JAPANESE TERCEPTHS

PREFACE

The Japanese lyrical poem haiku (haiku) is distinguished by its extreme brevity and unique poetics.

People love and willingly create short songs - concise poetic formulas, where there is not a single extra word. From folk poetry, these songs move into literary poetry, continue to develop in it and give rise to new poetic forms.

This is how national poetic forms were born in Japan: tanka five-line and haiku three-line.

Tanka (literally “short song”) was originally a folk song and already in the seventh-eighth centuries, at the dawn of Japanese history, it became the trendsetter of literary poetry, pushing into the background, and then completely displacing the so-called long poems “nagauta” (presented in famous eighth-century poetry anthology by Man'yōshū). Epic and lyrical songs of varying lengths are preserved only in folklore. Haiku separated from tanki many centuries later, during the heyday of the urban culture of the “third estate.” Historically, it is the first stanza of the thangka and received from it a rich legacy of poetic images.

Ancient tanka and younger haiku have a centuries-old history, in which periods of prosperity alternated with periods of decline. More than once these forms were on the verge of extinction, but stood the test of time and continue to live and develop even today. This example of longevity is not the only one of its kind. The Greek epigram did not disappear even after the death of Hellenic culture, but was adopted by Roman poets and is still preserved in world poetry. The Tajik-Persian poet Omar Khayyam created wonderful quatrains (rubai) back in the eleventh-twelfth centuries, but even in our era, folk singers in Tajikistan compose rubai, putting new ideas and images into them.

Obviously, short poetic forms are an urgent need for poetry. Such poems can be composed quickly, under the influence of immediate feelings. You can aphoristically, concisely express your thought in them so that it is remembered and passed from mouth to mouth. They are easy to use for praise or, conversely, sarcastic ridicule.

It is interesting to note in passing that the desire for laconicism and love for small forms are generally inherent in Japanese national art, although it is excellent at creating monumental images.

Only haiku, an even shorter and more laconic poem that originated among ordinary townspeople who were alien to the traditions of old poetry, could supplant the tank and temporarily wrest its primacy from it. It was haiku that became the bearer of new ideological content and was best able to respond to the demands of the growing “third estate”.

Haiku is a lyric poem. It depicts the life of nature and the life of man in their fused, indissoluble unity against the backdrop of the cycle of the seasons.

Japanese poetry is syllabic, its rhythm is based on the alternation of a certain number of syllables. There is no rhyme, but the sound and rhythmic organization of the tercet is a subject of great concern to Japanese poets.

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 (1644–1694). 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 monumental. 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 makes haiku similar to folk proverbs. Some tercets have gained currency in popular speech as proverbs, such as the poem by the poet 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 sharply from the 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.

Chekhov wrote in one of his letters to his brother Alexander: “...you will get a moonlit night if you write that on a mill dam a piece of glass from a broken bottle flashed like a bright star and the black shadow of a dog or wolf rolled in a ball...”

This method of depiction requires maximum activity from the reader, draws him into the creative process, and gives impetus to his thoughts. 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 miniature in size, but this does not detract from the poetic or philosophical meaning that a poet can give to it, nor does it limit the scope of his thoughts. However, the port, of course, cannot give a multifaceted image and at length, to fully develop its idea within the confines of haiku. In every phenomenon he seeks only its culmination.

Some poets, and first of all Issa, whose poetry most fully reflected the people's worldview, lovingly depicted the small and weak, asserting their right to life. When Issa stands up for a firefly, a fly, a frog, it is not difficult to understand that by doing so he stands up for the defense of a small, disadvantaged person who could be wiped off the face of the earth by his feudal master.

Thus, the poet’s poems are filled with social sound.

The moon has come out

And every small bush

Invited to the holiday

says Issa, and we recognize in these words the dream of equality of people.

Giving preference to the small, haiku sometimes painted a picture of a large scale:

The sea is raging!

Far away, to Sado Island,

The Milky Way is spreading.

This poem by Basho is a kind of peephole. Leaning our eyes towards it, we will see a large space. The Sea of ​​Japan will open before us on a windy but clear autumn night: the sparkle of stars, white breakers, and in the distance, at the edge of the sky, the black silhouette of Sado Island.

Or take another Basho poem:

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 there are three perspective plans.

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 are covered with yellow colza flowers, they seem especially bright in the 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.

