Japanese tercets analysis. Lyrics of medieval Japan. Lion and snail
(haiku – translation from Japanese)
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On a bare branch
The crow croaked and sat down -
At sunset the crown.
(Basho)
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In the plot of this haiku, Basho was able to bring together at one point the feelings of the sensations of three natural times:
The first - the first line, pointing to the bare branches of the tree, tells that the leaves have long fallen and it is deep autumn - the change of seasonal time of the solar astronomical year (one revolution of the Earth around the Sun). The specific time of transition from the warm season to the cold winter period is indicated.
The second - third line speaks of a change in daily time, that the day has already passed and night is about to come (sunset is the border between day and night).
Third - the second line defines the just seen short-term segment of the present current time - the flight of the crow and its end when it sat on the tree (the transition from dynamics to statics).
Conclusion: this branch turned out to be the point of confluence of the currents of the three indicated natural times.
But, in my opinion, we can say that the great Basho brought together at one point not even three, but four senses of time. The fourth is the feeling of a moment, that is, those one or two seconds of a crow’s cry with which it notifies the surrounding world about something (maybe about that internal biological time when the time of wakefulness has ended and the time of spending the night has come, i.e. change of the internal cycle of the bird’s biorhythm from activity to rest).
At the same time, the third line simultaneously expresses an elegant transition from the description of natural phenomena to the human aesthetic sense of admiration for the beauty of the transparent crown of a tree against the backdrop of a sunset.
The inner world of images and feelings of haiku of Japanese classics is large and multifaceted, although for this purpose the canonical haiku provides only seventeen syllables!
P.S.
Perhaps there will be a genius who will be able to bring together the five existing times at one point - add a sense of the eternity of time to the haiku, i.e. feeling of galactic time.
Reviews
Did the crow actually sit on bare branches in the original? How could she sit on several branches at once, or at least on two?
And the second question: past tense? Or is she still sitting?
It turns out, in the present tense: the crow sat down, cawed... I think that this is too much for a haiku.
And third: in the singular, you can get by with 5 syllables in the first line.
Liked:
We came to an interesting conclusion. There is something to think about.
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on a bare branch...
Tatiana, I liked you!!! (with your logic).
You are a crazier mathematician than me! It feels like accuracy is your strong point! (Unless you decide to be ironic...)
I admit that I have poor command of the poetic apparatus of allegory, because... mathematics education interferes. But you are probably superior to me in this! Are you by any chance a Kfmn or, oh God, a dfmn?!
But on the second question, I simply admire you as a woman! (Women are always confused about tenses, which is what attracts us with their unimaginable logic!)
Vladimir, I’m not a carrot to please. I quite seriously asked questions to you, as a translator, because... I hold haiku competitions on the competition page.
I see more theory than practice of haiku, so I’m figuring it out.
And meticulousness is a character trait, yes, the main thing is not to be meticulous. But sometimes some people don't like it. What to do...
With respect to you.
I came to your competition a couple of times. I didn’t like these entertainments - they write according to the “neither in the warehouse nor in the way, kiss the cat in the ass” method. Elementary simple sentences, only written in three lines. It’s like taking a potato sack, cutting a hole in the middle for the head, cutting off the corners for the arms, putting it on and saying it’s from Cardane.
To taste and color...Stay to your own. And we see a big difference between those who constantly participate and those who drop in occasionally, one-time. But, the owner is a gentleman!
Senryu is easier to write than high-quality landscape lyrics with the ensuing aftertaste. You know how, for example, many admire street artists, their bright works that catch the eye, and rarely will anyone notice a lonely figure standing on the sidelines with “modest” works that are actually worth a lot. Not everyone can recognize it. It takes years to cultivate taste.
But banter is banter. Many people like him. They laughed and dispersed. And this is understandable. The fact is that I personally am against any tasteless “laughing”, but I respect a high-quality parody. But only a few can, only a few... As well as write prose... There’s not much to like on Prose.ru... Oh, so little.
And modern young Japanese poets also suffer from simplified methods of writing haiku. Those. one canon is observed (the rest are ignored due to the difficulty of combining them) and is passed off as pseudo-haiku. Few people now want to think about 17 syllables for several days.
Two weeks, let alone a year, is too wasteful! In just nine months, from two drops a woman bears and gives birth to such perfection as a human being! And here there are only 17 syllables. Of course, you can endlessly improve the work, but then it will never be published... You need to stop at some option.
Matsuo Basho is the third name of the poet, by which he is known to Japan and the world. His real name is Jinsichiro Ginzaemon.
Biography of Matsuo Basho
The future poet was born into the family of a poor but educated samurai. Matsuo Basho's father and older brother were calligraphy teachers. But he chose a different fate for himself. His thirst for learning arose early and remained with him forever. While still a young man, Basho began to diligently study Chinese literature. Among his idols was the great Chinese poet Li Bo. Based on his name, which means "White Plum", Basho was called Tosei "Green Peach". This was Basho's middle name. He took the first one - Munefusa - as soon as he started writing poetry.
Diligently studying Chinese and Japanese poetry, Matsuo Basho gradually came to understand that poets have a special place among people. In addition to literature, he studied philosophy and medicine. True, after some time he realized that books could not study either man or nature, and at the age of 28 he left his native place. Matsuo Basho was prompted to take this step by the untimely death of his master, the prince’s son. They were brought together by their love of poetry. Basho became a monk (which freed the samurai from serving the feudal lord) and went to the largest Japanese city - Edo (modern Tokyo). His family tried to persuade him to abandon his “reckless act,” but he was adamant.
