Matsuo Basho. Engraving by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi from the series “101 Views of the Moon.” 1891 The Library of Congress
Genre haiku descended from another classical genre- five lines tank in 31 syllables, known since the 8th century. There was a caesura in the tanka, at this point it “broke” into two parts, resulting in a tercet of 17 syllables and a couplet of 14 syllables - a kind of dialogue, which was often composed by two authors. This original tercet was called haiku, which literally means "initial stanzas". Then, when the tercet received its own meaning and became a genre with its own complex laws, it began to be called haiku.
The Japanese genius finds himself in brevity. Haiku tercet is the most laconic genre of Japanese poetry: only 17 syllables of 5-7-5 mor. Mora- a unit of measurement for the number (longitude) of a foot. Mora is the time required to pronounce a short syllable. in line. There are only three or four significant words in a 17-syllable poem. In Japanese, a haiku is written in one line from top to bottom. On European languages A haiku is written in three lines. Japanese poetry does not know rhymes; phonetics had developed by the 9th century Japanese language, including only 5 vowels (a, i, u, e, o) and 10 consonants (except for voiced ones). With such phonetic poverty, no interesting rhyme is possible. Formally, the poem is based on the count of syllables.
Until the 17th century, haiku writing was viewed as a game. Hai-ku became a serious genre with the appearance of the poet Matsuo Basho on the literary scene. In 1681 he wrote famous poem about the crow and completely changed the world of haiku:
On a dead branch
The raven turns black.
Autumn evening. Translation by Konstantin Balmont.
Let us note that the Russian symbolist of the older generation, Konstantin Balmont, in this translation replaced the “dry” branch with a “dead” one, excessively, according to the laws of Japanese versification, dramatizing this poem. The translation turns out to violate the rule of avoiding evaluative words and definitions in general, except for the most ordinary ones. "Words of Haiku" ( haigo) should be distinguished by deliberate, precisely calibrated simplicity, difficult to achieve, but clearly felt insipidity. Nevertheless, this translation correctly conveys the atmosphere created by Basho in this haiku, which has become a classic, the melancholy of loneliness, the universal sadness.
There is another translation of this poem:
Here the translator added the word “lonely”, which is absent in the Japanese text, nevertheless its inclusion is justified, since “sad loneliness on an autumn evening” is main topic this haiku. Both translations are rated very highly by critics.
However, it is obvious that the poem is even simpler than the translators presented. If you give its literal translation and place it in one line, as the Japanese write haiku, you will get the following extremely short statement:
枯れ枝にからすのとまりけるや秋の暮れ
On a dry branch / a raven sits / autumn twilight
As we can see, the word “black” is missing in the original, it is only implied. The image of a “chilled raven on a bare tree” is Chinese in origin. "Autumn Twilight" ( aki no kure) can be interpreted both as “late autumn” and as “autumn evening”. Monochrome is a quality highly valued in the art of haiku; depicts the time of day and year, erasing all colors.
Haiku is least of all a description. It is necessary not to describe, the classics said, but to name things (literally “to give names to things” - to the hole) extremely in simple words and as if you were calling them for the first time.
Raven on a winter branch. Engraving by Watanabe Seitei. Around 1900 ukiyo-e.org Haiku are not miniatures, as they were long called in Europe. The greatest haiku poet of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, who died early from tuberculosis, Masaoka Shiki, wrote that haiku contains the whole world: a raging ocean, earthquakes, typhoons, the sky and stars - the whole earth with the highest peaks and the deepest sea depressions. The space of haiku is immense, infinite. In addition, haiku tends to be combined into cycles, into poetic diaries - and often life-long, so that the brevity of haiku can turn into its opposite: into long works - collections of poems (though of a discrete, intermittent nature ).
But the passage of time, past and future X does not depict aiku, haiku is a brief moment of the present - and nothing more. Here is an example of a haiku by Issa, perhaps the most beloved poet in Japan:
How the cherry blossomed!
She drove off her horse
And a proud prince.
Transience is an immanent quality of life in the Japanese understanding; without it, life has no value or meaning. Fleetingness is both beautiful and sad because its nature is fickle and changeable.
An important place in haiku poetry is the connection with the four seasons - autumn, winter, spring and summer. The sages said: “He who has seen the seasons has seen everything.” That is, I saw birth, growing up, love, rebirth and death. Therefore, in classical haiku, a necessary element is the “seasonal word” ( kigo), which connects the poem with the season. Sometimes these words are difficult for foreigners to recognize, but the Japanese know them all. Detailed kigo databases, some of thousands of words, are now being searched on Japanese networks.
In the above haiku about the crow, the seasonal word is very simple - "autumn." The coloring of this poem is very dark, emphasized by the atmosphere of an autumn evening, literally “autumn twilight,” that is, black against the background of deepening twilight.
Look how gracefully Basho introduces the essential sign of the season into a poem about separation:
For a spike of barley
I grabbed, looking for support...
How difficult is the moment of separation!
“A spike of barley” directly indicates the end of summer.
Or in the tragic poem of the poetess Chiyo-ni on the death of her little son:
O my dragonfly catcher!
Where in an unknown country
Did you run in today?
"Dragonfly" is a seasonal word for summer.
Another “summer” poem by Basho:
Summer herbs!
Here they are, the fallen warriors
Dreams of glory...
