WEBVTT

1
00:00:10.340 --> 00:00:12.079
Hello friends in Boston.

2
00:00:13.920 --> 00:00:14.560
I'm Janine Beichman.

3
00:00:15.719 --> 00:00:19.920
I'm so glad to be here today and
so grateful to Keith Vincent for

4
00:00:19.920 --> 00:00:25.360
making it possible for me to participate
from such a long distance by video.

5
00:00:27.619 --> 00:00:32.189
However I have to confess that I've never
given a presentation by video before so

6
00:00:32.189 --> 00:00:37.060
I am the tiniest bit nervous
in any case let's go.

7
00:00:39.760 --> 00:00:44.450
The spiritual life of an octopus,
a woman back from Flower viewing and

8
00:00:44.450 --> 00:00:47.450
undressing in the privacy of her bedroom,

9
00:00:47.450 --> 00:00:53.009
the pale almost unearthly cries
of wild ducks at twilight.

10
00:00:53.009 --> 00:00:58.239
What could they possibly have in
common not much one would think but

11
00:00:58.239 --> 00:01:00.520
strangely enough there is room for

12
00:01:00.520 --> 00:01:06.030
them all in the haiku the shortest
form of poetry in the world.

13
00:01:06.030 --> 00:01:06.890
Here they are.

14
00:01:08.070 --> 00:01:11.480
Octopus pots--brief dreams
beneath the summer moon.

15
00:01:12.700 --> 00:01:18.070
I slip off my flowery kimono,
uncurl rainbows of laces.

16
00:01:19.330 --> 00:01:25.735
The sea grows dark,
the wild ducks' cries faintly white.

17
00:01:28.460 --> 00:01:34.360
Common every day things all of them but
within it ethereal almost surreal quality.

18
00:01:35.540 --> 00:01:38.360
The first poem is by Matsuo Bashō,

19
00:01:38.360 --> 00:01:42.960
the greatest haiku poet of all--as
I'm sure everyone here knows.

20
00:01:42.960 --> 00:01:48.089
Octopus pots were ceramic pots that take
advantage of the propensity of octopuses

21
00:01:48.089 --> 00:01:50.619
for hiding in nicks and crannies.

22
00:01:50.619 --> 00:01:54.820
The fishermen lower the pots to
the bottom of the sea during the day and

23
00:01:54.820 --> 00:01:57.970
then pull them up shortly before dawn.

24
00:01:57.970 --> 00:02:03.200
In the darkness of the pot, as it rests on
the floor of the sea, the octopus settles

25
00:02:03.200 --> 00:02:08.490
in for the night--innocently dreaming or
so the poet imagines.

26
00:02:08.490 --> 00:02:12.170
At dawn when it is holed
up it's brief dream for

27
00:02:12.170 --> 00:02:15.490
summer nights assure it will be over.

28
00:02:15.490 --> 00:02:19.659
Our life,
its life is no more than a dream but

29
00:02:19.659 --> 00:02:24.260
it has been touched by the moon
symbol of enlightenment and eternity.

30
00:02:25.720 --> 00:02:28.309
I will come back to this poem again but

31
00:02:28.309 --> 00:02:33.130
for now let's move on to the second
one which is by Sugita Hisajo,

32
00:02:33.130 --> 00:02:36.980
one of the major haiku poets of
the twentieth century, and a woman.

33
00:02:38.490 --> 00:02:43.259
I slip off my flowery kimono,
uncurl rainbows of laces.

34
00:02:44.450 --> 00:02:48.300
Back from flower viewing
the woman undoes her kimono,

35
00:02:48.300 --> 00:02:51.170
which is patterned with flowers for
the season.

36
00:02:51.170 --> 00:02:55.660
As everyone here again probably knows,
kimonos have no zippers or

37
00:02:55.660 --> 00:02:59.370
buttons but
are held in place by fabric cords.

38
00:02:59.370 --> 00:03:04.870
Beneath the kimono itself is the under
kimono, and beneath that a simple shift so

39
00:03:04.870 --> 00:03:09.060
the woman in a formal kimono was all
wrapped up in cords and strings and

40
00:03:09.060 --> 00:03:15.640
laces of cotton and silk in a variety
of colors and shapes like a package.

41
00:03:15.640 --> 00:03:18.390
As she slowly unwraps
herself the cords and

42
00:03:18.390 --> 00:03:22.930
ties open--trail full--making
a rainbow of colors.

43
00:03:24.059 --> 00:03:29.859
When this poem was first published in
1919, almost one hundred years ago,

44
00:03:29.859 --> 00:03:34.530
it was interpreted as a simple
celebration of uniquely female

45
00:03:34.530 --> 00:03:39.650
experience although there were some
muttering about its so-called narcissism.

46
00:03:40.690 --> 00:03:45.690
The sensuality is more unabashedly
celebrated today but the courts and

47
00:03:45.690 --> 00:03:50.690
laces are also read as symbols of
the social restraints that bound women so

48
00:03:50.690 --> 00:03:53.270
tightly when the poem was written.