In Edo, the aspiring poet began to attend a poetry school. And soon he himself became a poetry teacher for young people, most of whom were as poor as himself. Poverty did not bother Basho. He felt like a follower of Buddhist monks, for whom spiritual improvement was above all material benefits. He lived in a house donated by the father of one of his students on the outskirts of Edo. Wanting to decorate his habitat, he planted a banana tree (basho in Japanese).
Probably, the noise of wide banana leaves inspired the poet’s last pseudonym - Basho. With this name he entered the history of Japanese and world poetry. Basho did not manage to live long in his hut decorated with a banana tree. She burned down. From that time (1682) until the end of his days he was a wanderer, like many poets before him. Traveling poets are a Japanese tradition. They walked around their country, looking for the most beautiful places, then described them in poetry and gave them to people. During his ten years of wandering, Matsuo Basho also traveled many roads and saw a lot of people. He left his impressions in travel diaries and in poetry. There are five “journey diaries” in total. In the memory of the Japanese, Matsuo Basho, whose biography we reviewed, remained a poet in a monastic robe and with a traveling staff.
Key dates in the life of Matsuo Basho:
1644 - born in the castle city of Ueno, Iga Province;
1672 - left his hometown and went to Edo (Tokyo) with a volume of his poems;
1684 - left Edo and went to travel around Japan;
1694 - died in Osaka.
Poems by Matsuo Basho
He wrote poems that were unusual for our perception in just three lines. The Japanese call them haiku. It is no coincidence that this poetic form arose in Japan. Its appearance is due to the entire structure of Japanese life, which takes place in a closed geographical space - on the islands. This circumstance, apparently, shaped the Japanese tendency towards asceticism and minimalism in everyday life: a light empty house, a rock garden, bansai (small trees). This also influenced laconicism in art.
Literature, especially poetry, also expressed the Japanese inner desire for small things. An example of this haiku is three lines, the length of which is strictly defined. The first has 5 syllables, the second has 7, the third has 5. In fact, haiku was formed as a result of cutting off the last two lines from the tank (5-7-5-7-7). In Japanese, haiku means opening verses. There is no rhyme in haiku, which we are accustomed to when reading Russian poets. In fact, the Japanese never had rhymes - that’s just their language.
Almost every haiku must have “seasonal words” that indicate the time of year. Winter plum, snow, ice, black color - these are images of winter; singing frogs, sakura flowers - spring; nightingale, cuckoo, “bamboo planting day” of summer; chrysanthemums, yellow leaves, rain, moon - autumn.
What sadness!
Suspended in a small cage
Captive cricket.
Sadness - because winter is coming. The cricket in the cage is her sign. In China and Japan, chirping insects (cicadas, crickets) were kept in small cages in the house in winter, like songbirds. And they were sold in the fall.
Haiku is usually divided into two parts. The first line of the poem is its first part, which indicates the picture, the situation and sets the mood.
The May rain is endless.
The mallows are reaching somewhere,
Looking for the path of the sun.
In this haiku, the first line captures a monotonous slow-motion phenomenon and sets up a wave of despondency and melancholy.
The second part of haiku should be contrasted with the first. In this poem, stillness is compared with movement (“stretching”, “searching”), grayness, despondency - with the “sun”. Thus, the poem contains not only a compositional, but also a semantic antithesis.
Each haiku is a small painting. We not only see it, but also hear it - the sound of the wind, the cry of a pheasant, the singing of a nightingale, the croaking of a frog and the voice of a cuckoo.
The peculiarity of haiku is that it creates pictures with hints, often expressed in one word. Japanese artists do the same.
What can you write about in haiku? About everything: about their native land, about mother, father, friend, about work, art, but the main theme of haiku is nature... The Japanese love nature and it gives them great pleasure to contemplate its beauty. They even have concepts that denote the process of admiring nature. Hanami is admiring the flowers, Tsukimi is admiring the moon, Yukimi is admiring the snow. Collections of haiku were usually divided into four chapters: “Spring”, “Summer”, “Autumn”, “Winter”.
But the poems of Matsuo Basho were not only about flowers, birds, wind and the moon. Together with nature, people always live in them - he plants rice sprouts, admires the beauty of the sacred Mount Fuji, freezes on a winter night, looks at the moon. He is sad and cheerful - he is everywhere, he is the main character.
I dreamed of an old story:
An old woman abandoned in the mountains is crying.
And only a month is her friend.
The poem captures echoes of an ancient legend about how one man, believing his wife’s slander, took his old aunt, who replaced his mother, to a deserted mountain and left her there. Seeing the clear face of the moon rise above the mountain, he repented and hastened to bring the old woman back home.
Matsuo Basho often speaks allegorically about a person and his life. Here's how in this, one of the most famous, haiku of this author:
Old pond.
A frog jumped into the water.
A splash in silence.
Haiku are seemingly very simple, uncomplicated, it seems that it is not at all difficult to write them. But it seems so only at first glance. In fact, behind them lies not only the hard work of the poet, but also knowledge of the history and philosophy of his people. Here, for example, is one of Basho’s recognized masterpieces:
On a bare branch
Raven sits alone.
Autumn evening.
