tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-786207835641480928.post1173590646157011502..comments2024-03-28T12:59:41.910-04:00Comments on NeverEnding Story: Butterfly Dream: Butterfly Haiku by Lorin FordChen-ou Liu, 劉鎮歐http://www.blogger.com/profile/06235248170011255532noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-786207835641480928.post-12920102914726740862014-01-13T09:01:01.627-05:002014-01-13T09:01:01.627-05:00Through her thematically effective use of '......Through her thematically effective use of '...,' Lorin's allusive butterfly haiku is open to interpretation (thus multivalent). There are at least two readings:<br /><br />1) The image of butterflies is the dream content, or<br />2) The implied speaker becomes the dream (of butterflies), which alludes to Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream (depicted in the Zhuangzi), the foundational text of Japanese butterfly haiku.<br /><br />Her haiku reminds me of one of my butterfly haiku, one that could be read as a response poem:<br /><br />falling off a dream I become a butterfly<br /><br />This one-line haiku is embedded in my haibun, To Liv(e) (Frogpond, 34:3, Fall 2011), which can be accessed at http://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.ca/2013/01/a-room-of-my-own-haibun-to-live.html Chen-ou Liu, 劉鎮歐https://www.blogger.com/profile/06235248170011255532noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-786207835641480928.post-50288459526226832122014-01-13T08:50:46.393-05:002014-01-13T08:50:46.393-05:00Below is excerpted from my Simply Haiku essay, Wak...Below is excerpted from my Simply Haiku essay, Waking from "Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream -- Plagiarism or Honkadori:"<br /><br />poets of all ages contributed to one Great Poem perpetually in progress<br />-- Percy Bysshe Shelley, cited in The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry by Harold Bloom<br /><br /><br />......<br />For those who are well versed in Japanese haiku and Chinese Daoist (Wade-Giles: Taoist) literature, especially in the Zhuangzi (Wade-Giles: Chuang Tzu), 12 the butterfly imagery in Buson’s haiku is “not original or fresh,” rather it belongs to a massive, communally shared Japanese butterfly haiku based on Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream, a famous story recorded in the Zhuangzi:<br /><br />“Once [Zhuangzi] dreamt he was a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was [Zhuangzi.] Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable [Zhuangzi]. But he didn't know if he was [Zhuangzi] who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was [Zhuangzi.] Between [Zhuangzi] and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.” 13<br /><br />In the first haiku lexicon, Yama no I (Mountain Spring published in 1647), there is an explanatory passage under the entry titled Butterfly: “Butterfly. The scene of a butterfly alighting on rape blossoms, napping among flowers with no worries. Its appearance as it flutters its feathery wings, dancing like whirling snowflakes. Also the image is associated with [Zhuangzi’s] dream, suggesting that one hundred years pass as a gleam in a butterfly’s dream.” 14 To demonstrate how to use this butterfly imagery, the compiler Kigin gives the following example:<br /><br />Scattering blossoms:<br /><br />the dream of a butterfly –<br /><br />one hundred years in a gleam 15<br /><br />Since then, the penetration of Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream into themes and images has clearly been seen in Japanese haiku.<br /><br />......<br />Chen-ou Liu, 劉鎮歐https://www.blogger.com/profile/06235248170011255532noreply@blogger.com