English Original
the pear blossoming
after the battle this
ruined house
The Haiku Handbook, 1985
Masaoka Shiki
Chinese Translation (Traditional)
梨花盛開
戰後這棟
破敗的房子
Chinese Translation (Simplified)
梨花盛开
战后这栋
破败的房子
Bio Sketch
Masaoka Shiki (October 14, 1867 -- September 19, 1902) was a Japanese poet and literary critic in Meiji period Japan. Shiki is regarded as a major figure in the development of modern haiku, and he also published articles on the reform of tanka. Some scholars and poets consider Shiki to be one of the four great haiku masters, the others being Matsuo Bashō, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa.
In his book “Haiku Handbook”, William J. Higginson compares Shiki’s poem with a famous poem by Basho, included in “The Narrow Road to the Interior”:
ReplyDeletesummer grass…
those mighty warriors’
dream-tracks
Comparing the two, Higginson says:
“Shiki writes a poem that gives us a vision of human nature and the rest of nature intertwined in contemporary battle ruins and pear blossoms, and at the same time he pokes a kind of fun at the naive veneration of ancient warriors expressed in Basho’s haiku. He contrasts the broad landscape of a battlefield, suggested in Basho’s poem, with the remains of a house, probably the home of some family now refugees, or worse. The bravery of legendary heroes, with the commonness of everyday living, both destroyed by war. By including a ruined house, rather than a ruined castle or fort, and writing at the scene of a recent battle, rather than of some long-ago event, Shiki has modernized the haiku, brought it into the present tense, and made the cruelty of war, rather than its grandeur, a fit subject for haiku.”
Shiki's haiku reminds me of the following haiku about a burnt house:
DeleteOn my return from Tsukushi at the close of March, I found that my hut had been destroyed by fire. Looking at the ruins, I composed this verse.
violets here and there
in the ruins
of my burnt house
Haiku Mind: 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness and Open Your Heart
Shokyu-ni
Commentary: As her poetic response to a personal tragedy depicted in the joshi (prefatory note) , Shokyu-ni's haiku addresses centuries-old question: how to confront or deal with the adversity in one's daily life? We can't control what happens, but we can control our response to what happens. And our response depends on our way(s) of seeing the reality on the ground: "the paradox, the complexity, how the good and bad are often intertwined... violets in the ruins" (p. 14) ... for more analysis, see "Poetic Musings: Burnt House Haiku by Shokyu-ni," accessed at https://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.com/2020/12/poetic-musings-burnt-house-by-shokyu-ni.html