It seems like nothing special, but it is known that Matsuo Basho reworked this poem many times - until he found the only necessary words and put them in their place. With the help of several precise details (“hints”), the poet created a picture of late autumn. Why did Basho choose the raven out of all the birds? Of course, it's no coincidence. This is the all-knowing raven. It symbolizes Buddhist detachment from the bustle world, that is, with its deep meaning, haiku is addressed to a person - his loneliness. Behind the images of nature, Matsuo Basho always hides moods and deep thoughts. He was the first in Japan to imbue haiku with philosophical thoughts.
Haiku is that part of the culture that was part of the life of every Japanese.
Main features of haiku:
- a certain number of syllables in three lines (5-7-5);
- contrasting one part of the poem with another;
- lack of rhyme;
- the presence of “hints”;
- the use of “seasonal words”;
- conciseness;
- picturesqueness;
- affirmation of two principles: nature and man;
- designed for the co-creation of the reader.
Matsuo Basho. Engraving by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi from the series “101 Views of the Moon.” 1891 The Library of Congress
Genre haiku originated from another classical genre - pentaverse tank in 31 syllables, known since the 8th century. There was a caesura in the tanka, at this point it “broke” into two parts, resulting in a tercet of 17 syllables and a couplet of 14 syllables - a kind of dialogue, which was often composed by two authors. This original tercet was called haiku, which literally means "initial stanzas". Then, when the tercet received its own meaning and became a genre with its own complex laws, it began to be called haiku.
The Japanese genius finds himself in brevity. Haiku tercet is the most laconic genre of Japanese poetry: only 17 syllables of 5-7-5 mor. Mora- a unit of measurement for the number (longitude) of a foot. Mora is the time required to pronounce a short syllable. in line. There are only three or four significant words in a 17-syllable poem. In Japanese, a haiku is written in one line from top to bottom. In European languages, haiku is written in three lines. Japanese poetry does not know rhymes; by the 9th century, the phonetics of the Japanese language had developed, including only 5 vowels (a, i, u, e, o) and 10 consonants (except for voiced ones). With such phonetic poverty, no interesting rhyme is possible. Formally, the poem is based on the count of syllables.
Until the 17th century, haiku writing was viewed as a game. Hai-ku became a serious genre with the appearance of the poet Matsuo Basho on the literary scene. In 1681, he wrote the famous poem about the crow and completely changed the world of haiku:
On a dead branch
The raven turns black.
Autumn evening. Translation by Konstantin Balmont.
Let us note that the Russian symbolist of the older generation, Konstantin Balmont, in this translation replaced the “dry” branch with a “dead” one, excessively, according to the laws of Japanese versification, dramatizing this poem. The translation turns out to violate the rule of avoiding evaluative words and definitions in general, except for the most ordinary ones. "Words of Haiku" ( haigo) should be distinguished by deliberate, precisely calibrated simplicity, difficult to achieve, but clearly felt insipidity. Nevertheless, this translation correctly conveys the atmosphere created by Basho in this haiku, which has become a classic, the melancholy of loneliness, the universal sadness.
There is another translation of this poem:
Here the translator added the word “lonely,” which is not in the Japanese text, but its inclusion is nevertheless justified, since “sad loneliness on an autumn evening” is the main theme of this haiku. Both translations are rated very highly by critics.
However, it is obvious that the poem is even simpler than the translators presented. If you give its literal translation and place it in one line, as the Japanese write haiku, you will get the following extremely short statement:
枯れ枝にからすのとまりけるや秋の暮れ
On a dry branch / a raven sits / autumn twilight
As we can see, the word “black” is missing in the original, it is only implied. The image of a “chilled raven on a bare tree” is Chinese in origin. "Autumn Twilight" ( aki no kure) can be interpreted both as “late autumn” and as “autumn evening”. Monochrome is a quality highly valued in the art of haiku; depicts the time of day and year, erasing all colors.
Haiku is least of all a description. It is necessary not to describe, the classics said, but to name things (literally “to give names to things” - to the hole) in extremely simple words and as if you were calling them for the first time.
Raven on a winter branch. Engraving by Watanabe Seitei. Around 1900 ukiyo-e.org Haiku are not miniatures, as they were long called in Europe. The greatest haiku poet of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who died early from tuberculosis, Masaoka Shiki, wrote that haiku contains the whole world: the raging ocean, earthquakes, typhoons, the sky and stars - the whole earth with the highest peaks and the deepest sea depressions. The space of haiku is immense, infinite. In addition, haiku tends to be combined into cycles, into poetic diaries - and often life-long, so that the brevity of haiku can turn into its opposite: into long works - collections of poems (though of a discrete, intermittent nature ).
But the passage of time, past and future X does not depict aiku, haiku is a brief moment of the present - and nothing more. Here is an example of a haiku by Issa, perhaps the most beloved poet in Japan:
How the cherry blossomed!
She drove off her horse
And a proud prince.
Transience is an immanent property of life in the Japanese understanding; without it, life has no value or meaning. Fleetingness is both beautiful and sad because its nature is fickle and changeable.
An important place in haiku poetry is the connection with the four seasons - autumn, winter, spring and summer. The sages said: “He who has seen the seasons has seen everything.” That is, I saw birth, growing up, love, rebirth and death. Therefore, in classical haiku, a necessary element is the “seasonal word” ( kigo), which connects the poem with the season. Sometimes these words are difficult for foreigners to recognize, but the Japanese know them all. Detailed kigo databases, some of thousands of words, are now being searched on Japanese networks.
