This is shown not only by the popularity it acquired
among Hungarian lyricists, but also by the world-wide revival of the genre.
Nowadays, as earth becomes a
global village where we can get a quick and accurate account of many important
events just as they happen anywhere in the world, we can only dedicate a short
time to any one piece of information. We are reluctant to read sagas of several
volumes. We are more willing to watch video clips and read or write haiku. The
ephemerity and the tension of here-and-now in Hungarian haiku-poetry is
signaled by the fact that poets do not confine themselves to season-words in
their poems; they also use words referring to parts of the day: night, noon and
morning are the times most frequently mentioned in haiku. We can quote Sándor
Weöres for an example:
Look: the night moon
Got hung on the railing
Look again: there's no trace of it.
Sometimes poets try to condense
their thoughts using the words of all four seasons in the same poem. Károly
Peto Tóth's haiku is a typical example of this technique:
Running and waiting.
sparkling spring and grape-autumn,
winter of metal, glass-summer.
Another master of haiku-poetry
is Transylvanian poet, Sándor Kányádi (b. 1929). He is a reputed translator,
as well as an author of original haiku, which he calls fingernail-poems,
referring to their shortness. His two-fingernail poems consist of two haiku, the
three-fingernail poems of three haiku. Moreover, he has haiku for shamans'
fingernails, making reference to shamans' six fingers. Kányádi is accurate in
complying with the formal requirements of the genre: he keeps the syllable-rule
and avoids the rhyme. Here is one of his haiku called "small petals of
cherry blossom":
Your sorrow and joy
My darling, please, entrust to
Vernal weeping willow
Kányádi is not exclusively an
author of classical haiku-poetry. Among his poems, we can find pieces which give
expression to the bitterness of Hungarian reality during socialism:
I wonder if there
will be throats to bellow all
that now we keep back.
A whole life takes shape in
these 17 syllables, and this life has nothing to do with Zen and oriental
meditation: the poem is filled with European, or rather, East-European
suffering, and becomes tense while remaining within the framework of the genre.
Among Hungarian poetesses,
Ágnes Gergely (b.1933) is an excellent connoisseur of form, a real poeta
doctus. She is a great authority on Japanese prose and poetry, and beside
limericks, haiku are frequent in her writings.
She does not approach the East
from the West anymore, Japanese culture is a lively experience to her. She had
the chance to travel to Japan as an English interpreter in the early 1970s, and
the culture of this country filled her with wonder for the rest of her life. She
even wrote a novel from her experiences, called 'The Interpreter."
She also translated a volume of Akutagawa's short stories. In her sombre haikus,
she remains loyal to the original haiku-pattern: no rhymes at the end of the
lines and frequent alliterations:
Threshold of thresholds.
No one ever got ever in.
No, nor even hope.
Among the significant
contemporary haiku authors, Tandori Dezso (b. 1938) must be mentioned. He
translated the haiku calendar in 1981. He was the first one not to use
English, French or German translations. The haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa were
translated for him from the original Japanese. Tandori's translations follow the
classical haiku form. He respects the formal demand that the haiku is to use
nominal rather than verbal structures. According to Takahama Kyoshi (1874-1959),
"The haiku
is the art of nouns".
This static aspect of nominal
structures creates the atmosphere of eternity and steadiness so typical of these
poems. This is what the people of our fast-changing time long for.
The other feature of Hungarian
haiku is the aphoristic formulation, the succinct philosophic message of this
tiny poem. As we stated above, this philosophical, often ironic style is due to
the fact that Europeans discover in these short poems a trait similar to
epigrams. This can be noticed in Tandori's haiku:
A haiku by Kavafis
It's half past to now!
How rapidly
A year has flown!
Ákos Fodor's (b.1945) haikus
also have this aphoristic character, the koan-theory is interwoven with
haiku-lyrics in his poetry. Generally, the Hungarian haiku-poetry at the turn of
the millennium is penetrated by the sober philosophy and painful pessimism
of authors who have to assume the responsibility of a Central-European
fate:
Mantra
Healthy is the one
Who gets to live in peace with
All his diseases
Buddhist way of thinking, and
contrasted ideas are the main aspects of Fodor's haiku, which comprise
macrocosm and microcosm at the same time. Contrasting structures has been a main
aspect of Japanese poetry from the beginning. In early tanka, the first line is
opposed to the other two. In haiku, the first two lines are answered by the
third one. But the haiku has a contrapuntal construction not only in respect to
its subject. The rhythm itself follows a contrasting technique: in each
line the first and the fifth syllables are stressed. This stress cannot be
rendered in Hungarian due to the specific character of the language, namely that
in Hungarian words the first syllable is always emphasized. Thus the fifth
syllable can be stressed only if there is a one-syllable word in this position.
Beside Buddhist traditions,
Christian theory can also be a subject for Hungarian haiku-poetry, as we can see
in László Sajó's (b. 1956) poem:
Deserted markets
in the Christmas-loneliness
you are not on your own
Loneliness means a different
thing in a Japanese haiku than in either its European or Hungarian counterparts.
While, for Japanese people, loneliness is an opportunity to fuse with nature,
for a European, the self is in the center (and thus the lonely self touches
inner emotion).
In Japanese language, the word,
'lonely,' is described with a character meaning water, trees, groves;
for a European, 'loneliness' is when he hides in his den, left alone and sad.
Attempting to derive a conclusion from this, we have to state that Hungarian
haiku is related with the epigram. Its tone is often painful, sobre and ironic.
Authors employ time; although not always using the season-word, they frequently
use words referring to the time of day. As to form and structure, Hungarian
haiku often respects the syllable count. Many poets keep to the 17-syllable
rule, others, in turn, choose the traditional Hungarian stress-counting verse,
of eight syllables, with the caesura in the middle of the line. Some poets use
the five-syllable Adonisian line. Titles and typical Hungarian line-ending
rhymes are frequent. The rhyme pattern may be: a-b-a, or a-a-b. The
alliterations familiar in Japanese haikus are used by Hungarian poets as
well.
After the World Haiku Festival
of 2000 [Oxford/London, England], a Hungarian Haiku Club was founded
using the framework of the Hungary-Japan Friendship Society. The age of club
members varies from 7 to 76 years. Many are students of Japanese at university,
who themselves try their talent writing haiku, mostly in Hungarian, but
sometimes even in Japanese. Today, this club organizes meetings in the
picturesque sites of the country each season. The sites are always related in
some way to Japanese culture (e.g. a Japanese garden, a Japanese statue-park).
*This paper was presented at
the World Haiku Festival 2002 conference, Yuwa-machi, Akita Prefecture, Japan by
Judit Vihar.