49
00:03:53.270 --> 00:03:58.130
To my twenty first century ears
a phrase from a poem by the poet called

50
00:03:58.130 --> 00:04:03.552
Sapphire describes
Hisajo's poem perfectly.

51
00:04:03.552 --> 00:04:08.380
"Pain pulled through the eye
of beauty" Sapphire wrote.

52
00:04:08.380 --> 00:04:10.580
That's exactly what this poem is.

53
00:04:11.630 --> 00:04:14.570
The third poem is by Basho again.

54
00:04:14.570 --> 00:04:19.270
Night is coming over the sea and the cries
of the wild ducks calling back and

55
00:04:19.270 --> 00:04:22.840
forth somehow seem to take on body and
color,

56
00:04:22.840 --> 00:04:28.150
pale against the darkness,
mingling with the last left over light.

57
00:04:28.150 --> 00:04:31.950
The synesthesia or
the mingling of senses in this poem

58
00:04:31.950 --> 00:04:35.185
appears in a number of
Basho's other poems as well.

59
00:04:35.185 --> 00:04:41.120
Parenthetically, let me add that the idea
to use six lines in the translation

60
00:04:41.120 --> 00:04:46.180
is mine not--doesn't come from
Basho's original poem and of course

61
00:04:46.180 --> 00:04:50.719
all the translations used here today are
my own except where noted in two cases.

62
00:04:59.119 --> 00:05:05.149
Haiku has other tones than the slightly
surreal symbolic one of these three poems.

63
00:05:05.149 --> 00:05:10.080
One that we are familiar with that we may
even think of as quintessentially haiku

64
00:05:10.080 --> 00:05:14.970
like is the down to earth
tone of the next three poems.

65
00:05:14.970 --> 00:05:20.671
Here we have Matsuo Basho again,
then Yosa Buso, then Kobayashi Issa.

66
00:05:20.671 --> 00:05:25.220
Autumn's nearly gone--how does
my neighbor make his living?

67
00:05:26.680 --> 00:05:30.419
The pleasure of crossing
a summer stream sandals in hand.

68
00:05:32.030 --> 00:05:36.559
Snow thawed,
suddenly the village fills with children.

69
00:05:38.180 --> 00:05:44.690
And then there are poems like the next
two, also seemingly very simple but rather

70
00:05:44.690 --> 00:05:49.542
than being about happy topics like beauty
or pleasure they are about pain and death.

71
00:05:49.542 --> 00:05:54.860
Kobayashi Issa,
on the death of his infant daughter:

72
00:05:54.860 --> 00:05:59.850
The world of dew is a world of dew and
yet...

73
00:05:59.850 --> 00:06:01.508
and yet...

74
00:06:01.508 --> 00:06:07.779
Masaoka Shiki, on his death bed:

75
00:06:07.779 --> 00:06:13.714
How much life is left to
me--brief these summer nights.

76
00:06:13.714 --> 00:06:19.421
Unlike the previous poems,
these autobiographical poems by Issa and

77
00:06:19.421 --> 00:06:23.870
Shiki are so personal,
that knowing who wrote them and

78
00:06:23.870 --> 00:06:29.009
a little about the circumstances
adds a great deal to the poem.

79
00:06:30.369 --> 00:06:34.939
But sometimes we don't need to add the
poets name because he does it himself as

80
00:06:34.939 --> 00:06:39.929
here where Issa, who always
identified with the downtrodden and

81
00:06:39.929 --> 00:06:43.069
oppressed, introduces
himself to a small frog.

82
00:06:43.069 --> 00:06:49.469
"Skinny little frog don't
give in--here is Issa".

83
00:06:49.469 --> 00:06:54.136
So now that I've touched on the four
greats of haiku--Basho, Buson, Issa, and

84
00:06:54.136 --> 00:06:58.469
Shiki--let's move on to the form
itself and its origins.

85
00:07:00.779 --> 00:07:06.458
What we now call haiku was not originally
the independent form that it is today

86
00:07:06.458 --> 00:07:11.739
it originally appeared either within works
of prose like Basho's famous travel diary,

87
00:07:11.739 --> 00:07:16.729
"The narrow road to the north", or
as the first link in the chain of linked

88
00:07:16.729 --> 00:07:21.618
verses called haikai no renga or
informal linked verse.

89
00:07:21.618 --> 00:07:24.309
Many of the verses that
are now famous as haiku,

90
00:07:24.309 --> 00:07:27.859
were originally the first
link in a linked verse chain.

91
00:07:27.859 --> 00:07:30.729
Yosa Buson's, "Mustard-seed flowers,

92
00:07:30.729 --> 00:07:34.989
moon in the east ,sun in
the West" is one example.

93
00:07:34.989 --> 00:07:39.269
Here it is in its original context
followed by the second verse

94
00:07:39.269 --> 00:07:42.779
composed by Buson's disciple and
friend Chiyoda.

95
00:07:42.779 --> 00:07:44.879
Mustard-seed flowers...

96
00:07:44.879 --> 00:07:46.932
moon in the east, sun in the west.

97
00:07:46.932 --> 00:07:52.433
Far off at the mountain's foot
,herons fade into the mist.