In the above haiku about the crow, the seasonal word is very simple - "autumn." The coloring of this poem is very dark, emphasized by the atmosphere of an autumn evening, literally “autumn twilight,” that is, black against the background of deepening twilight.
Look how gracefully Basho introduces the essential sign of the season into a poem about separation:
For a spike of barley
I grabbed, looking for support...
How difficult is the moment of separation!
“A spike of barley” directly indicates the end of summer.
Or in the tragic poem of the poetess Chiyo-ni on the death of her little son:
O my dragonfly catcher!
Where in an unknown country
Did you run in today?
"Dragonfly" is a seasonal word for summer.
Another “summer” poem by Basho:
Summer herbs!
Here they are, the fallen warriors
Dreams of glory...
Basho is called the poet of wanderings: he wandered a lot around Japan in search of true haiku, and, when setting off, he did not care about food, lodging, tramps, or the vicissitudes of the path in the remote mountains. On the way, he was accompanied by the fear of death. A sign of this fear was the image of “Bones Whitening in the Field” - this was the name of the first book of his poetic diary, written in the genre haibun(“prose in haiku style”):
Maybe my bones
The wind will whiten... It's in the heart
It breathed cold on me.
After Basho, the theme of “death on the way” became canonical. Here is his last poem, “The Dying Song”:
I got sick on the way,
And everything runs and circles my dream
Through scorched fields.
Imitating Basho, haiku poets always composed “last stanzas” before they died.
"True" ( Makoto-no) the poems of Basho, Buson, Issa are close to our contemporaries. The historical distance is, as it were, removed in them due to the immutability of the haiku language, its formulaic nature, which has been preserved throughout the history of the genre from the 15th century to the present day.
The main thing in the worldview of a haikaist is an acute personal interest in the form of things, their essence, and connections. Let us remember the words of Basho: “Learn from the pine tree what pine is, learn from bamboo what bamboo is.” Japanese poets cultivated meditative contemplation of nature, peering into the objects surrounding a person in the world, into the endless cycle of things in nature, into its bodily, sensual features. The poet's goal is to observe nature and intuitively discern its connections with the human world; haikaists rejected ugliness, pointlessness, utilitarianism, and abstraction.
Basho created not only haiku poetry and haibun prose, but also the image of a poet-wanderer - a noble man, outwardly ascetic, in a poor dress, far from everything worldly, but also aware of the sad involvement in everything happening in the world, preaching conscious “simplification”. The haiku poet is characterized by an obsession with wandering, the Zen Buddhist ability to embody the great in the small, awareness of the frailty of the world, the fragility and changeability of life, the loneliness of man in the universe, the tart bitterness of existence, a sense of the inseparability of nature and man, hypersensitivity to all natural phenomena and the change of seasons .
The ideal of such a person is poverty, simplicity, sincerity, a state of spiritual concentration necessary to comprehend things, but also lightness, transparency of verse, the ability to depict the eternal in the current.
At the end of these notes, we present two poems by Issa, a poet who treated with tenderness everything small, fragile, and defenseless:
Quietly, quietly crawl,
Snail, on the slope of Fuji,
Up to the very heights!Hiding under the bridge,
Sleeping on a snowy winter night
Homeless child.
Phil ol OGPCHESKPE INUKI
POETIC FEATURES AND ARTISTIC
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF V. BRYUSOV’S LITERARY TRANSLATION OF THE HAIKU ABOUT THE FROG MATSUO BASE (“Oh, DREAM POND!”)
L. P. Davydova
POETIC PECULIARITIES AND ARTISTIC SIGNIFICANCE OF V. BRIUSOV"S LITERARY TRANSLATION OF MATSUO BASHO"S HAIKU ABOUT A FROG ("OH, DROWSY POND!")
The peculiarities of translator's adaptation of Matsuo Basho s haiku about a frog ("The Old Pond") made by Valeriy Briusov in the poetic collection "Sons of the Humanity" are analyzed in the article. The analysis of Briusovs translation is made in the context of the specific features peculiar to the Japanese aesthetics in general and to verse forms in particular.
Key words: Briusov, literary translation, haiku, tanka, Matsuo Basho, metrics, accentual-syllabic versification.
The article analyzes the features of the translation adaptation of the haiku about a frog (“Old Pond”) by Matsuo Basho, undertaken by Valery Bryusov in the poetry collection “Dreams! humanity." The analysis of Bryusov's translation is carried out in the context of specific features characteristic of Japanese aesthetics in general and poetic forms in particular.
Key words: Bryusov, literary translation, haiku, tanka, Basho, metrics, syllabic-tonic versification.
Interest in the culture and literature of the Far East becomes one of the factors determining the characteristics of Europe's own aesthetic development at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. V. Van Gogh and Henri Matisse turned to Japanese graphic miniatures; oriental motifs were transmitted and developed by the composer G. Mahler. At the beginning of the twentieth century, interest in the art of the Far East appeared in Russian culture. In 1904, V. M. Mendrin (1866-1920), a lover and promoter of Far Eastern culture, rector of the Vladivostok Higher Polytechnic School, created largely on his initiative, translated the work of the famous orientalist V. G. Aston in 1904 “History of Japanese Literature” (Vladivostok, 1904), in which for the first time he provides his own translations of one hundred Japanese three-line miniatures - haiku (hoku). Mendrin carried out his translations not from Japanese, but from English translations. It was in translation from English that the famous haiku about the frog by Matsuo Basho was first heard in Russian. In V. Mendrin’s interpretation, this tercet sounded like this: Oh! old pond! Frogs jump into it, Water splashes...