Basho is called the poet of wanderings: he wandered a lot around Japan in search of true haiku, and, when setting off, he did not care about food, lodging, tramps, or the vicissitudes of the path in the remote mountains. On the way, he was accompanied by the fear of death. A sign of this fear was the image of “Bones Whitening in the Field” - this was the name of the first book of his poetic diary, written in the genre haibun(“prose in haiku style”):
Maybe my bones
The wind will whiten... It's in the heart
It breathed cold on me.
After Basho, the theme of “death on the way” became canonical. Here is his last poem, “The Dying Song”:
I got sick on the way,
And everything runs and circles my dream
Through scorched fields.
Imitating Basho, haiku poets always composed “last stanzas” before they died.
"True" ( Makoto-no) the poems of Basho, Buson, Issa are close to our contemporaries. The historical distance is, as it were, removed in them due to the immutability of the haiku language, its formulaic nature, which has been preserved throughout the history of the genre from the 15th century to the present day.
The main thing in the worldview of a haikaist is an acute personal interest in the form of things, their essence, and connections. Let us remember the words of Basho: “Learn from the pine tree what pine is, learn from bamboo what bamboo is.” Japanese poets cultivated meditative contemplation of nature, peering into the objects surrounding a person in the world, into the endless cycle of things in nature, into its bodily, sensual features. The poet's goal is to observe nature and intuitively discern its connections with the human world; haikaists rejected ugliness, pointlessness, utilitarianism, and abstraction.
Basho created not only haiku poetry and haibun prose, but also the image of a poet-wanderer - a noble man, outwardly ascetic, in a poor dress, far from everything worldly, but also aware of the sad involvement in everything happening in the world, preaching conscious “simplification”. The haiku poet is characterized by an obsession with wandering, the Zen Buddhist ability to embody the great in the small, awareness of the frailty of the world, the fragility and changeability of life, the loneliness of man in the universe, the tart bitterness of existence, a sense of the inseparability of nature and man, hypersensitivity to all natural phenomena and the change of seasons .
The ideal of such a person is poverty, simplicity, sincerity, a state of spiritual concentration necessary to comprehend things, but also lightness, transparency of verse, the ability to depict the eternal in the current.
At the end of these notes, we present two poems by Issa, a poet who treated with tenderness everything small, fragile, and defenseless:
Quietly, quietly crawl,
Snail, on the slope of Fuji,
Up to the very heights!Hiding under the bridge,
Sleeping on a snowy winter night
Homeless child.
Japan is a country with a very ancient and unique culture. Perhaps there is no other literary genre, which would express the Japanese national spirit in the same way that haiku does.
Haiku (haiku) - lyric poem, is distinguished by extreme brevity and unique poetics. It depicts the life of nature and human life against the backdrop of the cycle of seasons.
In Japan, haiku were not simply invented by someone, but were the product of a centuries-old historical literary and poetic process. Until the 7th century, Japanese poetry was dominated by long poems - “nagauta”. In the 7th-8th centuries, the Japanese legislator literary poetry, having supplanted them, the five-line “tanka” (literally “short song”), not yet divided into stanzas, becomes. Later, tanka began to be clearly divided into tercet and couplet, but haiku did not yet exist. In the 12th century, chain verses "renga" (literally "strung stanzas") appeared, consisting of alternating tercets and couplets. Their first tercise was called the "initial stanza" or "haiku", but did not exist independently. It was only in the 14th century that renga reached its peak. The opening stanza was usually the best in its composition, and collections of exemplary haiku appeared, which became a popular form of poetry. But it was only in the second half of the 17th century that haiku as an independent phenomenon became firmly established in Japanese literature.
Japanese poetry is syllabic, that is, its rhythm is based on the alternation of a certain number of syllables. There is no rhyme: the sound and rhythmic organization of the tercet is a subject of great concern to Japanese poets.
Hundreds, thousands of poets have been and continue to be interested in the addition of haiku. Among these countless names, four great names are now known throughout the world: Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), Yosa Buson (1716-1783), Kobayashi Issa (1769-1827) and Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902). These poets traveled far and wide to the Land of the Rising Sun. We found the most beautiful corners in the depths of the mountains, on the sea coast and sang them in poetry. They put all the heat of their hearts into a few syllables of haiku. When the reader opens the book, it’s as if he sees with his own eyes the green mountains of Yoshino, and the surf waves in Suma Bay rustle in the wind. The pine trees in Suminoe will sing a sad song.
Haiku has a stable meter. Each verse has a certain number of syllables: five in the first, seven in the second and five in the third - a total of seventeen syllables. This does not exclude poetic license, especially among such bold and innovative poets as Matsuo Basho. He sometimes did not take into account the meter, striving to achieve the greatest poetic expressiveness.
The dimensions of haiku are so small that in comparison with it a European sonnet seems like a large poem. It contains only a few words, and yet its capacity is relatively large. The art of writing haiku is, first of all, the ability to say a lot in a few words.
Brevity is similar to haiku folk proverbs. Some tercets have gained currency in popular speech as proverbs, such as the poem by Basho:
I'll say the word -
Lips freeze.
Autumn whirlwind!
As a proverb, it means that “caution sometimes makes one remain silent.” But most often, haiku differs from a proverb in its genre characteristics. This is not an edifying saying, a short parable or a well-aimed wit, but a poetic picture sketched in one or two strokes. The poet’s task is to infect the reader with lyrical excitement, to awaken his imagination, and for this it is not necessary to paint a picture in all its details.