98
00:07:52.433 --> 00:07:58.759
Buson's poem is a description
of an early spring evening and

99
00:07:58.759 --> 00:08:04.179
that season sunset and
moonrise coincide and almost coincide and

100
00:08:04.179 --> 00:08:07.723
the bright yellow of the mustard
seed flowers lights up the fields.

101
00:08:07.723 --> 00:08:14.289
Buson describes the scene as though he
were standing somewhere outside the field,

102
00:08:14.289 --> 00:08:18.694
watching the moon rise in the east and
opposite it the sunset in the West.

103
00:08:18.694 --> 00:08:22.569
Chiyoda, his eyes led
by a flock of herons or

104
00:08:22.569 --> 00:08:28.029
perhaps one heron, extends the line of
sight towards a mountain in the distance.

105
00:08:28.029 --> 00:08:32.049
One modern reader,
the poet and critic commented,

106
00:08:32.049 --> 00:08:36.929
"Read together it is as if one's
eyes were sweeping over a pastoral

107
00:08:36.929 --> 00:08:41.136
landscape of the late eighteenth
century in panoramic fashion".

108
00:08:41.136 --> 00:08:47.326
It was Matsuo Basho and his followers
who had brought in formal linked

109
00:08:47.326 --> 00:08:52.499
verse to a peak of artistic perfection
in the seventeenth century before Buson,

110
00:08:52.499 --> 00:08:57.099
and by the late Edo period linked
verse had become extremely popular.

111
00:08:57.099 --> 00:09:01.048
This led paradoxically to a watering
down of standards, and in general

112
00:09:01.048 --> 00:09:05.059
the debasement of the art, which combined
with the vogue for all things Western in

113
00:09:05.059 --> 00:09:10.159
the early Meiji period threatened for
a time to kill off not only linked verse,

114
00:09:10.159 --> 00:09:15.968
but also that first verse haiku, which
had achieved semi independence by then.

115
00:09:15.968 --> 00:09:20.460
It was this dismal fate from which the
passion determination and brilliance of

116
00:09:20.460 --> 00:09:25.175
Matsuoka Shiki -- his birthday we
are celebrating today -- saved it.

117
00:09:25.175 --> 00:09:29.528
So why was Shiki so
passionate about haiku?

118
00:09:29.528 --> 00:09:34.349
What was it about haiku and what was it
about him that brought them together for

119
00:09:34.349 --> 00:09:35.823
their fateful encounter?

120
00:09:35.823 --> 00:09:40.638
Shiki chronicled the beginning of
his own love affair with Haiku

121
00:09:40.638 --> 00:09:45.449
with disarming simplicity and humor
in his sick bed diary: A Drop of Ink.

122
00:09:46.939 --> 00:09:52.449
Looking back on his college days when he
moved out of the dormitory to a house

123
00:09:52.449 --> 00:09:56.379
where he lived alone he describes
how his obsession with Haiku led

124
00:09:56.379 --> 00:09:58.638
to his flunking out of school.

125
00:09:58.638 --> 00:10:02.499
His desk was usually cluttered
with Haiku books and novels but

126
00:10:02.499 --> 00:10:07.149
when an exam loomed loomed he would
neaten it up and set out his notes.

127
00:10:07.149 --> 00:10:11.897
But then, as he writes: "When I
sat down quietly and saw it so

128
00:10:11.897 --> 00:10:14.819
bare and neat I felt a nameless pleasure.

129
00:10:14.819 --> 00:10:19.179
"As soon as I felt so pleasant and
cheerful a Haiku would flash into my

130
00:10:19.179 --> 00:10:23.779
mind." When I opened my notebook
a seven hundred syllable verse

131
00:10:23.779 --> 00:10:28.689
would emerge before I could read a page."
"I couldn't write it down since I had

132
00:10:28.689 --> 00:10:33.299
put my poetry notebook and
even my stationery away so

133
00:10:33.299 --> 00:10:37.628
I would write it on the lampshade."
"Verse after verse came forth,

134
00:10:37.628 --> 00:10:42.389
entranced I abandoned the examination
to cover the lampshade with writing."

135
00:10:42.389 --> 00:10:47.779
"I was in such a state that as soon
as I tried to stop writing haiku and

136
00:10:47.779 --> 00:10:52.569
prepare for an examination, verses
would flash through my mind in droves,

137
00:10:52.569 --> 00:10:57.658
examinations came to me nothing but
a flood of poetry." "Bewitched

138
00:10:57.658 --> 00:11:02.549
by the goddess of haiku nothing
could save me." "I failed the final

139
00:11:02.549 --> 00:11:08.388
examinations of eighteen ninety two and
withdrew from school once and for all".

140
00:11:09.928 --> 00:11:15.039
Partly then it was the ease of writing
haiku that made it attractive but

141
00:11:15.039 --> 00:11:20.865
it was also the fact that for some reason
haiku was a particularly congenial way for

142
00:11:20.865 --> 00:11:24.200
Shiki to express his sheer
pleasure at being alive.

143
00:11:24.200 --> 00:11:28.959
As Shiki got more into the form
he began making some rules for

144
00:11:28.959 --> 00:11:32.299
himself and
then teaching them to other people.