(Russian translation 1899, translated from the work of V. G. Aston, 1904).
V. Bryusov in the poetic cycle “Dreams of Humanity” (1913) in the section “Japan. Japanese tanks and hi-kai" offers its version of Basho's haiku about a frog, based on
specifically for the translation by V. M. Mendrin. Bryusov defined the concept of the collection as follows: to present “lyrical reflections of the life of all peoples and all times” (2;459). As Bryusov indicated in the “Preface,” he initially planned to “perform this task in a number of sample translations” (2;461), but as he worked on the collection he came to the conclusion that imitations are preferable to translations because they concentrate “ all the main features of the poetry of a given time and a given country in one work” (2;461). An explanation of the reasons for choosing not only translations, but also imitations, “when it was possible to combine two or three works into one in which the characteristic features would appear clearly” (2;460), as well as independent works “written on the basis of a careful study of the era, with an attempt to convey the manner of the era and the poet” (2;460), conveying the general concept of culture, generally expressing its spirit, Bryusov allocated a special place in the preface to the collection, which in the drafts bears exactly the same name “The author’s explanation of “Dreams of Humanity”.” Bryusov pointed out that he speaks several European ancient and modern languages, his familiarity with the grammars of the languages of the ancient and modern languages of the East, but especially emphasized the fact that “his direct task ... was not so much to introduce scientifically with examples to the poetry of the past how much to feel it in artistic creations. For such a purpose of imitation, original works written in the spirit of a certain era seem to me to be more adequate to the purpose than poetic translations. Without refusing translations in those cases where I managed to find works in which the characteristics of their time were fully expressed, and when I managed to translate these works more or less modernly, I, however, considered the main thing in the light of this goal to be “imitation”" ( italics by V. Ya. Bryusov) (2;461-462).
However, in the case of the haiku about the frog, Bryusov proposed a translation, and, moreover,
not only offering an “arrangement” of V. M. Mendrin’s translation. In auto-comments to “Dreams of Humanity,” Bryusov emphasized that he is fluent in Latin and French, reads ancient Greek, German, English, Italian without a dictionary, and also “looked into the grammars of languages: ancient Hebrew, ancient Egyptian, ancient Arabic, Persian, Japanese, although not had the leisure to study them, but could still form some idea about them” (emphasis added - L.D.) (2:460-461). In addition, in the same auto-commentary, Bryusov expressed gratitude to S. A. Polyakov, who provided the poet with “precious information about Persian and Japanese versification” (461). It is difficult to say exactly what exactly the “precious information” given to the poet on Japanese versification contained, but based on Bryusov’s own comments to the Japanese section of “Dreams of Humanity,” they most likely related to the formal characteristics of Japanese five-line and three-line lines. V. Ya. Bryusov pointed out in the “Notes” to “Experiments on Stanza”: “Tanka, the favorite form of the Old Japanese poets, a poem of 31 syllables arranged in 5 verses, according to the nature of the Japanese language - without rhymes. Hai-kai is like a shortened tanka, its first three verses. Japanese poets knew how to put complex and diverse feelings into the 31 syllables of tanki. For a European, tanka seems like an introductory verse to an unwritten poem” (2;470-471). Yu. B. Orlitsky also emphasizes that “for the two main (or rather, the most widespread in Japan, but the only known in Europe) small forms of Japanese classical poetry - the three-line haiku (or haiku) and the five-line tanka - the constructive factor of the verse The number of syllables in each line and in the poem as a whole stands out. In a certain sense, this is an analogue of syllabic versification (that is, based only on the equality of the number of syllables in lines), which, as is known, has not been established in the Russian tradition. . Feeling this, professional poets, turning to their exo-
tic and expressiveness of Japanese miniature poetry - V. Bryusov, A. Bely and K. Balmont - at first introduced elements of syllabonics into their translations imitating Japanese lyrics, i.e. they tried to organize poems according to the principle most familiar to contemporary readers "(6). However, it is obvious that Bryusov is not limited only to the metrical, formal sign when determining the features of tanka and haiku, pointing out that tanka is perceived by Europeans as a prologue “to an unwritten poem.” In fact, tanka is genetically more likely to be an epilogue than a prologue - in the collection of old Japanese lyrics "Man'eshu" the tanka acted as a generalization, a poetic conclusion to a larger poem. But Bryusov absolutely accurately points out its generalizing nature, the presence of an artistic poetic conclusion, an emotional and philosophical conclusion, concentrated in the tank. Especially in Japanese, in accordance with the aesthetics of incomplete appearance, incomplete expression of the image, an indication of an experience that needs to be joined in order to be fully felt through the landscape sketch that the poet offers, sounds Bryusov’s remark about an unwritten poem, perhaps preceded by a tanka. The principle of indicating completeness, presence in its absence is constructive for Japanese aesthetics and the philosophy of Zen Buddhism and the national Japanese religion - Shinto - in general, it is embedded in such a specifically Japanese phenomenon as a rock garden, based on the invisible, but material presence of completeness, with its constant perception as incompleteness.
