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haiku crossroads · 492 like this
November 3, 2010 at 4:33pm
"The haiku reproduces the designating gesture of the child pointing at whatever
it is (the haiku shows no partiality for the subject), merely saying: that!"
The Breach of Meaning? Roland Barthes’s View of Haiku | haijinx
The brevity of the haiku is not formal; the haiku is not a rich thought reduced to a brief form, but a brief event which immediately finds its proper form.
haiku crossroads
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“...there is a moment when languages ceases (a moment obtained by dint of many exercises), and it is this echoless breach which institutes at once the truth of Zen and the form — brief and empty — of the haiku” (p. 74). Because of his recognition of the emptiness of forms that is Buddhist reality, Barthes idealizes in the haiku this Buddhist notion of emptiness. When reading haiku, all that one can do with it is to scrutinize it, as recommended to the Zen apprentice who is working on a koan. He is told “not to solve it, as if it had a meaning, nor even to perceive its absurdity (which is still a meaning), but to ruminate it until ‘the tooth falls out’” (p. 74). As an alternative to Western thinking, although proposing such a radical blockage of sense-making structures, Zen Buddhism teaches its practitioners to meditate on the sign as sign, not as meaning but as an operation just like working on a koan."
— Chen-ou Liu
http://www.haijinx.org/columns/haiku-a-looking-bird/chen-ou-liu/
November 3, 2010 at 4:38pm
Paul Freedman Thus the admonition, "Show. Don't tell."
November 3, 2010 at 5:04pm
haiku crossroads
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COMMENTARY
As words of a haiku 'fall away' the indicated image emerges out of boundless silence. The boundless silence is the perennial message of haiku. Yes, we enjoy the experience provided by the living diorama. Yes, we enjoy the associations which come and go. But, it is the silence which is the teaching, the inner meaning of every true haiku. This is why the Buddhist connection endures, even in the secular West, despite materialist sophistry and excuses to the contrary.
An outstanding example of this process is given in discourse (see link below) by Hasegawa Kai relayed to this haiku (somewhat staccato in plain translation) :
dying tub
dripping ceased -
tree cricket
— Nozawa Bonchō (student of Matsuo Bashō)
http://gendaihaiku.com/hasegawa/index.html
[8:70, video 2]
This is worth using the pause button with and replaying until the point sinks in. A most worthwhile meditation that will stay with you forever and seriously enhance the reading, writing and detection of your haiku ..and life!
— jp
November 3, 2010 at 5:07pm
haiku crossroads @Paul: Absolutely and *SHOW not tell* corollary: "SENSE don't think". — jp
November 3, 2010 at 5:23pm
haiku crossroads
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A PROSE-POEM HAIRON (haiku theory, or essay, in this case based on the Hasegawa Kai discourse - see previous comment link. For those who have no time.)
dying tub
dripping ceased -
tree cricket
— Boncho
Ceased, death. We have silence of water, as the drops stop. A tree (of thought, relating to drops like fat leaves,) with a chirping male cricket (the girls don't). There may be a play on 'dying' - certainly this in English. When the noise of the tub ceases the chirp of the cricket is more noticeable - then we remember that this is so because the tub noise has gone into silence (to the last drop, sliding into the boundless nothingness of mu). Now we are aware of the unmeasurable silence. The cricket's tune becomes secondary to this Zen sartori, this brief enlightenment of the awareness of source. The elements of this wonderful haiku bear attention as we switch from silence to objects to silence to.. Meanings come. New forms emerging out of the dark cosmic ocean. This is the arena of any haiku show. This ephemeral becoming and begoning. Our own death. The faith of renewal.
That's how Buddhism influenced Japan thinks. Some useful terms to note : http://www.stillinthestream.com/files/glossary.html
jp