You cannot skim through a collection of haiku, flipping through page after page. If the reader is passive and not attentive enough, he will not perceive the impulse sent to him by the poet. Japanese poetics takes into account the counter-work of the reader's thoughts. Thus, the blow of the bow and the response of the string trembling together give birth to music.
Haiku is small in size, but this does not detract from the poetic or philosophical meaning that a poet is able to give to it, nor does it limit the scope of his thoughts. However, the poet, of course, cannot give a multifaceted image and at length, to fully develop his thought within the framework of haiku. In every phenomenon he seeks only its culminating point.
Giving preference to the small, haiku sometimes painted a picture of a large scale:
On a high embankment there are pine trees,
And between them the cherries are visible, and the palace
In the depths of flowering trees...
In three lines of Basho's poem there are three perspectives.
Haiku is akin to the art of painting. They were often painted on the subjects of paintings and, in turn, inspired artists; sometimes they turned into a component of the painting in the form of a calligraphic inscription on it. Sometimes poets resorted to methods of depiction akin to the art of painting. This is, for example, Buson’s tercet:
Crescent flowers around.
The sun is going out in the west.
The moon is rising in the east.
Wide fields covered yellow flowers rapeseeds, they seem especially bright in the rays of sunset. The pale moon rising in the east contrasts with the fiery ball of the setting sun. The poet does not tell us in detail what kind of lighting effect is created, what colors are on his palette. He only offers a new look at the picture that everyone has seen, perhaps, dozens of times... Grouping and selection of pictorial details is the main task of the poet. He has only two or three arrows in his quiver: not one should fly past.
Haiku is a little magical picture. It can be compared with landscape sketch. You can paint a huge landscape on canvas, carefully drawing the picture, or you can sketch a tree bent by the wind and rain with a few strokes. This is how the Japanese poet does it, he “draws”, outlining in a few words what we ourselves must imagine, complete in our imagination. Very often, haiku authors made illustrations for their poems.
Often the poet creates not visual, but sound images. The howl of the wind, the chirping of cicadas, the cries of a pheasant, the singing of a nightingale and a lark, the voice of a cuckoo - each sound is filled with a special meaning, giving rise to certain moods and feelings.
The lark sings
with a stinking blow in the thicket
The pheasant echoes him. (Buson)
The Japanese poet does not unfold before the reader the entire panorama of possible ideas and associations that arise in connection with a given object or phenomenon. It only awakens the reader’s thought and gives it a certain direction.
On a bare branch
Raven sits alone.
Autumn evening. (Basho)
The poem looks like a monochrome ink drawing.
There is nothing superfluous here, everything is extremely simple. With the help of a few skillfully chosen details, a picture of late autumn is created. You can feel the absence of wind, nature seems frozen in sad stillness. Poetic image, it would seem, is slightly outlined, but has a large capacity and, bewitching, leads you along. The poet depicted a real landscape and, through it, his state of mind. He is not talking about the raven's loneliness, but about his own.
It is quite understandable that there is some confusion in haiku. The poem consists of only three verses. Each verse is very short. Most often in verse two meaningful words, not counting formal elements and exclamatory particles. All excess is wrung out and eliminated; there is nothing left that serves only for decoration. The means of poetic speech are selected extremely sparingly: haiku avoids epithet or metaphor if it can do without them. Sometimes the entire haiku is an extended metaphor, but its direct meaning is usually hidden in the subtext.
From the heart of a peony
A bee slowly crawls out...
Oh, with what reluctance!
Basho composed this poem while leaving the hospitable home of his friend. It would be a mistake, however, to look for such a double meaning in every haiku. Most often, haiku is a concrete image of the real world that does not require or allow any other interpretation.
Haiku teaches you to look for hidden beauty in the simple, inconspicuous, everyday. Not only the famous, many times sung cherry blossoms are beautiful, but also the modest, invisible at first glance, flowers of colza and shepherd's purse.
Take a close look!
Shepherd's purse flowers
You will see under the fence. (Basho)
In another poem by Basho, the face of a fisherman at dawn resembles a blooming poppy, and both are equally beautiful. Beauty can strike like lightning:
I've barely gotten around to it
Exhausted, until the night...
And suddenly - wisteria flowers! (Basho)
Beauty can be deeply hidden. The feeling of beauty in nature and in human life is akin to a sudden comprehension of the truth, the eternal principle, which, according to Buddhist teaching, is invisibly present in all phenomena of existence. In haiku we find a new rethinking of this truth - the affirmation of beauty in the unnoticed, ordinary:
They scare them and drive them out of the fields!
The sparrows will fly up and hide
Under the protection of tea bushes. (Basho)Trembling on the horse's tail
Spring webs...
Tavern at noon. (Izen)
In Japanese poetry, haiku are always symbolic, always filled with deep feeling and philosophical content. Each line carries a high semantic load.
How the autumn wind whistles!
Then only you will understand my poems,
When you spend the night in the field. (Matsuo Basho)Throw a stone at me!
Cherry blossom branch
I'm broke now. (Chikarai Kikaku, student of Basho)Not one of the ordinary people
The one who attracts
Tree without flowers. (Onitsura)The moon has come out
And every small bush
Invited to the celebration. (Kobaasi Issa)
Deep meaning, passionate appeal, emotional intensity in these short lines and necessarily the dynamics of thought or feeling!