145
00:11:32.299 --> 00:11:36.829
The most important one was dedicated
observation of one's surroundings.

146
00:11:37.949 --> 00:11:40.458
He made this into a strict discipline

147
00:11:40.458 --> 00:11:43.351
the most fundamental exercise
in the poet's training.

148
00:11:43.351 --> 00:11:49.269
In eighteen ninety nine and
his instructions to the beginning poets

149
00:11:49.269 --> 00:11:54.789
under his care he wrote this:
"You must not stop when

150
00:11:54.789 --> 00:11:59.895
you have managed to extract one or
two poems from some broad view."

151
00:11:59.895 --> 00:12:05.058
"Next you must look down at your feet and
write about what you see--there the grass,

152
00:12:05.058 --> 00:12:09.268
the flowers in bloom." "If you write
about each, you will have ten or

153
00:12:09.268 --> 00:12:15.179
twenty poems without moving from where
you are." "Take your materials from what

154
00:12:15.179 --> 00:12:21.169
is around you--if you see a dandelion,
write about that: if there is mist,

155
00:12:21.169 --> 00:12:27.389
write about the mist." "The materials for
poems are all about you in abundance".

156
00:12:28.929 --> 00:12:32.058
In these vivid and
encouraging instructions Shiki

157
00:12:32.058 --> 00:12:35.681
emphasizes looking at nature
in quite a matter of fact way.

158
00:12:35.681 --> 00:12:40.689
In a different essay however he showed
that you can observe nature by listening

159
00:12:40.689 --> 00:12:44.948
as well as looking simply by closing
your eyes and listening intently.

160
00:12:46.109 --> 00:12:51.119
In the back story for Basho's famous
poem about the frog: "old pond,

161
00:12:51.119 --> 00:12:53.797
a frog hops in the waters sound",

162
00:12:53.797 --> 00:12:58.746
he imagined Basho alone in his
cottage at a creative impasse.

163
00:12:58.746 --> 00:13:02.859
Bored and dissatisfied with
the poetic styles current at the time

164
00:13:02.859 --> 00:13:07.819
he is brooding over how to create his
own distinctive poems or as we would put

165
00:13:07.819 --> 00:13:11.649
it he's trying to think about how
he can find his voice as the poet.

166
00:13:11.649 --> 00:13:16.608
"Lost in his thoughts" writes Shiki,
"[Basho] felt as though a dense

167
00:13:16.608 --> 00:13:21.742
fog had fallen, and simply sat there
in a trance, neither asleep nor

168
00:13:21.742 --> 00:13:28.188
awake." "At the moment when all nature was
quiet and all his daydreams had faded out

169
00:13:28.188 --> 00:13:33.969
he heard the sound of a frog jumping
into the old pond outside his window." "

170
00:13:33.969 --> 00:13:38.449
He himself did not murmur them nor
did anyone speak but

171
00:13:38.449 --> 00:13:43.649
the lines, 'A frog hops in:
the water's sound' reached his

172
00:13:43.649 --> 00:13:48.779
ears." "As though awakening from
a dream he inclined his head for

173
00:13:48.779 --> 00:13:54.579
a moment and then raised it and
a broad smile broke out upon his face".

174
00:13:54.579 --> 00:13:58.129
In other words he knew where
he was going from there.

175
00:13:58.129 --> 00:14:02.919
To sum up at the basis of the famous
frog haiku in Shiki's view was

176
00:14:02.919 --> 00:14:07.829
observation of an unusually intense
sort really concentrating on

177
00:14:07.829 --> 00:14:12.859
what is around you really being there
in the moment not simply looking or

178
00:14:12.859 --> 00:14:16.299
listening but being wholly present.

179
00:14:16.299 --> 00:14:19.058
This is what we now call mindfulness and

180
00:14:19.058 --> 00:14:22.704
for Shiki it was the cornerstone
of haiku composition.

181
00:14:22.704 --> 00:14:27.064
Shiki's signature method,
the sketch from life,

182
00:14:27.064 --> 00:14:31.979
Bushasei, rests upon this
kind of intense observation.

183
00:14:31.979 --> 00:14:36.889
When practice devotedly it led to
something more than reflecting reality

184
00:14:36.889 --> 00:14:41.349
it drew the practitioner into
a kind of quiet creative ecstasy,

185
00:14:41.349 --> 00:14:44.128
which Shiki recorded himself.

186
00:14:44.128 --> 00:14:48.599
As Shiki put it in "Haiku Wastebasket":
"The writer takes his raw

187
00:14:48.599 --> 00:14:53.169
materials from nature, then refines
them and makes them part of his own

188
00:14:53.169 --> 00:14:57.988
imagination." "In this sense one
may call him a second Creator".