In the general and detailed plans for the publication of “Dreams of Humanity,” Bryusov invariably assigned a place to Japanese poetry under different definitions:
"Part II. Middle Ages. 1. Middle Kingdom (China). Sayings of Confucius. 2. Land of the Rising Sun (Japan). Tanks." (General publication plan) (462).
"Part two. Middle Ages.
I. The Middle Kingdom. China. 1,2,3. From the book Chi-King. 4.5. In the Tu-fu manner. 6. Chorus from drama. 7.8. From the teachings of Lao-Tse. 9.10. From the teachings of Kon-Fu-Tze (Confucius). 11, 12. Folk songs.
II. Country of fans. Japan. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7. Tankas and uta from the Kokinshu and Manio-shu anthologies. 8. Pantomime. 9, 10. Inscriptions for engravings. 11. From drama. 12, 13. Fuzii-Yama. 14. Poems for a butterfly” (italics by V. Ya. Bryusov) (2; 464).
Bryusov’s plan was not fully realized: the poet completed only a tenth of the poems that he planned to include in the collection. From the “Japan” section, the collection includes seven poems under the general title “Japanese Tanks and Hi-Kai”; the publishers place another five poems in the “Additions” section to the collection entitled “Japanese Tanks and Uta” (388). The first edition of “Dreams of Humanity” (“Sirin”, 1914) contained the first four poems of the section. In the collection “Unpublished” (1935) 6 and 7 (together with 1,2,3) were published in the “Experiments” section. The sixth position was occupied by a haiku about the frog by Matsuo Basho, translated by V. Bryusov.
Judging by the definitions that the section on Japan received in the plans for the publication of “Dreams of Humanity,” Bryusov perceived Japanese poetry as part of Japanese culture as a whole and identified it not only by strophic and metrical principles. The traditional definition of Japan as the “Land of the Rising Sun” is being replaced by a deeper one, going back to the characteristics of the national culture - “the land of fans.” The fan, like the sakura branch, can be considered a symbol of Japan. In Japan, two types of fans are known: uchiwa and sensu, later a light “sun fan” was added to them, used as a sun umbrella. Utiwa is a petal fan (fan), made from a single piece of wood or from a wire frame covered with silk (nowadays there are also uchiwa made of cardboard). The uchiwa fan is considered a purely Japanese invention, unlike the sensu. Seng-su is of Chinese origin. It consists of several plates that can
SHL. P. Davydova
fold and unfold. Sensu in Japan was used mainly in martial arts. With such a fan, when rolled up, it was possible to strike on the head, and when unfolded, on the throat, since the edges of such fans were sharpened as sharply as possible. During the Edo period, when the Japanese lifestyle became more peaceful, uchiva became common among artists, actors, geishas, sumo wrestlers and just middle-class people. At this time, new motifs of images with which fans were painted appeared; previously, two irises were depicted on fans - a symbol of the samurai spirit. Now it was impossible to imagine the Kabuki theater without a fan. In general, the fan symbolized the flow of air energy, which could be attracted into the house by hanging a fan to strengthen the energy field. For this purpose, fans are still used in the art of Feng Shui. Fans are an integral part of the traditional Japanese costume, an accessory to Japanese everyday life and interior design, and a convenient and beautiful accessory.
The Japanese literary tradition is considered very ancient and highly developed. Although the earliest written works date back to the 8th century. n. e., there is reason to believe that the oral tradition dates back to an incomparably earlier period. The emergence of written literature is associated with the borrowing of Chinese hieroglyphic writing, on the basis of which in the 9th century. The Japanese alphabet -kana was developed, which served to convey the phonetic structure of the Japanese language.
The classic genre of Japanese poetry is considered to be poetry in the style of "waka" ("Japanese verse"), also called tanka ("short verse"), because it consisted of five lines with only 31 syllables (5-7-5-7-7 ). The term "waka" originated in the Heian era to refer to "high" poetry in Japanese (previously known as yamato-nota). Waka poetry enjoyed special patronage at the imperial court. Special poetry competitions (uta-awase) were organized at court, and the best poems were collected into imperial collections. First
One of these collections (late 8th century) is “Man’yōshu,” literally “Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves” (i.e., poems), consisting of 20 volumes, combining a total of 4,516 waka poems. The next extensive collection of poetry was Kokinshu, completed by 905. This collection was followed by 20 more imperial anthologies of waka poetry, bringing together the works of the best Japanese poets, including many Japanese emperors, senior government officials and courtiers, Zen monks and samurai warriors . The last anthology was completed in 1439, but the genre of poetry of the century is still developing to this day. Sublime and deeply lyrical poetry has been a way of communication between lovers since Heian times; aristocratic courtiers competed with each other in wit through poetry, because they judged a person’s intelligence and upbringing by the ability to instantly compose accurate and exquisite poetry on any occasion. The lack of poetic talent could have a detrimental effect on the career of a courtier. A favorite poetic game was the composition of so-called renga - “joint poems”; Several people participated in their composition. One asked the first three lines (5-7-5 syllables), the other - the last two (7-7 syllables). Renga has become one of the most popular poetic genres.