When writing haiku, the poet must have mentioned what time of year he was talking about. And haiku collections were also usually divided into four chapters: “Spring”, “Summer”, “Autumn”, “Winter”. If you carefully read the tercet, you can always find a “seasonal” word in it. For example, about melt water, about plum and cherry blossoms, about the first swallows, about the nightingale. Singing frogs are spoken of in spring poems; about cicadas, about cuckoos, about green grass, about lush peonies - in summer; about chrysanthemums, about scarlet maple leaves, about the sad trills of a cricket - in autumn; about bare groves, about cold wind, about snow, about frost - in winter. But haiku talks about more than just flowers, birds, wind and the moon. Here is a peasant planting rice in a flooded field, here are travelers coming to admire the snow cap on sacred mountain Fuji. There is so much Japanese life here - both everyday and festive. One of the most revered holidays among the Japanese is the cherry blossom festival. Its branch is a symbol of Japan. When the cherry blossoms, everyone, young and old, whole families, friends and loved ones gather in gardens and parks to admire the pink and white clouds of delicate petals. This is one of the oldest Japanese traditions. They carefully prepare for this spectacle. To choose a good place, sometimes you have to come a day earlier. The Japanese tend to celebrate cherry blossoms twice: with colleagues and with family. In the first case, it is a sacred duty that is not violated by anyone, in the second, it is true pleasure. Contemplation of cherry blossoms has a beneficial effect on a person, puts one in a philosophical mood, causes admiration, joy, and peace.
The haiku of the poet Issa are both lyrical and ironic:
In my native country
Cherry blossoms
And there is grass in the fields!“Cherry trees, cherry blossoms!” -
And about these old trees
Once upon a time they sang...It's spring again.
A new stupidity is coming
The old one is replaced.Cherries and those
May become nasty
Under the squeak of mosquitoes.
Haiku is not just a poetic form, but something more - a certain way thinking, a special way of seeing the world. Haiku connects the worldly and the spiritual, the small and the great, the natural and the human, the momentary and the eternal. Spring - Summer - Autumn - Winter - this traditional division has a broader meaning than simply assigning poems to seasonal themes. In this single time space, not only nature moves and changes, but also man himself, whose life has its own Spring - Summer - Autumn - Winter. The natural world connects with the human world in eternity.
No matter what haiku we take, it’s the same everywhere main character- Human. The poets of Japan, with their haiku, try to tell how a person lives on earth, what he thinks about, how he is sad and happy. They also help us feel and understand beauty. After all, everything in nature is beautiful: a huge oak tree, an inconspicuous blade of grass, a red deer, and a green frog. Even if you think about mosquitoes in winter, you will immediately remember summer, sun, walks in the forest.
Japanese poets teach us to take care of all living things, to feel sorry for all living things, because pity is a great feeling. He who does not know how to truly regret will never kind person. Poets repeat again and again: peer into the familiar and you will see the unexpected, peer into the ugly and you will see the beautiful, peer into the simple and you will see the complex, peer into the particles and you will see the whole, peer into the small and you will see the great. To see the beautiful and not remain indifferent - this is what haiku poetry calls us to, glorifying humanity in Nature and spiritualizing the life of Man.
Haiku is a style of classical Japanese waka lyric poetry that has been popular since the 16th century.
Features and examples of haiku
This type of poetry, then called haiku, became a separate genre in the 16th century; This style received its current name in the 19th century thanks to the poet Masaoka Shiki. Matsuo Basho is recognized as the most famous haiku poet throughout the world.
How enviable is their fate!
North of the busy world
The cherries have blossomed in the mountains!
Autumn darkness
Broken and driven away
Conversation of friends
The structure and stylistic features of the haiku (hoku) genre
The present Japanese haiku represents 17 syllables that form one column of hieroglyphs. With special delimiting words kireji (Japanese “cutting word”) - the haiku verse is broken in the proportion 12:5 on the 5th syllable, or on the 12th.
Haiku in Japanese (Basho):
かれ朶に烏の とまりけり 秋の暮
Karaeda nikarasu no tomarikeri aki no kure
On a bare branch
Raven sits alone.
Autumn evening.
When translating haiku poems into languages Western countries The kireji is replaced by a line break, so the haiku takes the form of a tercet. Among haiku, it is very rare to find verses consisting of two lines, composed in a ratio of 2:1. Modern haiku, which are composed in Western languages, usually include less than 17 syllables, while haiku written in Russian can be longer.
In the original haiku, the image associated with nature is of particular importance, which is compared with human life. The verse denotes the time of year using the necessary seasonal word kigo. Haiku are written only in the present tense: the author writes about his personal feelings about the event that just happened. Classic haiku does not have a name and does not use artistic and expressive means common in Western poetry (for example, rhyme), but uses some special techniques created by the national poetry of Japan. The skill of creating haiku poetry lies in the art of describing your feeling or moment of life in three lines. IN Japanese tercet every word and every image counts, they have great meaning and value. The basic rule of haiku is to express all your feelings using a minimum of words.
In haiku collections, each verse is often placed on an individual page. This is done so that the reader can concentrate, without haste, to experience the atmosphere of the haiku.
Photograph of a haiku in Japanese
haiku video
Video with examples of Japanese poetry about sakura.