This laconic manner is sometimes very reminiscent of the generalized method of depiction used by the masters of color engraving ukiyoe. Different types of art - haiku and color engraving - are marked by the features of the general style of the era of urban culture in Japan of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and this makes them similar to each other.

Spring rain is pouring!

They talk along the way

Umbrella and mino.

This Buson tercet is a genre scene in the spirit of ukiyoe engraving. Two passers-by are talking on the street under the net of spring rain. One is wearing a straw cloak - mino, the other is covered with a large paper umbrella. That's all! But the poem feels the breath of spring, it has subtle humor, close to the grotesque.

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.

A whole orchestra sounds in the forest. The lark leads the melody of the flute, the sharp cries of the pheasant are the percussion instrument.

The lark sings.

With a resounding blow in the thicket

The pheasant echoes him.

The Japanese poet does not unfold before the reader the entire panorama of possible ideas and associations that arise in connection with a given subject or phenomenon. It only awakens the reader’s thought and gives it a certain direction.

On a bare branch

Raven sits alone.

Autumn evening.

The poem looks like a monochrome ink drawing. Nothing extra, 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. The poetic image, it would seem, is slightly outlined, but it has great capacity and, bewitching, takes you along. It seems that you are looking into the waters of a river, the bottom of which is very deep. And at the same time, he is extremely specific. The poet depicted a real landscape near his hut and, through it, his state of mind. He is not talking about the raven's loneliness, but about his own.

Much scope is left to the reader's imagination. Together with the poet, he can experience a feeling of sadness inspired by autumn nature, or share with him the melancholy born of deeply personal experiences.

It’s no wonder that over the centuries of its existence, ancient haiku has acquired layers of commentary. The richer the subtext, the higher the poetic skill of haiku. It suggests rather than shows. Hint, hint, reticence become additional means of poetic expressiveness. Longing for his dead child, the poet Issa said:

Our life is a dewdrop.

Let just a drop of dew

Our life - and yet...

Dew is a common metaphor for the frailty of life, just like a flash of lightning, foam on water, or quickly falling cherry blossoms. Buddhism teaches that human life is short and ephemeral, and therefore has no special value. But it is not easy for a father to come to terms with the loss of his beloved child. Issa says “and yet...” and puts down the brush. But his very silence becomes more eloquent than words.

It is quite understandable that there is some misunderstanding in haiku. The poem consists of only three verses. Each verse is very short, in contrast to the hexameter of the Greek epigram. A five-syllable word already takes up an entire verse: for example, hototogisu - cuckoo, kirigirisu - cricket. Most often, a verse has 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. Even the grammar in haiku is special: there are few grammatical forms, and each carries a maximum load, sometimes combining several meanings. 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 poetry was an innovative art. If over time, tanka, moving away from folk origins, became a favorite form of aristocratic poetry, then haiku became the property of the common people: merchants, artisans, peasants, monks, beggars... It brought with it common expressions and slang words. It introduces natural, conversational intonations into poetry.

The scene of action in haiku was not the gardens and palaces of the aristocratic capital, but the poor streets of the city, rice fields, highways, shops, taverns, inns...

An “ideal” landscape, freed from all roughness - this is how old classical poetry painted nature. In haiku, poetry regained its Sight. A man in haiku is not static, he is in motion: here is a street peddler wandering through a snowy whirlwind, and here is a worker turning a grinding mill. The gulf that already lay between literary poetry and folk song in the tenth century became less wide. A raven pecking a snail in a rice field with its nose is an image found in both haiku and folk songs.

The canonical images of the old tanks could no longer evoke that immediate feeling of amazement at the beauty of the living world that the poets of the “third estate” wanted to express. New images, new colors were needed. Poets, who for so long relied on only one literary tradition, are now turning to life, to the real world around them. The old ceremonial decorations have been removed. Haiku teaches you to look for hidden beauty in the simple, inconspicuous, everyday. Not only the famous, many times sung cherry flowers are beautiful, but also the modest, invisible at first glance flowers of cress, shepherd’s purse, and a stalk of wild asparagus...

Take a close look!

Shepherd's purse flowers

You will see under the fence.

Haiku also teaches us to appreciate the modest beauty of ordinary people. Here is a genre picture created by Basho:

Azaleas in a rough pot,

And nearby there is crumbling dry cod

A woman in their shadow.

