Associate Professor
Kozlovska Anna
Ukrainian Academy of Banking of National Bank of
Ukraine, Sumy
The
haiku principle:
to stop a time
selectively
Orekhovaya Sonya
[Õàéêóìåíà
, 122]
To
English
Haiku Text as the Motivation Factor in the Process
of Learning Foreign
Language
Haiku. What is it about this small poem that makes people all over the
world want to read and write them? Nick
Virgilio, one of America’s first major haiku poets, once said that he wrote haiku “to get in touch with the
real” [ Virgilio, 11]. And the Haiku Society of America has called haiku a
“poem in which Nature is linked to human nature”[http://www.hsa-haiku.org]. We
all want to know what is real and to feel at one with the natural world. Haiku
helps us to experience the everyday things around us vividly and directly, so
we see them as they really are, as bright and fresh as they were when we first
saw them as children. Haiku is basically about living with intense awareness,
having openness to the existence around us. A kind of openness that involves
seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching.
A haiku is not just a pretty picture in three lines of 5-7-5 syllables
each. In fact, most haiku in English are not written in 5-7-5 syllables at all
– many are not even written in three lines. What distinguishes a haiku is
concision, perception and awareness – not a set number of syllables. A haiku is
a short poem recording the essence of a moment keenly perceived in which Nature
is linked to human nature. As Roland
Barthes has pointed out, this record neither describes nor defines, but
“diminishes to the point of pure and sole designation” [Barthes, 8]. The poem
is refined into a touchstone of suggestiveness. In the mind of an aware reader
it opens again into an image that is immediate and palpable, and pulsing with
that delight of the senses that carries a conviction of one’s unity with all of
existence. A haiku can be anywhere from a few to 17 syllables, rarely more. It is
now known that about 12-not 17 syllables in English are equivalent in length to
the 17 onji (sound-symbols) of the Japanese haiku. A number of poets are
writing them shorter than that. But despite their simplicity, haiku can be very
demanding of both writer and reader, being at the same time one of the most
accessible and inaccessible kinds of poetry. R. H. Blyth, the great translator of Japanese haiku, wrote that a
haiku is “an open door which looks shut” [Blyth,27]. To see what a haiku
suggests, the reader must share in the creative process, being willing to
associate and pick up on the echoes implicit in the words. A wrong focus, or
lack of awareness, and he will see only a closed door.
A great number of
scientific debates are held, a great number of scientific works have been
issued to touch the problem of haiku – one of the most important forms of
traditional Japanese poetry [Blyth; Henderson; Higginson; Lynch; Norton].
English haiku
texts are the object of the research,
motivation factor of above-mentioned texts are the subject of the investigation.
The actuality of this investigation is based on the fact that modern linguistics tends
to study different kinds of texts, poetic texts included. Besides, poetry is a
universal means of cultural integration; it uses the universal language of the
world.
The aim of the investigation is to analyze
basic and specific characteristics of English haiku texts. The task of the article is to show that haiku texts can be the
motivation factor while learning the English language.
1. THE ESSENCE OF HAIKU
Haiku is more than a form of poetry; it is a way of seeing the world.
Each haiku captures a moment of experience; an instant when the ordinary
suddenly reveals its inner nature and makes us take a second look at the event,
at human nature, at life. It can be as elevated as the ringing of a temple
bell, or as simple as sunlight catching a bit of silverware on your table; as
isolated as a mountain top, or as crowded as a subway car; revealing in beauty
or acknowledging the ugly. What unifies these moments is the way they make us
pause and take notice, the way we are still recalling them hours later, the
feeling of having had a momentary insight transcending the ordinary, or a
glimpse into the very essence of ordinariness itself.
Such an experience, referred
to as the "aha moment", is the central root of a haiku. The act of
writing a haiku is an attempt to capture that moment so that others (or we
ourselves) can re-experience it and its associated insight. This means picking
out of memory the elements of the scene that made it vivid, and expressing them
as directly as possible - that is, the goal is to recreate the moment for the
reader, not explain it to them (this is sometimes called the "show, don't
tell" rule).
sun
flowers;
one
facing
the
other way
Kenneth Leibman
sudden shower
in the empty park
a swing still
swinging
Margaret Chula
A haiku should share a moment of awareness with the reader. Peace,
sadness, mystery — these are only a few of the emotions that haiku evokes and
which we can feel when we read a haiku. The key to our feelings about the
things around us and to the feelings we have when we read a good haiku, are the
things themselves. The things produce the emotions.
In haiku you have to give the reader words that help recreate the
moment, the image or images that gave you the feeling. Telling the reader how
you feel does not make the reader feel anything and does not make a good haiku.
The words of the haiku should create in the reader the emotion felt by the
poet, not describe the emotion.
Even though some haiku come from memories or things made up in the mind,
each haiku should sound as though it is happening as you read it, in a specific
place and a specific time. So haiku are mostly written in the present tense, as
if they are right here and now. Haiku should not cover a lengthy time span. A
haiku freezes one moment in time the way a photograph does.
Every haiku is a sort of
little picture, an interesting image. Two main ideas about these images:
A)
They come from direct experience; certain bright moments of life you
managed to catch with your 'internal camera': wonders, strange coincidences,
funny situations; sceneries that resonate with your current 'soul state' or
even change, shock you suddenly, giving you a moment of sadness or another
sensation YOU COULDN'T EVEN NAME.
B)
This image, being written down, should evoke certain deep feelings in
readers, too; this is really difficult - not only to present the experience in
words but to do it such a way that it could be effectively reflected in
someone's mind.