Don't imitate me too much!
Look, what's the point of such similarities?
Two halves of melon. For students
I want it at least once
Go to the market on holiday
Buy tobacco
"Autumn has already arrived!" -
The wind whispered in my ear,
Sneaking up to my pillow.
He is a hundred times nobler
Who does not say at the flash of lightning:
"This is our life!"
All the excitement, all the sadness
Of your troubled heart
Give it to the flexible willow.
What freshness it blows
From this melon in drops of dew,
With sticky wet soil!
In the garden where the irises have opened,
Talking with your old friend, -
What a reward for the traveler!
Cold mountain spring.
I didn’t have time to scoop up a handful of water,
How my teeth are already creaking
What a connoisseur's quirk!
For a flower without fragrance
The moth descended.
Come quickly, friends!
Let's go wander through the first snow,
Until we fall off our feet.
Evening bindweed
I'm captured...Motionless
I stand in oblivion.
Frost covered him,
The wind makes his bed...
An abandoned child.
There's such a moon in the sky,
Like a tree cut down to the roots:
The fresh cut turns white.
A yellow leaf floats.
Which shore, cicada,
What if you wake up?
How the river overflowed!
A heron wanders on short legs
Knee-deep in water.
How a banana moans in the wind,
How the drops fall into the tub,
I hear it all night long. In a thatched hut
Willow is bent over and sleeping.
And it seems to me that there is a nightingale on a branch...
This is her soul.
Top-top is my horse.
I see myself in the picture -
In the expanse of summer meadows.
Suddenly you will hear “shorkh-shorkh”.
Longing stirs in my soul...
Bamboo on a frosty night.
Butterflies flying
Wakes up a quiet clearing
In the sun's rays.
How the autumn wind whistles!
Then only you will understand my poems,
When you spend the night in the field.
And I want to live in autumn
To this butterfly: drinks hastily
There is dew from the chrysanthemum.
The flowers have faded.
The seeds are scattering and falling,
It's like tears...
Gusty leaf
Hid in a bamboo grove
And little by little it calmed down.
Take a close look!
Shepherd's purse flowers
You will see under the fence.
Oh, wake up, wake up!
Become my comrade
Sleeping moth!
They fly to the ground
Returning to old roots...
Separation of flowers! In memory of a friend
Old pond.
A frog jumped into the water.
A splash in silence.
Autumn Moon Festival.
Around the pond and around again,
All night long all around!
That's all I'm rich with!
Easy as if my life
Gourd pumpkin. Grain storage jug
First snow in the morning.
He barely covered
Narcissus leaves.
The water is so cold!
The seagull can't sleep
Rocking on the wave.
The jug burst with a crash:
At night the water in it froze.
I woke up suddenly.
Moon or morning snow...
Admiring the beauty, I lived as I wanted.
This is how I end the year.
Clouds of cherry blossoms!
The ringing of the bell floated... From Ueno
Or Asakusa?
In the cup of a flower
The bumblebee is dozing. Don't touch him
Sparrow friend!
Stork nest in the wind.
And underneath - beyond the storm -
Cherry is a calm color.
Long day to go
Sings - and doesn’t get drunk
Lark in spring.
Over the expanse of fields -
Not tied to the ground by anything -
The lark is ringing.
It's raining in May.
What is this? Has the rim on the barrel burst?
The sound is unclear at night...
Pure spring!
Up ran up my leg
Little crab.
Today is a clear day.
But where do the drops come from?
There is a patch of clouds in the sky.
It's like I took it in my hands
Lightning when in the dark
You lit a candle. In praise of the poet Rika
How fast the moon flies!
On motionless branches
Drops of rain hung.
Steps important
Heron on fresh stubble.
Autumn in the village.
Left for a moment
Farmer threshing rice
Looks at the moon.
In a glass of wine,
Swallows, don't drop me
Clay lump.
There once was a castle here...
Let me be the first to tell you about it
A spring flowing in an old well.
How the grass thickens in summer!
And only one-sheet
One single leaf.
Oh no, ready
I won’t find any comparisons for you,
Three day month!
Hanging motionless
Dark cloud in half the sky...
Apparently he's waiting for lightning.
Oh, how many of them there are in the fields!
But everyone blooms in their own way -
This is the highest feat of a flower!
I wrapped my life around
Around the suspension bridge
This wild ivy.
Blanket for one.
And icy, black
Winter night... Oh, sadness! Poet Rika mourns his wife
Spring is leaving.
The birds are crying. Fish eyes
Full of tears.
The distant call of the cuckoo
It sounded wrong. After all, these days
The poets have disappeared.
A thin tongue of fire, -
The oil in the lamp has frozen.
You wake up... What sadness! In a foreign land
West East -
Everywhere the same trouble
The wind is still cold. To a friend who left for the West
Even White flower on the fence
Near the house where the owner is gone,
The cold poured over me. To an orphaned friend
Did I break off the branch?
The wind running through the pines?
How cool is the splash of water!
Here intoxicated
I wish I could fall asleep on these river stones,
Overgrown with cloves...
They rise from the ground again,
Fading in the darkness, chrysanthemums,
Nailed by heavy rain.
Pray for happy days!
On a winter plum tree
Be like your heart.
Visiting the cherry blossoms
I stayed neither more nor less -
Twenty happy days.