This is probably a mistress or a maid somewhere in a poor tavern. The situation is the most miserable, but the brighter, the more unexpectedly the beauty of the flower and the beauty of the woman stand out. 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 better

Exhausted, until the night...

And suddenly - wisteria flowers!

Beauty can be deeply hidden. In haiku poems we find a new, social rethinking of this truth - the affirmation of beauty in the unnoticed, the ordinary, and above all in the common man of the people. This is precisely the meaning of the poem by the poet Kikaku:

Cherries in spring blossom

Not on distant mountain tops

Only in our valleys.

True to the truth of life, the poets could not help but see the tragic contrasts in feudal Japan. They felt the discord between the beauty of nature and the living conditions of the common man. Basho's haiku speaks about this discord:

Next to the blooming bindweed

The thresher is resting during the harvest.

How sad it is, our world!

And like a sigh escapes Issa:

Sad world!

Even when the cherry blossoms...

Even then…

The anti-feudal sentiments of the townspeople found an echo in haiku. Seeing a samurai at the cherry blossom festival, Kyorai says:

How is this, friends?

A man looks at the cherry blossoms

And on his belt is a long sword!

The people's poet, a peasant by birth, Issa asks the children:

Red Moon!

Who owns it, children?

Give me an answer!

And children will have to think about the fact that the moon in the sky, of course, is no one’s and at the same time common, because its beauty belongs to all people.

The book of selected haiku contains the entire nature of Japan, its original way of life, customs and beliefs, the work and holidays of the Japanese people in their most characteristic, living details.

That is why hockey is loved, known by heart and still composed to this day.

The tradition of writing poetry in Japan has been passed down from generation to generation for centuries. With each new century, under the influence of time and cultural development, Japanese haiku poems underwent a number of changes, new rules for adding and writing poetry were developed and improved. Today, Japanese haiku poems have their own rules of versification, which are unshakable, cannot be adjusted, and must be strictly observed by everyone who wants to compose haiku.

Haiku is not an easy Japanese verse

It is a part of Japanese culture for which the Japanese have great respect and love.Japanese haiku, like Japanese poetry itself in general, it has distinctive features from the poetry of eastern and European schools.

Japanese poetry was formed under the influence of Zen - Buddhism,which dictated the rules of minimalism, and the main theme was complete immersion in one subject, its comprehensive consideration, contemplation and understanding. Despite the fact that haiku is the poetry of minimalism, with a minimum of words, each word carries a great meaning.

Japanese poetry that has survived to this day is represented by two types:

• Japanese haiku tercets,
• pentaverse - tanka.

In order to understand haiku, it is necessary to have a background knowledge of Japanese history and culture.

Tanka- Japanese pentaverse, over the course of its development, formed into two types - couplet and tercet. In many cases, the authorship of the tanka belonged to several poets, one composed the first stanza, the second poet supplemented the tanka with the second stanza.

In the 12th century, so-called chains of verses began to form, which consisted of tercets and couplets interconnected. The tercet was called the “initial stanza,” which was later taken into independent tercet - haiku. The opening stanza was the strongest point in the verse.

Initially, haiku was considered the pampering of Japanese peasants, and over time, representatives of the nobility began to become interested in composing haiku. Every respected Japanese nobleman had a court poet with him. Poets were often representatives of ordinary working classes who, through the power of their talent and desire for creativity, were able to make their way.

Haiku refers to lyrical poetry that glorifies nature, palace intrigue, love and unbridled passion. The main theme of haiku is the interaction of nature and man, their complete fusion.

In the 5th – 7th centuries, strict rules were applied to the formation of haiku and regulations that did not give many, even very talented poets, the opportunity to become famous. The most famous Japanese poets of that time are: Issa And Basho, who devoted their lives to the creativity of composing haiku.

The main talent of haiku is to say a lot using a minimum of words.

In three lines that contain no more than 10 words you can tell a whole story.

The basic rules for adding haiku, which were formed in the 5th - 7th centuries - the 5-7-5 rule, are still applied today. Today, haiku is not just a Japanese tercet; it is a separate sphere of Japanese culture, respected and revered.

The heyday of haiku came in the 17th century.

It was during this period that haiku became a whole work of art. The famous poet of that time, Basho, took haiku to a new level, revolutionizing the world of poetry. He threw away all unnecessary elements and features of the comic from haiku, making the haiku rule 5-7-5 the main one, which is still used by Japanese poets of our time, and compliance with which is the main rule for adding haiku.