189
00:14:59.518 --> 00:15:04.459
In his diary, "A Sixfoot Sickbed",
Shiki recorded a moment when he actually

190
00:15:04.459 --> 00:15:09.809
came to feel that he knew what it was
like to be the creator of the world,

191
00:15:09.809 --> 00:15:15.109
the medium is visual not verbal but
the idea is the same: "I had

192
00:15:15.109 --> 00:15:20.159
a flowering branch placed beside my
pillow." "As I faithfully sketch it,

193
00:15:20.159 --> 00:15:25.509
I feel I'm gradually coming to understand
the secrets of Creation..." "One

194
00:15:25.509 --> 00:15:30.729
of the joys of sketching from life lies in
pondering how to obtain a slightly darker

195
00:15:30.729 --> 00:15:36.579
red or a rather more yellowish one."
"When the gods first dyed the flowers

196
00:15:36.579 --> 00:15:41.179
did they too lose themselves
in musings like this?".

197
00:15:41.179 --> 00:15:45.839
So haiku brought Shiki happiness
more than any other activity did

198
00:15:45.839 --> 00:15:49.699
because in it he used first
mindful observation, and

199
00:15:49.699 --> 00:15:55.539
second his imagination, and
at times he achieved moments of ecstasy.

200
00:15:55.539 --> 00:15:59.339
Mindfulness and
imagination were linked not separate.

201
00:16:01.769 --> 00:16:06.189
How does this apply to other poets
specifically to Shiki's views of

202
00:16:06.189 --> 00:16:09.909
Yosa Buson, who was rediscovered by Shiki?

203
00:16:09.909 --> 00:16:15.569
Shiki pointed to two things especially
in Buson: one was Buson's gift for

204
00:16:15.569 --> 00:16:19.219
precise observation and
the other was his use of imagination.

205
00:16:20.609 --> 00:16:22.223
In such poems as these,

206
00:16:22.223 --> 00:16:26.759
Buson observed small precise
details of natural flora and fauna.

207
00:16:27.869 --> 00:16:35.127
"The peonies petals scatter pile of two
then three." "Struck by a raindrop,

208
00:16:35.127 --> 00:16:40.144
snail closes up." "Some
sandals walked on flowers,

209
00:16:40.144 --> 00:16:43.799
I see-- That morning lazybones!".

210
00:16:43.799 --> 00:16:49.072
As for poems of imagination these
were two examples: "Harvest

211
00:16:49.072 --> 00:16:54.828
Moon-- a rabbit crossing Suwa Lake."
"Give me lodging he cries,

212
00:16:54.828 --> 00:16:59.045
flinging down his
sword--what a blizzard!".

213
00:16:59.045 --> 00:17:03.254
In "Harvest Moon", one needs to think
about the light of a full moon and

214
00:17:03.254 --> 00:17:07.533
how it would make the lake look,
the white wavelets that would be there and

215
00:17:07.533 --> 00:17:11.281
which could look like a white
rabbit cross hopping across Lake.

216
00:17:11.281 --> 00:17:15.668
The White Rabbit who of course is
the rabbit in the moon come down to earth.

217
00:17:16.799 --> 00:17:19.438
"Give me lodging",
is like a line in a story:

218
00:17:19.438 --> 00:17:22.839
a samurai comes rushing in from
a frigid snowy night begging for

219
00:17:22.839 --> 00:17:27.539
lodging, throwing down his sword to
show he has no intention to harm anyone.

220
00:17:29.409 --> 00:17:34.399
As for Basho, Shiki revered Basho for
qualities opposite to those for

221
00:17:34.399 --> 00:17:36.369
which he admired Buson.

222
00:17:36.369 --> 00:17:41.289
The most important was Basho's mastery of
the tone of "sublimity and grandeur" to

223
00:17:41.289 --> 00:17:46.978
use Shiki's words, the macroscopic
scale of some of his poems as in

224
00:17:46.978 --> 00:17:52.944
this famous poem "Stormy seas--stretching
over to Sado the Milky Way".

225
00:17:52.944 --> 00:17:58.059
Shiki thought this was a realistic
description of looking out from the coast

226
00:17:58.059 --> 00:18:04.269
of Niigata to the island of Sado said
home of so many medieval exiles,

227
00:18:04.269 --> 00:18:09.169
but many years after Shiki died,
the diary of Bahso's travel companion Sora

228
00:18:09.169 --> 00:18:13.649
was discovered and there was found that
Sora had recorded that on the night

229
00:18:13.649 --> 00:18:18.604
of the poem it was actually raining and
Sado was invisible because of the clouds.

230
00:18:18.604 --> 00:18:24.399
Shiki was wrong in thinking that this
was a poem of natural observations yet

231
00:18:24.399 --> 00:18:27.628
it still fulfills his own
dictum that observation and

232
00:18:27.628 --> 00:18:29.679
imagination should go hand in hand.

233
00:18:30.779 --> 00:18:35.549
How did this interplay of mindfulness and
imagination play out in these own poetry?

234
00:18:36.759 --> 00:18:40.859
For an idea let's look at Shiki's famous
poem on the coxcombs in his garden.

235
00:18:40.859 --> 00:18:47.047
"Coxcomb flowers coxcomb flowers
must be fourteen maybe fifteen".

236
00:18:47.047 --> 00:18:53.041
Coxcomb flowers are bright red, rather
tall and their petals are very thick.