Under the canopy of cherry blossoms
I'm like the hero of an old drama,
At night I lay down to sleep.
Garden and mountain in the distance
Trembling, moving, entering
In a summer open house.
Driver! Lead your horse
Over there, across the field!
There's a cuckoo singing.
May rains
The waterfall was buried -
They filled it with water.
Summer herbs
Where the heroes disappeared
Like a dream. On the old battlefield
Islands...Islets...
And it breaks into hundreds of fragments
Sea of a summer day.
What bliss!
Cool field of green rice...
The water is murmuring...
Silence all around.
Penetrate into the heart of the rocks
Voices of cicadas.
Tide Gate.
Washes the heron up to its chest
Cool sea.
Small perches are dried
On the branches of a willow...What coolness!
Fishing huts on the shore.
Wooden pestle.
Was he once a willow tree?
Was it a camellia?
Celebration of the meeting of two stars.
Even the night before is so different
For an ordinary night! On the eve of the Tashibama holiday
The sea is raging!
Far away, to Sado Island,
The Milky Way is spreading.
With me under the same roof
Two girls... Hagi branches in bloom
And a lonely month. At the hotel
What does ripening rice smell like?
I was walking across the field, and suddenly -
To the right is Ariso Bay.
Tremble, O hill!
Autumn wind in the field -
My lonely moan. In front of the burial mound of the early deceased poet Isse
Red-red sun
In the deserted distance... But it’s chilling
The merciless autumn wind.
Pines... Cute name!
Leaning towards the pine trees in the wind
Bushes and autumn herbs. An area called Sosenki
Musashi Plain around.
Not a single cloud will touch
Your traveling hat.
Wet, walking in the rain,
But this traveler is worthy of song too,
Not only hagi are in bloom.
O merciless rock!
Under this glorious helmet
Now the cricket is ringing.
Whiter than white rocks
On the slopes of a stone mountain
This autumn whirlwind!
Farewell poems
I wanted to write on the fan -
It broke in his hands. Breaking up with a friend
Where are you, moon, now?
Like a sunken bell
She disappeared to the bottom of the sea. In Tsuruga Bay, where the bell once sank
Never a butterfly
He won't be anymore... He trembles in vain
Worm in the autumn wind.
A secluded house.
Moon... Chrysanthemums... In addition to them
A piece of a small field.
Cold rain without end.
This is how the chilled monkey looks,
As if asking for a straw cloak.
Winter night in the garden.
With a thin thread - and a month in the sky,
And the cicadas make a barely audible sound.
The nuns story
About his previous service at court...
There is deep snow all around. In a mountain village
Children, who's the fastest?
We'll catch up with the balls
Ice grains. Playing with children in the mountains
Tell me why
Oh raven, to the noisy city
Where are you flying from?
How tender are the young leaves?
Even here, on the weeds
At a forgotten house.
Camellia petals...
Maybe the nightingale dropped
A hat made of flowers?
Ivy leaves...
For some reason their smoky purple
He talks about the past.
Mossy gravestone.
Under it - is it in reality or in a dream? -
A voice whispers prayers.
The dragonfly is spinning...
Can't get a hold of it
For stalks of flexible grass.
Don't think with contempt:
“What small seeds!”
It's red pepper.
First I left the grass...
Then he left the trees...
Lark flight.
The bell fell silent in the distance,
But the scent of evening flowers
Its echo floats.
The cobwebs tremble a little.
Thin threads of saiko grass
They flutter in the twilight.
Dropping petals
Suddenly spilled a handful of water
Camellia flower.
The stream is barely noticeable.
Swimming through a thicket of bamboo
Camellia petals.
The May rain is endless.
The mallows are reaching somewhere,
Looking for the path of the sun.
Faint orange aroma.
Where?.. When?.. In what fields, cuckoo,
Did I hear your migratory cry?
Falls with a leaf...
No, look! Halfway there
The firefly flew up.
And who could say
Why don't they live so long!
The incessant sound of cicadas.
Fisherman's hut.
Mixed up in a pile of shrimp
Lonely cricket.
White hair fell.
Under my headboard
The cricket does not stop talking.
Sick goose dropped
On a field on a cold night.
A lonely dream on the way.
Even a wild boar
Will spin you around and take you with you
This winter field whirlwind!
It's already the end of autumn,
But he believes in future days
Green tangerine.
Portable hearth.
So, heart of wanderings, and for you
There is no peace anywhere. At the travel hotel
The cold set in on the way.
At the scarecrow's place, perhaps?
Should I borrow some sleeves?
Sea kale stems.
The sand creaked on my teeth...
And I remembered that I was getting old.
Mandzai came late
To a mountain village.
The plum trees have already bloomed.
Why so lazy all of a sudden?
They barely woke me up today...
The spring rain is noisy.
sad me
Give me more sadness,
Cuckoos distant call!
I clapped my hands.
And where the echo sounded,
The summer moon is growing pale.
A friend sent me a gift
Risu, I invited him
To visit the moon itself. On the night of the full moon
ancient times
There's a whiff... The garden near the temple
Covered with fallen leaves.
So easy, so easy
Floated out - and in the cloud
The moon thought.
Quails are calling.
It must be evening.
The hawk's eye went dark.
Together with the owner of the house
I listen in silence to the evening bells.
Willow leaves are falling.
White fungus in the forest.
Some unknown leaf
It stuck to his hat.