Every poet who undertakes to write haiku faces a difficult task - to instill in the reader a lyrical mood, arouse boundless interest and awaken the imagination, which draws colorful pictures when reading the tercet.

It would seem that what can be said using only 17 syllables? But they are the ones who are able to immerse the reader in another, colorful world, full of fantasy and philosophy. Haiku can change a person’s worldview, awakening in him a philosophical view of everyday things.

Video: Haiku of the Japanese poet Issa

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Matsuo Basho. Engraving by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi from the series “101 Views of the Moon.” 1891 The Library of Congress

Genre haiku originated from another classical genre - pentaverse 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 acquired 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. In European languages, haiku is written in three lines. Japanese poetry does not know rhymes; by the 9th century, the phonetics of the Japanese language had developed, 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 the 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 not in the Japanese text, but its inclusion is nevertheless justified, since “sad loneliness on an autumn evening” is the main theme of 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) in extremely simple words and as if you were calling them for the first time.

Haiku are not miniatures, as they were long called in Europe. The greatest haiku poet of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who died early from tuberculosis, Masaoka Shiki, wrote that haiku contains the whole world: the 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 property 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
Have 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” - that 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 is 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. 

JAPANESE TERCEPTHS

translator and compiler

Vera Nikolaevna MARKOVA

PREFACE

The Japanese lyrical poem haiku (haiku) is distinguished by its extreme brevity and unique poetics.

People love and willingly create short songs - concise poetic formulas, where there is not a single extra word. From folk poetry, these songs move into literary poetry, continue to develop in it and give rise to new poetic forms.

This is how national poetic forms were born in Japan: tanka five-line and haiku three-line.

Tanka (literally "short song") was originally a folk song and already in the seventh-eighth centuries, at the dawn of Japanese history, it became the trendsetter of literary poetry, pushing into the background, and then completely displacing the so-called long poems "nagauta" (presented in famous eighth-century poetry anthology by Man'yōshū). Epic and lyrical songs of varying lengths are preserved only in folklore. Haiku separated from tanki many centuries later, during the heyday of the urban culture of the “third estate.” Historically, it is the first stanza of the thangka and received from it a rich legacy of poetic images.

Ancient tanka and younger haiku have a centuries-old history, in which periods of prosperity alternated with periods of decline. More than once these forms were on the verge of extinction, but stood the test of time and continue to live and develop even today. This example of longevity is not the only one of its kind. The Greek epigram did not disappear even after the death of Hellenic culture, but was adopted by Roman poets and is still preserved in world poetry. The Tajik-Persian poet Omar Khayyam created wonderful quatrains (rubai) back in the eleventh-twelfth centuries, but even in our era, folk singers in Tajikistan compose rubai, putting new ideas and images into them.

Obviously, short poetic forms are an urgent need for poetry. Such poems can be composed quickly, under the influence of immediate feelings. You can aphoristically, concisely express your thought in them so that it is remembered and passed from mouth to mouth. They are easy to use for praise or, conversely, sarcastic ridicule.

It is interesting to note in passing that the desire for laconicism and love for small forms are generally inherent in Japanese national art, although it is excellent at creating monumental images.

Only haiku, an even shorter and more laconic poem that originated among ordinary townspeople who were alien to the traditions of old poetry, could supplant the tank and temporarily wrest its primacy from it. It was haiku that became the bearer of new ideological content and was best able to respond to the demands of the growing “third estate”.

Haiku is a lyric poem. It depicts the life of nature and the life of man in their fused, indissoluble unity against the backdrop of the cycle of the seasons.

Japanese poetry is syllabic, its rhythm is based on the alternation of a certain number of syllables. There is no rhyme, but the sound and rhythmic organization of the tercet is a subject of great concern to Japanese poets.

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 (1644–1694). 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 monumental. 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 makes haiku similar to folk proverbs. Some tercets have gained currency in popular speech as proverbs, such as the poem by the poet Basho:

I'll say the word
Lips freeze.
Autumn whirlwind!

As a proverb, it means that “caution sometimes forces one to remain silent.”

But most often, haiku differs sharply from the 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.

Chekhov wrote in one of his letters to his brother Alexander: “...you will get a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam a piece of glass from a broken bottle flashed like a bright star and the black shadow of a dog or wolf rolled in a ball...”