237
00:18:53.041 --> 00:18:57.669
Shiki titled the poem looking
out at the garden--on first

238
00:18:57.669 --> 00:19:01.048
reading it seems no more than
a casual comment to himself or

239
00:19:01.048 --> 00:19:06.559
to someone sitting nearby as he lies
on his sick bed looking outside.

240
00:19:06.559 --> 00:19:11.539
But if one visualizes the mortally ill
person that he was speaking the poem in

241
00:19:11.539 --> 00:19:17.209
a quiet voice to someone very nearby and
intimate it suddenly expands.

242
00:19:17.209 --> 00:19:20.709
Now the flowers with their
magnificent powerful red and

243
00:19:20.709 --> 00:19:24.598
strong thick forms impress
him with their vitality but

244
00:19:24.598 --> 00:19:31.479
at the same time there are they are his
own opposite emphasizing his own decay.

245
00:19:31.479 --> 00:19:35.679
In Haiku we may say the reader,
having imagined this,

246
00:19:35.679 --> 00:19:39.039
possesses the power of life and
death over the poem.

247
00:19:40.399 --> 00:19:45.618
I have always thought that this was one of
the few possible interpretations possible

248
00:19:45.618 --> 00:19:50.138
but recently thanks to Keith Vincent
who introduced it in his Shiki series

249
00:19:50.138 --> 00:19:54.097
I learnt that Ogama Koto had proposed
a completely different interpretation.

250
00:19:54.097 --> 00:19:59.179
Shiki argues Oka is remembering
a time from the year before

251
00:19:59.179 --> 00:20:02.019
when a typhoon destroyed the flowers.

252
00:20:02.019 --> 00:20:05.988
Before the storm there had been
fourteen or fifteen of them and

253
00:20:05.988 --> 00:20:12.018
he misses them now but only Joshi of all
the people of the poem party on that day,

254
00:20:12.018 --> 00:20:16.659
the day Shiki wrote the poem had also
been there when the typhoon struck, so

255
00:20:16.659 --> 00:20:19.409
the poem was a sort of
quiet memory shared with

256
00:20:19.409 --> 00:20:23.779
with Kyoshi-- a remark that expressed
his feeling of friendship and love.

257
00:20:24.808 --> 00:20:29.569
Based on this interpretation Keith
offers a totally different translation

258
00:20:29.569 --> 00:20:34.808
big red coxcombs' stalks fourteen or
fifteen of them, do you remember?

259
00:20:34.808 --> 00:20:39.929
The question is do we have to choose one
or the other of the two interpretations?

260
00:20:39.929 --> 00:20:40.919
I would say no.

261
00:20:42.238 --> 00:20:46.209
I want to plot it like a fan with
the poem itself as the pivot.

262
00:20:47.639 --> 00:20:52.558
And different interpretations radiating
from there like spokes on the fan and

263
00:20:52.558 --> 00:20:57.444
of course each interpretation has in
turn at least one possible translation.

264
00:20:57.444 --> 00:21:01.619
The Coxcomb poem is an extreme
example of how much

265
00:21:01.619 --> 00:21:06.809
the interpretation of a haiku can vary
depending on what the reader brings to it.

266
00:21:06.809 --> 00:21:10.769
In terms of mindfulness and
imagination you could say that Shiki has

267
00:21:10.769 --> 00:21:15.699
supplied the mindfulness, the intense
observation of the flower, but the reader

268
00:21:15.699 --> 00:21:20.571
supplies most of the imagination,
aided by the headnote and in Oka and

269
00:21:20.571 --> 00:21:25.839
Keith's interpretation-translation by
Shiki's prose essays about the coxcombs.

270
00:21:28.249 --> 00:21:32.408
That's about it for
imagination and observation or

271
00:21:32.408 --> 00:21:35.138
mindfulness and
I want to move on now to the second

272
00:21:35.138 --> 00:21:39.179
pair that I spoke of in my abstract
to lightness and stickiness.

273
00:21:40.219 --> 00:21:44.489
First lightness by which I mean a certain
casual in a certain light heartedness

274
00:21:44.489 --> 00:21:45.789
a kind of brightness.

275
00:21:48.449 --> 00:21:53.169
Lightness is inherent in haikai linked
verse, the first session on record took

276
00:21:53.169 --> 00:21:58.158
place in 1206 as a way for some poets
to relax and kick up their heels

277
00:21:58.158 --> 00:22:03.509
by composing informal linked verse
after a strenuous court walk a session.

278
00:22:03.509 --> 00:22:08.329
Even after haiku became its own
independent form it kept that lightness

279
00:22:08.329 --> 00:22:12.518
but at the same time it acquired
something I call stickiness.

280
00:22:12.518 --> 00:22:16.289
By this I mean something about
the poem that hangs on and

281
00:22:16.289 --> 00:22:21.009
doesn't let you go so that you keep
coming back to it in your mind.

282
00:22:21.009 --> 00:22:26.029
Other people might call this profundity
but I use stickiness to emphasize the feel

283
00:22:26.029 --> 00:22:31.488
of it how it sticks to your mind even your
body is not an intellectual thing but

284
00:22:31.488 --> 00:22:35.639
a whole body thing as the poem
inscribed to self in your mind and

285
00:22:35.639 --> 00:22:39.389
body maybe even burrows into your life.