What sadness!
Suspended in a small cage
Captive cricket.
Night silence.
Only behind the picture on the wall
The cricket is ringing and ringing.
Dewdrops sparkle.
But they have a taste of sadness,
Don't forget!
That's right, this cicada
Are you all drunk? -
One shell remains.
The leaves have fallen.
The whole world is one color.
Only the wind hums.
Rocks among cryptomerias!
How I sharpened their teeth
Winter cold wind!
Trees were planted in the garden.
Quietly, quietly, to encourage them,
Autumn rain whispers.
So that the cold whirlwind
Give them the aroma, they open up again
Late autumn flowers.
Everything was covered with snow.
Lonely old woman
In a forest hut.
Ugly Raven -
And it's beautiful in the first snow
On a winter morning!
Like soot sweeps away,
Cryptomeria apex trembles
A storm has arrived.
To fish and birds
I don't envy you anymore... I'll forget
All the sorrows of the year. New Year's Eve
Nightingales are singing everywhere.
There - behind the bamboo grove,
Here - in front of the river willow.
From branch to branch
Quietly the drops are running...
Spring rain.
Through the hedge
How many times have you fluttered
Butterfly wings!
She closed her mouth tightly
Sea shell.
Unbearable heat!
Just the breeze blows -
From branch to branch of willow
The butterfly will flutter.
They are getting along with the winter hearth.
How old my familiar stove maker has aged!
Strands of hair turned white.
Year after year everything is the same:
Monkey amuses the crowd
In a monkey mask.
I didn’t have time to take my hands away,
Like a spring breeze
Settled in a green sprout. Planting rice
Rain comes after rain,
And the heart is no longer disturbed
Sprouts in rice fields.
Stayed and left
Bright moon... Stayed
Table with four corners. In memory of the poet Tojun
First fungus!
Still, autumn dew,
He didn't consider you.
Boy perched
On the saddle, and the horse is waiting.
Collect radishes.
The duck pressed to the ground.
Covered with a dress of wings
Your bare legs...
Sweep away the soot.
For myself this time
The carpenter gets along well. Before New Year
O spring rain!
Streams run from the roof
Along wasp nests.
Under the open umbrella
I make my way through the branches.
Willows in the first down.
From the sky of its peaks
Only river willows
It's still raining.
A hillock right next to the road.
To replace the faded rainbow -
Azaleas in the sunset light.
Lightning in the dark at night.
Lake water surface
Suddenly it burst into sparks.
The waves are running across the lake.
Some people regret the heat
Sunset clouds.
The ground is disappearing from under our feet.
I grab a light ear...
The moment of separation has arrived. Saying goodbye to friends
My whole life is on the way!
It's like I'm digging up a small field,
I wander back and forth.
Transparent waterfall...
Fell into a light wave
Pine needle.
Hanging in the sun
Cloud... Across it -
Migratory birds.
The buckwheat has not ripened
But they treat you to a field of flowers
Guest in a mountain village.
The end of autumn days.
Already throwing up his hands
Chestnut shell.
What do people feed on there?
The house pressed to the ground
Under the autumn willows.
The scent of chrysanthemums...
In the temples of ancient Nara
Dark buddha statues.
Autumn darkness
Broken and driven away
Conversation of friends.
Oh this long journey!
The autumn twilight is thickening,
And - not a soul around.
Why am I so strong
Did you sense old age this fall?
Clouds and birds.
It's late autumn.
Alone I think:
“How does my neighbor live?”
I got sick on the way.
And everything runs and circles my dream
Through scorched fields. Death Song
* * *
Poems from travel diaries
Maybe my bones
The wind will whiten - It is in the heart
It breathed cold on me. Hitting the road
You are sad listening to the cry of monkeys!
Do you know how a child cries?
Abandoned in the autumn wind?
Moonless night. Darkness.
With cryptomeria millennial
The whirlwind grabbed him in an embrace.
The ivy leaf is trembling.
In a small bamboo grove
The first storm murmurs.
You stand indestructible, pine tree!
And how many monks have lived here?
How many bindweeds have bloomed... In the garden of the old monastery
Drops dewdrops - tok-tok -
The source, as in previous years...
Wash away the world's dirt! The source sung by Saigyo
Dusk over the sea.
Only the cries of wild ducks in the distance
They turn vaguely white.
Spring morning.
Over every nameless hill
Transparent haze.
I'm walking along a mountain path.
Suddenly I felt at ease for some reason.
Violets in the thick grass.
From the heart of a peony
A bee slowly crawls out...
Oh, with what reluctance! Leaving a hospitable home
young horse
He happily plucks the ears of corn.
Rest on the way.
To the capital - there, in the distance, -
Half the sky remains...
Snow clouds. On a mountain pass
The sun of a winter day,
My shadow freezes
On the horse's back.
She is only nine days old.
But both fields and mountains know:
Spring has come again.
Cobwebs above.
I see the image of Buddha again
At the foot of the empty. Where the Buddha statue once stood
Let's hit the road! I'll show you
How cherry blossoms bloom in distant Yoshino,
My old hat.
I've barely gotten better
Exhausted, until the night...
And suddenly - wisteria flowers!
Soaring larks above
I sat down in the sky to rest -
On the very ridge of the pass.
Cherries at the waterfall...
To those who love good wine,
I'll take the branch as a gift. Dragon Gate Waterfall
Like spring rain
Runs under a canopy of branches...