This method of depiction requires maximum activity from the reader, draws him into the creative process, and gives impetus to his thoughts. 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 miniature in size, but this does not detract from the poetic or philosophical meaning that a poet can give to it, nor does it limit the scope of his thoughts. However, the port, of course, cannot give a multifaceted image and at length, to fully develop its idea within the confines of haiku. In every phenomenon he seeks only its culmination.

Some poets, and first of all Issa, whose poetry most fully reflected the people's worldview, lovingly depicted the small and weak, asserting their right to life. When Issa stands up for a firefly, a fly, a frog, it is not difficult to understand that by doing so he stands up for the defense of a small, disadvantaged person who could be wiped off the face of the earth by his feudal master.

Thus, the poet’s poems are filled with social sound.

The moon has come out
And every small bush
Invited to the holiday

says Issa, and we recognize in these words the dream of equality of people.

Giving preference to the small, haiku sometimes painted a picture of a large scale:

The sea is raging!
Far away, to Sado Island,
The Milky Way is spreading.

This poem by Basho is a kind of peephole. Leaning our eyes towards it, we will see a large space. The Sea of ​​Japan will open before us on a windy but clear autumn night: the sparkle of stars, white breakers, and in the distance, at the edge of the sky, the black silhouette of Sado Island.

where the bell once sank

Where are you, moon, now?
Like a sunken bell
She disappeared to the bottom of the sea.

A secluded house.
Moon... Chrysanthemums... In addition to them
A piece of a small field.

In a mountain village

The nuns story
About previous service at court...
There is deep snow all around.

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.

The bell fell silent in the distance,
But the scent of evening flowers
Its echo floats.

Falls with a leaf...
No, look! Halfway there
The firefly flew up.

Fisherman's hut.
Mixed up in a pile of shrimp
Lonely cricket.

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!

sad me
Give me more sadness,
Cuckoos distant call!

I clapped my hands loudly.
And where the echo sounded,
The summer moon is growing pale.

On the night of the full moon

A friend sent me a gift
Risu, I invited him
To visit the moon itself.

Of great antiquity
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.

White fungus in the forest.
Some unknown leaf
It stuck to his hat.

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.

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.

Rocks among cryptomerias!
How I sharpened their teeth
Winter cold wind!

Everything was covered with snow.
Lonely old woman
In a forest hut.

Planting rice

I didn’t have time to take my hands away,
Like a spring breeze
Settled in a green sprout.

All the excitement, all the sadness
Of your troubled heart
Give it to the flexible willow.

She closed her mouth tightly
Sea shell.
Unbearable heat!

In memory of the poet Tojun

Stayed and left
Bright moon... Stayed
Table with four corners.

Seeing a painting for sale
works by Kano Motonobu

...Brushes by Motonobu himself!
How sad is the fate of your masters!
The twilight of the year is approaching.

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.

Saying goodbye to friends

The ground disappears from under your feet.
I grab the light ear...
The moment of separation has arrived.

Transparent Waterfall…
Fell into a light wave
Pine needle.

Hanging in the sun
Cloud... Across it -
Migratory birds.

Autumn darkness
Broken and driven away
Conversation of friends.

Death Song

I got sick on the way.
And everything runs, my dream circles
Through scorched fields.

A strand of dead mother's hair

If I take her in my hands,
It will melt - my tears are so hot! –
Autumn frost of hair.

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.

On a mountain pass

To the capital - there, in the distance -
Half the sky remains...
Snow clouds.

She is only nine days old.
But both fields and mountains know:
Spring has come again.

Where it once stood

buddha statue

Cobwebs above.
I see the image of Buddha again
At the foot of the empty.

Soaring larks above
I sat down to rest in the sky -
On the very ridge of the pass.

Visiting Nara City

On Buddha's birthday
He was born
Little deer.

Where it flies
The pre-dawn cry of the cuckoo,
What's there? - Distant island.

Flute Sanemori

Sumadera Temple.
I hear the flute playing by itself
In the dark thicket of trees.

KORAI (1651–1704)

How is this, friends?
A man looks at the cherry blossoms
And on his belt is a long sword!

On the death of a younger sister

Alas, in my hand,
Weakening unnoticeably,
My firefly went out.

ISSE (1653–1688)

Seen everything in the world
My eyes are back
To you, white chrysanthemums.

RANSETSU (1654–1707)

autumn moon
Painting a pine tree with ink
In blue skies.