286
00:22:39.389 --> 00:22:41.128
In his poem "Japan",

287
00:22:41.128 --> 00:22:46.414
Billy Collins former poet laureate of
the United States, riffs on a haiku by

288
00:22:46.414 --> 00:22:51.749
Buson in a way that evokes this strange
combination of lightness and stickiness.

289
00:22:51.749 --> 00:22:58.599
Here is the haiku by Buson: "Perched on
a temple bell, asleep-- a butterfly".

290
00:22:58.599 --> 00:23:03.879
And here is the translation, that there
is convincing evidence Collins used,

291
00:23:03.879 --> 00:23:08.340
on the one, or the convincing evidence
that Collins knew the poem: "On

292
00:23:08.340 --> 00:23:13.569
the one-ton temple bell a moon-moth,
folded into sleep, sits still.".

293
00:23:13.569 --> 00:23:16.679
This of course is by ex
Jake Kennedy not by me.

294
00:23:16.679 --> 00:23:21.629
In either translation as in the original,
we have a tiny insect on a large bell.

295
00:23:21.629 --> 00:23:25.549
This is a light subject--there's something
sweet in charming about this innocent

296
00:23:25.549 --> 00:23:30.819
creature resting on the huge bell which
could begin to ring at any minute and

297
00:23:30.819 --> 00:23:33.269
the same time there is
a sense of suspense.

298
00:23:33.269 --> 00:23:36.904
When will the bell ring and
upset the delicate balance of this moment?

299
00:23:36.904 --> 00:23:40.099
Will the butterfly leave before then or
not?

300
00:23:40.099 --> 00:23:42.969
So what seems a casual
observation actually

301
00:23:42.969 --> 00:23:46.969
catches a fragile moment of
stillness between two actions.

302
00:23:46.969 --> 00:23:52.079
Collins describes himself walking through
the House saying the haiku's quote a few

303
00:23:52.079 --> 00:23:57.047
words over and over like eating the same
small perfect grape again and again.

304
00:23:57.047 --> 00:24:02.298
But the haiku's images keep expanding
in his mind as he recites it

305
00:24:02.298 --> 00:24:06.948
by the time you get to the last stanzas of
his longish poem there is nothing small or

306
00:24:06.948 --> 00:24:09.369
perfect about the original haiku.

307
00:24:09.369 --> 00:24:13.429
The bell is the world, the moth is
life--that moment of balance between two

308
00:24:13.429 --> 00:24:16.859
actions has been magnified
a million times.

309
00:24:16.859 --> 00:24:22.128
These are the last stanzas of his poem:
"when I say it at the window the bell

310
00:24:22.128 --> 00:24:27.189
is the world and I am the mall resting
there." "When I say it into the mirror,

311
00:24:27.189 --> 00:24:32.679
I am the heavy bell and the moth is
life with its papery wings." "And later

312
00:24:32.679 --> 00:24:38.929
when I say to you in the dark, you are
the bell ,and I am the tongue of the bell

313
00:24:38.929 --> 00:24:44.228
ringing you." "And the moth has flown,

314
00:24:44.228 --> 00:24:48.939
from its line, and moves like
a hinge in the air above our bed".

315
00:24:50.429 --> 00:24:54.999
I think Collins explains stickiness
about as well as anyone could.

316
00:24:54.999 --> 00:25:00.558
Now we come to generosity and why I
want to call the haiku a generous form.

317
00:25:00.558 --> 00:25:03.949
Let me explain, the multiple readings that

318
00:25:03.949 --> 00:25:09.299
Collins describes of Buson's poem
are not confusing, they are enriching.

319
00:25:09.299 --> 00:25:13.628
Like a plume of Suzuki grass swaying
in the wind he does not waver but

320
00:25:13.628 --> 00:25:18.719
simply moves to and
fro choosing now one now another.

321
00:25:18.719 --> 00:25:20.879
Haiku allows this freedom,

322
00:25:20.879 --> 00:25:25.089
in fact encourages it,
largely because of its minimalism.

323
00:25:26.149 --> 00:25:30.524
I stress the minimalism part here
because I don't want to be too wonky but

324
00:25:30.524 --> 00:25:34.619
haiku's close relationship to classical
literature is another reason for

325
00:25:34.619 --> 00:25:36.451
its poly polyvocalism.

326
00:25:36.451 --> 00:25:41.059
Haiku's suggestiveness and
elusiveness, it's permissiveness

327
00:25:41.059 --> 00:25:46.269
if we may call it that, have an effect
on readers and writers of haiku.

328
00:25:46.269 --> 00:25:51.019
The plenitude of possible interpretations
none of which cancel each other out makes

329
00:25:51.019 --> 00:25:57.548
one feel for a time anyway that, dare I
say it, the universe itself is generous.

330
00:25:58.617 --> 00:26:03.028
Even if Shiki did not practice
the kind of close readings that we do

331
00:26:03.028 --> 00:26:05.528
I think he felt this quality in haiku.