The spring whispers quietly. Stream near the hut where Saigyo lived
The past spring
In the distant harbor of Vaca
I finally caught up.
On Buddha's birthday
He was born
Little deer.
I saw it first
In the rays of dawn the face of a fisherman,
And then - a blooming poppy.
Where it flies
The pre-dawn cry of the cuckoo,
What's there? - Distant island.
In the ancient culture of Japan, a significant place was occupied by various expressions of human nature, in the form of enchanting prose and poetry that awakens reverent emotions and feelings. Japanese haiku poetry about love is precise, laconic and sharp, like a snowflake melting on a baby’s cheek or the magical gaze of an old man.
Japanese poetry is attentive to detail, has a keen ear and a keen eye. The poet sees more than an ordinary person; he hears all the rustles of picturesque nature and the depth of human relationships.
Poems and life
The entire style of poetry of the Japanese people was formed in everyday life, on the basis of traditional life, great holidays, turning point battles, rituals and superstitions, and the historical heritage of Japan. A special place in the life of the people of the Land of the Rising Sun is occupied by the forces of Mother Nature and their divine origin.
There were many gods, and each was the inspiration of one of the elements: earth, water, fire and air. Natural life force filled many Japanese works, in the role of mountains, trees, rivers and lakes.
The first, inherited monument of written Japanese poetry 
« Manyoshu”(the second title is “Collection of Myriad Leaves”) remains the standard of folk melodies for contemporaries to this day. Japanese poets traditionally compare the “word” to the leaves of trees and plants.
This collection expresses the embodiment of the culture of the Nara time, the most vibrant flowering of Buddhism and poetry. This era is named after Japan's first permanent capital. The exact period of formation of Manyoshu is unknown, approximately a couple of decades of the 8th century.
"The Collection of Myriad Leaves" includes 20 books, in which 4496 songs are filled with a complex unity of more than four hundred years of the development of poetry ancient country. Historians note that the collection contains songs from the 5th to the 8th centuries.
Rules of poetry
The first rules for the formation of verse size, the foundations of poetic meaning and form are based on the Manyoshu anthology. Here all forms are not thoroughly followed, but basic poetic methods are created depending on the number of verses, for example, nagauta, translated “long song” is interpreted with an indefinite number of five- and seven-syllable verses.
The second classification of the six-line is sadoka or "rowers' song", built according to the pattern of 5,7,7,5,7,7 syllables. And, of course, the popular five-line tank or “short song”, where the verses of 5,7,5,7,7 syllables vary. The little thangka is one of the oldest poetic forms. Geniuses write in this style; these are the most prosaic, precise and great poems.
At the turn of the century, at the end of the 8th century, the capital of Japan became the city of Heian (modern Kyoto) and only Chinese. This trend continued for more than a hundred years, but the influence of Manyoshu did not lose its ground.
The founders of this collection supported national poetry and contrasted it with Chinese poetry. Symbol national struggle became a tank. It is a paradox, but the classical theme of the “moon” emerged from Chinese culture and took pride of place in Japanese poetry.
Later poets of the 9th century began new stage heyday in Japanese lyrics, Japanese haiku about love are embodied in the anthology " Kokinshu"(the second name is "Kokin wakashu"). It was created by the Committee of Poets based on the decree of the emperor. Led by the scientist and lyric poet Ki no Tsurayuki, he creative person imprinted in the history of Japanese culture as one of the most important people in history.
A collection of Yamato's old and new songs, Kokinshu, is divided into 20 parts, just like Manyoshu, but unlike the latter, it has an introduction written by Tsurayuki, in which he discusses the meaning of all Japanese poetry.
The essence of thangka is considered to be a highly spiritual sparkling art, both for connoisseurs and commoners. During this period, tanka was the embodiment of the universality of the way of expressing thoughts and emotions, love experiences that embraced the Japanese.
Only poets who master this method can breathe a piece of life into words motionless on a sheet of paper. The pinnacle of classic craftsmanship are tanks:
- Saigyo,
- Sikisi-Naisinno,
- Fujiwara Sadaie.
The latter is the main compiler of the “Shinkokinshu” tank anthology, which is very significant for the Japanese (second name “New Kokinshu”). The Japanese also liked poetry competitions, which were called utaawase.
In the late classics, they began to divide poems into two hemistiches: three and two verses; this rule was dictated by strict censorship. It is not surprising that over time, a manner of putting two poems together appeared, new ones gradually joined them, and so a new type appeared rank, genre hackai.
With the advent of the 16th century, renga-hakai acquired the character of a joke, parody, and ridicule. This style was especially loved by the Japanese, who belonged to the third estate. Later, rengate rak separated from such a style as Japanese haiku poetry about love and became an independent unit of poetry. From the very beginning of its existence, haiku was a genre for the lower strata of society, the main characters of haikai were townspeople or street rogues.
Hokku Basho appeared in the 17th century from the lips of the wandering monk Matsuo. He created a completely new and unique style of tercet, which became a successful combination of the comic and serious sides of haiku. It took its origins from the classic tank. The Zen Buddhist and traveler Saigyo was not only his spiritual teacher, but also a good friend. The basis of Zen teachings is that the truth of the world is known in small details.
Only through real earthly human feelings one can know the truth of haiku poetry.
Video: Haiku poetry