During the Edo period, another genre appeared - haiku, or haikai, haikai no renga, 17 syllable verse (5-7-5), which allowed a more conversational style and was therefore considered more “frivolous” compared to the “serious” waka poetry. Nevertheless, during the Edo period, the more “democratic” haiku poems found wide acceptance and became an integral feature of Japanese urban culture in the 17th-19th centuries. The most recognized poets who worked in the haiku genre are Nishiyama Shoin (1605-82), Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693), Uejima Onitsura (1661-1738), as well as Konishi Raizan, Ike-nishi Gonsui, Yamaguchi Sodoo and many others. However, the most famous master of haiku is the great Matsuo Basho (16441694). E. M. Dyakonova points out: “The first
Haiku date back to the 15th century. The original haiku, which at that time were called hai-kai, were always humorous, they were like comic couplets of a semi-folklore type on the topic of the day. Later their character completely changed. The haikai genre (comic poems) was first mentioned in the classical poetic anthology “Collected Old and New Songs of Japan” (Ko-kin Shu, 905) in the section “Haikai uta” (“Comic Songs”), but it was not yet a haiku genre in the full sense of the word, but only the first approximation to it.. Comic haiku became a thing of the past with the appearance on the literary stage of the best poet of the genre, Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), haiku turned into an independent serious genre and took, along with waka, a dominant place in Japanese poetry and in the works of such poets as Yosa Buson (1716-1783), Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827). The term haiku was put forward at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century. the fourth great poet and haiku theorist Masaoka Shiki, who attempted to reform the traditional genre. In the XVII-XVIII centuries. Haiku poetry was influenced by the Zen Buddhist “aesthetics of understatement,” which forces the reader and listener to participate in the act of creation. The effect of understatement was achieved, for example, grammatically (taigendome), so one of the intonation-syntactic means of haiku - the last line ends with an unconjugated part of speech, and the predicative part of the statement is omitted” (4; 191).
Basho's poem "The Old Pond" began a new era in the history of haiku. “In haiku poetry, a major role was played by the aesthetic principles formulated by Basho in the form of conversations with students and recorded by them: sabi (“sadness”) and wabi (“simplicity,” “simplification”), karumi (“lightness”), toriawase (“combination of objects.” ), fuei ryuko (“eternal, unchanging and current, present”),” points out E. M. Dyakonova (4;195). The poem “Old Pond” is one of the most famous haiku in Japan, the emblem of the genre itself.
The transliteration of this poem from Japanese is:
furuike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto.
The literal translation is as follows: furu (old) ike (pond) I (oh!) kawazu (frog) tobikomu (dive) mizu no (water) oto (sound) In Valery Bryusov’s translation, the haiku takes the following form: Oh, drowsy pond, frogs are jumping deeper, a splash of water is heard (2; 335). Here is a translation by Vera Markova, which can be considered a classic for Russian poetry: Old pond, a frog jumped into the water, splashing in silence (7; 37). In the article by V.N. Markova “Basho’s poem “Old Pond”” Masaoki Shiki’s reasoning about this poem is given: “Truly, no other haiku is so widely known. But if you ask what its meaning is, the haijin says: “It’s a secret, you can’t express it in words.” A modern European scientist gives the following interpretation: “The frog jumped into the water, disturbing the calm surface of the old dead pond. There was a sudden splash. There is not a single word in the poem that directly means silence, and yet it makes one feel the silence of a spring day with great force. We understand that there is a desert silence all around, far from the sound of wheels and human talk. This haiku embodied one of the principles of rhetoric, which teaches that to remain silent at the right time means to strengthen the impression of what was said.” I don't know if there is a secret in this poem. I don't believe it's inexplicable. A European-style scientist, perhaps, quite correctly conveys the general meaning of this poem, but still does not fully explain it.” A very characteristic statement, on the one hand, of a connoisseur of haiku and Basho, and, on the other, of a connoisseur of European culture” (3;672-673). The poet creates a very real landscape sketch, but at the same time imbues it with deep philosophical content,
This is how V.N. Markova defines the features of this poem: “. the poet painted a very real picture, skillfully selecting specific details. Basho's poetry is always surprisingly specific, despite the fact that its philosophical implications are very deep. There is no epigonic bookishness or convention in it. Basho looks at the world with a keen eye and sees what others pass by.” E. M. Dyakonova, developing the idea about the essence of haiku and the features of Basho’s lyrics, writes: “The main property of haiku as a poem is that it is dramatically short, shorter than a tanka pentaverse, and such compression of space creates a special type of timeless, poetic -linguistic field. The main theme of haiku is nature, the cycle of the seasons; haiku does not exist outside of this theme. The quintessence of this theme is the so-called kigo - a “seasonal word”, emblematically denoting the time of year, its presence in a seventeen-syllable poem is felt by the bearer of the tradition as strictly obligatory. No seasonal word - no haiku. “A seasonal word” is a nerve knot that awakens in the reader a series of certain images” (4; 197).
Yokoi Kinoku (1761-1832): Portrait of Matsuo Basho with haiku about a frog (c. 1820)
universal, cosmic and nearby, specific interacting according to the principle of “fueki ryuko”. The universal, “cosmic” plan relates haiku to the natural world in the broadest sense” (4;196). R. Barth, analyzing the peculiarities of the perception of haiku by European poets and readers, interprets the features of the two-dimensional nature of the genre differently: “Haiku awakens envy: how many Western readers dreamed of walking through life like this with a notebook in hand, noting here and there certain “impressions”, the brevity of which was would be a guarantee of perfection, and simplicity would be a criterion of depth (and all thanks to a myth consisting of two parts, one of which - the classical one - makes laconicism a dimension of art, the other - the romantic one - sees truthfulness in improvisation). While haiku is absolutely intelligible, it does not communicate anything, and it is precisely because of this double condition that it seems to present itself to the meaning with the helpfulness of a well-bred host who invites you to feel at home with him, accepting you with all your attachments, values and symbols; this “absence” of haiku (in the sense that is meant when they talk about abstract consciousness, and not about the departed owner) is fraught with temptation and fall - in a word, a strong desire for meaning” (1:87-88).