332
00:26:07.259 --> 00:26:11.859
In line with my emphasis on multi
interpretations I want to leave you with

333
00:26:11.859 --> 00:26:16.399
one more reading of the octopus poem,
the first poem I talked about.

334
00:26:16.399 --> 00:26:17.238
Here it is again.

335
00:26:17.238 --> 00:26:22.999
"Octopus pots--brief dreams
beneath the summer moon.".

336
00:26:24.249 --> 00:26:28.254
When I was a child living on the shores
of a small harbor in Connecticut,

337
00:26:28.254 --> 00:26:32.669
lobstermen used to set their traps
in the waters off our house and

338
00:26:32.669 --> 00:26:37.609
in return for letting us for letting them
use our driveway to park their truck

339
00:26:37.609 --> 00:26:41.628
they would give us the lobsters that were
missing claws, which they could not sell.

340
00:26:42.728 --> 00:26:46.959
Many years later when I first read
Basho's poem about the octopus's,

341
00:26:46.959 --> 00:26:51.919
I imagine the octopus pot, which I
had never seen as a lobster pot, and

342
00:26:51.919 --> 00:26:56.548
every time I read the poem I thought
of a place where I had grown up.

343
00:26:56.548 --> 00:27:01.269
The poem's lightness is in the unsteady
comparison of human beings to the octopus,

344
00:27:01.269 --> 00:27:03.238
which is slightly ridiculous.

345
00:27:03.238 --> 00:27:05.429
But its stickiness is there too,

346
00:27:05.429 --> 00:27:09.729
that comparison that you can't get out
of your mind and it never goes away.

347
00:27:09.729 --> 00:27:12.319
Somehow your mind going back and
forth to and

348
00:27:12.319 --> 00:27:16.019
fro between the octopus
drifting in its underwater pot,

349
00:27:16.019 --> 00:27:20.569
the moon that shines down for the bright
brief night on the dreams within the pot

350
00:27:20.569 --> 00:27:24.129
and shines down too on our own lives,
which are also dreams.

351
00:27:25.618 --> 00:27:28.579
How are we any different from the octopus?

352
00:27:28.579 --> 00:27:33.704
We aren't in but in Basho's poem
we meet the octopus and it is us.

353
00:27:33.704 --> 00:27:39.318
Basho's haiku on the octopus can
survive my double exposure reading,

354
00:27:39.318 --> 00:27:44.829
in fact thrives on it, becomes for me at
least a bigger poem a more memorable one.

355
00:27:44.829 --> 00:27:50.589
Just because the octopus in my imagination
mingle with the actual lobsters I saw and

356
00:27:50.589 --> 00:27:55.089
sometimes ate as a child my
early reading or misreading,

357
00:27:55.089 --> 00:27:59.818
if that's what it was, is folded
into my later reading of the poem.

358
00:27:59.818 --> 00:28:04.367
Effortlessly the poem expands to
include: me and my childhood home,

359
00:28:04.367 --> 00:28:08.558
to include Basho,

360
00:28:08.558 --> 00:28:12.738
to include that octopus in the inland
sea hundreds of years ago,

361
00:28:12.738 --> 00:28:16.579
not to mention the moon,
enlightenment, eternity.

362
00:28:16.579 --> 00:28:20.819
That too, all these things together,
is what I mean and

363
00:28:20.819 --> 00:28:25.088
all these things able to exist together
is what I mean by the generosity.

364
00:28:26.389 --> 00:28:30.229
Having come this far in my thoughts
I suddenly remembered a line

365
00:28:30.229 --> 00:28:34.729
from Walt Whitman in his magisterial poem,
"Song with Myself",

366
00:28:34.729 --> 00:28:39.634
which seemed to express what the goddess
of haiku could say if she could

367
00:28:39.634 --> 00:28:44.429
speak: "Do I contradict
myself--very well then I

368
00:28:44.429 --> 00:28:49.749
contradict myself, I am large,
I contain multitudes.".

369
00:28:51.369 --> 00:28:54.338
I began with three very different subjects

370
00:28:54.338 --> 00:28:58.791
all of whom fit surprisingly
enough into the same haiku world.

371
00:28:58.791 --> 00:29:03.059
I end here with two unlikely creatures,

372
00:29:03.059 --> 00:29:08.518
Walt Whitman and the Goddess of haiku,
walking side by side.

373
00:29:08.518 --> 00:29:13.508
Who would have thought the good old Walt
with his long lines in Promethean poems

374
00:29:13.508 --> 00:29:19.809
could have anything in common with
the minimalist haiku but he does he does.

375
00:29:20.948 --> 00:29:26.089
And if we listen well to both Walt and
the Goddess I think we may even hear,

376
00:29:26.089 --> 00:29:30.059
to quote J.C.
Varia the power of our diversity.

377
00:29:31.829 --> 00:29:34.179
Thank you everyone for listening and

378
00:29:34.179 --> 00:29:38.369
I hope that these rather scattered
remarks will become fodder for

379
00:29:38.369 --> 00:29:41.869
some of the discussions that will
go on later in the symposium.