Flower... And another flower...
This is how the plum blossoms,
This is how warmth comes.

I looked at midnight:
Changed direction
Heavenly river.

KIKAKU (1661–1707)

Midge light swarm
Flies upward - floating bridge
For my dream.

A beggar is on the way!
In the summer all his clothes are
Heaven and earth.

To me at dawn in a dream
My mother has come... Don't drive her away
With your cry, cuckoo!

How beautiful your fish are!
But if only, old fisherman,
You could try them yourself!

Paid tribute
Earthly and fell silent,
Like the sea on a summer day.

JOSO (1662–1704)

And fields and mountains -
The snow quietly stole everything...
It immediately became empty.

Moonlight is pouring from the sky.
Hid in the shadow of the idol
Blinded Owl.

ONITSURA (1661–1738)

No place for water from the vat
Spit it out for me now...
Cicadas are singing everywhere!

TIYO (1703–1775)

During the night the bindweed entwined itself
Around the tub of my well...
I'll get some water from my neighbor!

To the death of a little son

O my dragonfly catcher!
Far into the unknown distance
Have you run in today?

Full moon night!
Even the birds didn't lock it up
Doors in their nests.

Dew on saffron flowers!
It will spill onto the ground
And it will become simple water...

O bright moon!
I walked and walked to you,
And you are still far away.

Only their screams can be heard...
Egrets are invisible
In the morning on fresh snow.

Plum spring color
Gives its aroma to a person...
The one who broke the branch.

KAKEI (1648–1716)

The autumn storm is raging!
Barely born month
He's about to sweep it out of the sky.

SICO (1665–1731)

O maple leaves!
You burn your wings
Flying birds.

BUSON (1716–1783)

From this willow
The evening twilight begins.
Road in the field.

Here they come out of the box...
How could I forget your faces?..
It's time for holiday dolls.

Heavy bell.
And at its very edge
A butterfly is dozing.

Only the top of Fuji
They didn’t bury themselves
Young leaves.

Cool breeze.
Leaving the bells
The evening bell floats.

Old well in the village.
The fish rushed after the midge...
A dark splash in the depths.

Thunderstorm shower!
Slightly clings to the grass
A flock of sparrows.

The moon shines so brightly!
Suddenly came across me
The blind man laughed...

"The storm has begun!" –
Robber on the road
Warned me.

The cold penetrated to the heart:
On the crest of the deceased wife
I stepped in the bedroom.

I hit with an ax
And froze... What a scent
There was a whiff of air in the winter forest!

To the west is moonlight
Moving. Shadows of flowers
They are going east.

The summer night is short.
Sparkled on the caterpillar
Drops of dawn dew.

KITO (1741–1789)

I met a messenger on the way.
Spring wind playing
The open letter rustles.

Thunderstorm shower!
Dropped Dead
The horse comes to life.

You're walking on the clouds
And suddenly on a mountain path
Through the rain - cherry blossoms!

ISSA (1768–1827)

This is how the pheasant screams
It's like he opened it
The first star.

The winter snow has melted.
Light up with joy
Even the faces of the stars.

There are no strangers between us!
We are all each other's brothers
Under the cherry blossoms.

Look, nightingale
Sings the same song
And in the face of the gentlemen!

Passing wild goose!
Tell me your wanderings
How old were you when you started?

O cicada, don't cry!
There is no love without separation
Even for the stars in the sky.

The snow has melted -
And suddenly the whole village is full
Noisy kids!

Oh, don't trample the grass!
There were fireflies shining
Yesterday at night sometimes.

The moon has come out
And the smallest bush
Invited to the celebration.

That's right, in a previous life
You were my sister
Sad cuckoo...

Tree - for felling...
And the birds carefree
They're building a nest there!

Don't quarrel along the way,
Help each other like brothers
Migratory birds!

To the death of a little son

Our life is a dewdrop.
Let just a drop of dew
Our life - and yet...

Oh, if only there was an autumn whirlwind
He brought so many fallen leaves,
To warm the hearth!

Quietly, quietly crawl,
Snail, along the slope of Fuji
Up to the very heights!

In thickets of weeds,
Look how beautiful they are
Butterflies are born!

I punished the child
But he tied him to a tree there,
Where the cool wind blows.

Sad world!
Even when the cherry blossoms...
Even then…

So I knew in advance
That they are beautiful, these mushrooms,
Killing people!