My Dear Dellow Poets/Readers:
I got permission from Jack Galmitz to publish his audio interview about his view of haiku aesthetics (kigo, the role of "nature," shasei approach, ...) He was interviewed by Laurence Stacey, Haiku News editor. The interview begins with reciting one of Laurence's favorite haiku by Jack and Jack's different take on his published haiku.
Published Version
turning away
the soldier’s face
deformed
Haiku News, February 13, 2012
Original Version
turning away
the deformed face
of a soldier
Now, listen to the Jack Galmitz Interview (After opening the link in a new window, first click Download, and then you'll see the listing show up in the new tab with an "Open" option. Click Open)
Enjoy the interview
Chen-ou
Below is a relevant excerpt from Robert D. Wilson's An Interview with Hasegawa Kai (Simply Haiku, 6:3, Autumn 2008)
ReplyDeleteat the crescent moon
the silence
enters the heart
Chiyo-ni
(trans. Donegan and Ishibashi)
... Metonymy, especially the construction of a larger scene from a small detail, also played a crucial role, particularly in short forms like waka and seventeen-syllable hokku (opening verse of renga sequence). From the perspective of the reader, all such poetry will potentially have a surface (literal) meaning and a deeper meaning. Representations of nature in aristocratic visual culture --- whether painting, poetry, or design --- are thus seldom simply decorative or mimetic; they are almost always culturally and symbolically encoded, and that encoding tends to evolve with time and genre...
. . . because of the extremes of modern realism, kokoro is neglected, and only 'things' have come to be written about in haiku. These are what I referred to as 'junk' (garakuta) haiku. Sooner or later, this tendency will have to be corrected. For one thing, it is a serious departure from the main principle of Japanese literary art. And more to the point, 'junk haiku' just aren't interesting."
I'll publish a series of "To the Lighthouse" posts to further discuss the shasei (objective realism) approach, the conception of "nature," in the Japanese poetic tradition, and the dis/use of kigo in haiku composition.
Below is a relevant excerpt about kokoro mentioned in Kai's interview, which is taken from Eric Thomas Sherlock's MA Thesis, Kokoro as Ecological Insight: The Concept of Heart in Japanese Literature (Asian Studies, University of Columbia, 1984)
ReplyDeleteThe concept of kokoro forms a central motif in the poetic theory of Japanese literature. The genesis of kokoro resides in the Shinto understanding that the kami no kokoro, or "the heart of the deity" forms an important bond between the human and spiritual worlds. With increasing Buddhist influence, the concept of kokoro evolves, historically, toward being an ideal for a way of life, and in its medieval variant as mushin (kokoro nashi) approaches being understood in metaphysical terms. Kokoro is defined in this paper as "an innate capacity for feeling which is the innermost nature of things with which binds them to each other". In the Kojiki and the Manyoshu, kokoro. was perceived from a materialistic basis as a physical organ in the human body that responds to emotion. At the same time, kokoro was understood as the seat of an expressive instinct in all beings that urges them toward mutual identification, experienced as metaphor in the human imagination. Kino Tsurayuki's Preface to the Kokinshu reveals such a trans-species identification through the universal capacity for kokoro and the poetic instinct this implies. The historical crisis of the twelfth century and the decline of the Heian court precipitated a new interpretation of the tradition of kokoro. A conflict between an optimistic Shinto-esoteric Buddhist affirmation of the spiritual unity of the physical world and the more general Buddhist notion that the world had entered a degenerate age (mappo) forged in literature the notions of yugen and ushiiitei whereby a profound aesthetic penetration into nature reveals an absoluteness of reality within the relativity of the world. The emphasis of a poetry of kokoro seeking to express an absolute truth about life found new expression and continuity in the Zen-inspired notion of mushin. Mushin confronted a paradox within the concept of kokoro when seen from a Buddhist perspective. Through the doctrine of Codependent Origination, kokoro could not inherently be limited to any single perspective or place, and thus its final unfindability (mu) is the kokoro of kokoro, its intrinsic quality of mushin. Such an understanding underpins the Noh of Zeami and Basho's haiku. Finally, the literary tradition of kokoro expression is submitted to a universal theory of language evolution as discussed in Northrop Frye's The Great Code. It is concluded that the Japanese kokoro tradition kept alive for over one thousand years the metaphorical identification of man and nature. The sciences of biology and quantum physics are now urging a similar ecological vision that gives the literary tradition of kokoro in Japan its special importance to the modern world.