The art of haiku is
the some kind of a "dance" on the sharp blade between these (A) and
(B): you can write about what you saw but it won't grab your reader as you
write merely "there are leaves on the tree" - extreme (A); on the
other hand, going to the extreme (B), you can make up a fancy abstract
construction but it'll be too far from the immediate perception; this
artificial fake will be visible and will impress no one.
Virtually, this
"dance on the blade" is the essence of all poetry and Art in general.
Haiku art uses its own special ways to do it.
2. JUXTAPOSITION AND
TWO-ELEMENT SCHEME
In haiku, unlike in
many Western poetic forms, the writer tries to maintain an invisible hand,
avoiding overt 'poetic' phrasing, use of metaphors, etc. in favor of simple,
direct language. The writer's reaction to the scene is not stated, but comes
across in the choice of images and juxtapositions, the exact wording used,
e.g.:
edge of the marsh - the wind from rising geese in our hair
Ebba Story
You have perhaps noted that
haiku are generally broken into two asymmetrical parts, often corresponding to
one and two of the (common) 3 lines. Indeed, good haiku are seldom written in a
single sentence, but tend to take the form of either "setting or
action" or a juxtaposition of two images. It is at the interface of these
elements that resonances arise. For example:
Nick Avis
A great number of "haiku
images" are based on juxtaposition. Usually there are two things that
happen to be somewhat "together", and haiku presents the very
essence, the very dynamics of their relationship:
snadow’s hand
grasping the ant
then losing it
Dhugal Lindsay
on
every icicle’s tip
a drop
of sunlight
Alexey Andreyev
This two-element scheme can be split further into sub schemes, sort of
'haiku skeletal': we can place 'something new around something old' or 'a
little thing by a big thing'. It's interesting to see how poets manage to evoke
different sensations using the same haiku skeleton, for example:
Old pond…
A frog leaps in
Water’s sound
Basho
the old pond + a jumping frog
=> splash
on
the one ton temple bell
a
moon-moth, folded into sleep,
sits
still.
Buson
the bell + a sleeping moth
=> silence, calmness
Climb
Mount Fuji,
O
snail,
but
slowly, slowly
Issa
Mt.Fuji + a snail =>
slowly, maybe senseless, but - climbing
On the other hand,
it is very appealing to write a haiku in which some common elements are
involved in a new type of relationship, more complicated than simple two-
element juxtaposition. Here are the following examples:
daffodils
opend
around
my mailbox
but
no letter
Karen Tellefsen
a supermarket;
In someone’s cart –
beef, heer
flowers and a child
Alexey Andreyev
spring breeze — the pull of her hand as we near the pet store
Michael Dylan Welch
3. "UNFINISHED
BRIDGE" EFFECT AND "OUTSIDER" EFFECT
Metaphors and
similes are not common for haiku. Not that it's prohibited, but haiku itself is
a different poetic tool. Every metaphor or simile gives a reader two things and
the explicit link between them: we may compare ("the years like
dust") or substitute one thing for another ("diamond dust in the
night sky"). In the first case we have the connection
"dust<~>years", in the second case
"dust<~>stars". Haiku doesn't give a reader such a pre-built
link: the connection (we may also call it "reflection",
"resonance") should happen in reader's own mind:
dust on the toes
of my boots
Penny Harter
Here "dust" stands for real dust, not for years or stars.
However, seeing this dust makes us feel or sense something, so we can describe
the effect of haiku as "dust<~>..." or "dust<~...~>
snow" (snow helped to see the dust that wasn't so noticeable otherwise).
Imagine you are
walking by the river and see an unfinished bridge: maybe, just a half of the
bridge from one side to the middle of the river, or some pillars stuck in the
bottom, or even ruins - an old cement block on one side and a similar one on
the other. Anyway, there's no bridge, no connection now, you can't reach the
other side of the river - yet you can finish the bridge in your mind and say
where exactly it starts and ends. This is the way the unfinished links in haiku
work. Here is an example of a great image for haiku:
red cut leaves circling fingers on keys
Richard MacDonald
However, the
connection used ("cut leaves <--> fingers") is too straight;
besides, we don't see how these things, connected in a poem, are connected in
reality, so it looks almost like a simile without the word "like". We
can try to make it more "haiku-like"; maybe something like this:
As a special case of metaphor I'd
also mention anthropomorphism, so common for western poetry: some human
features are attributed to inanimate things ("crescent moon smiles",
"angry wind"). Everything said above about metaphors can be applied
to this poetic device, too: it is avoided in haiku.
Another (possible)
implication of the "excluded links" idea is that the figure of the
watcher/ poet is also excluded from the scene (usually): instead of saying
"I feel" a poet gives a natural image that makes others feel the same
way. However, "I" and "myself' can be used in haiku; for
instance, when you consider yourself not as a watcher but as one of the images;
as if you looked at yourself "from outside", like at another natural
phenomenon, playing a role in the picture, e.g.:
in the gleam of cherry blossoms
Akutagawa
Ryunosuke
Dhugal Lindsay
Haiku is more than a form of poetry; it is a way of seeing the world.
Each haiku captures a moment of experience; an instant when the ordinary
suddenly reveals its inner nature and makes us take a second look at the event,
at human nature, at life. A haiku should share a moment of awareness with the
reader. Even though some haiku come from memories or things made up in the mind,
each haiku should sound as though it is happening as you read it, in a specific
place and specific time. Haiku texts are a good motivation factor while
learning the English language.
Literature:
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2. Virglilio N.A. Selected Haiku. – Windsor: Black
Moss Press, 1988. – 486 p.
3. http://www.hsa-haiku.org/HSA
Definition_2004.html
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Heath. – London: Noonday Press, 1999. – 271 p.
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Doubleday, 1988. – 511 p.
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Oregon, 1989. – P. 141.
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