Japanese literary historians, poets and researchers provide interesting facts from the history of the creation of haiku. Thus, A Sikou reported that when Basho hesitated in deciding the first verse, Kikaku (Basho’s student) advised pointing to “yatabiI ya” (yellow flowers (kerria japonica), but Basho did not follow the student’s advice, and finally established the verse “igshke ya" “Kikaku’s thought,” the Japanese researcher develops his thought, ““yatabuI ya” has a wonderful taste of spring, is not bad at all.....But Basho peered more deeply into the “frog itself.” The expression “igshke ya”, putting the appearance of a circle in parentheses, concentrates the focus of the haiku on the sound of the water after the frog jumps. "ToYkochi" centers the haiku not on the figure or movement of the frog's jump, but only on the sound of the water
dy, thus giving a strong impression of the silence of the world. However, the appearance of the circle has not completely disappeared. True, the “description” of the type of circle has been removed, but the “view” remains. From the fact that external description is excluded, on the contrary, slow spreading circles on the water appear, the poet’s wretched “hut”, in addition, even the depth of the heart, which loves sad silence. This principle can be expressed by the definition - “to depict without describing, more vividly than to describe”; it has a connection with the concept of “speech of non-speech” adopted in Zen Buddhism” (5; 121). Without going into an analysis of the significance of Buddhist sentiments and principles in Basho’s work, let us draw attention to the fact that the Japanese researcher’s poetry is more than poetry: it conveys a sense of volume and type of space, it is picturesque, it conveys sounds and silence, that is, it creates a complete a capacious image of the world - an image of a moment captured in the fullness of its components, which can be seen, heard, touched, smelled, tasted, that is, perceived in its entirety as the real state of the world, experienced then by the poet and now by his reader. Undoubtedly, A. Sikou’s interpretation is based on a holistic perception of the poem and the poet’s graphic sketch.
It must be emphasized that the translation of the famous haiku undertaken by Valery Bryusov was one of the first; it actually opened up a world of another poetic culture for Russia. The inclusion of Japanese five-line and three-line miniatures, as representative of Japanese versification and Japanese culture, in the “Dreams of Humanity” cycle, along with other poetic images of the world presented in their historical development, had the goal of recreating the lyrical world of humanity in its cultural integrity and historical completeness. It is obvious that for Bryusov, without the participation of the Japanese poetic tradition, the holistic lyrical picture of the world would not be complete. At the same time, it is especially significant that Bryusov was able to absolutely accurately see and convey the features of Japanese lyrics. Already in the plans offering a detailed content of the collection, Bryusov points out the connection between Japanese lyricism and painting and graphics, intending to create poems that reproduce inscriptions for engravings - a special genre in Japanese lyricism, justified by its desire for integrity in conveying a stopped moment in the life of the world.
Old pond. Drawing of a poet
On the other hand, Bryusov, in his translation of Basho’s haiku, was able to surprisingly accurately convey the principle of the presence of the invisible, but present, the principle of the mystery of the world, which can be pointed out, but cannot be expressed in the usual way: the second line in Bryusov’s translation sounds like “frogs jump into the depths.” An indication of the invisible depth, the unrevealed secret present in the motif of depth, which is also not measured, not realized in its extent, is conveyed through the pronoun “deep” chosen by the poet. In Bryusov’s translation, all ways of perceiving a captured moment interact, alternately activated: the first line awakens our vision - we see a “drowsy pond”, the second details the direction of gaze, leads to awareness of movement in space, to awareness, thus, of the passage of time - “frogs are jumping” deep"; the third includes our hearing - “a splash of water is heard.”. Thus, Bryusov’s translation surprisingly accurately conveys precisely the “Japanese” perception of the poem as a captured moment of the world’s existence, but captured in all its pictorial, musical, tactile and olfactory fullness. The cosmism and philosophy of the Japanese tercet, its semantic depth are conveyed in the translation surprisingly succinctly, while the visible and audible plans of the poem, its concreteness do not lose relevance. It is the symbolist Bryusov, who conveys in a specific image (perhaps material and objective, perhaps natural) the symbolic he surprisingly accurately captured the depth and inexhaustibility of meaning and conveyed these same qualities inherent in another culture, other poetic images.
There is another feature of Bryusov’s translation, noted by Yu. B. Orlitsky: “It is interesting that Bryusov, probably feeling the aesthetic significance for the Japanese of the very appearance of their calligraphically inscribed poems, tries to demonstrate the special activity of this external (in the original - hieroglyphic) form with the help the simplest technique, quite accepted in the European tradition:
odd lines are printed double indented from the left edge, which gives the traditional square of the stanza a faint semblance of a bizarre hieroglyphic outline...” (6).
It is necessary to pay attention to one more curious detail: Bryusov Russifies the Japanese poem, gives it poetry through the epithet in the first line “drowsy”, instead of the “old” indicated in the original, which does not sound poetically figurative for the Russian reader, but conveys a statement of the state of nature. For Japanese poets, the concept of old age is poetic in itself; indicating the old age of an object means a guarantee of its significance and value - the sword of an old master, teaware passed down in a family from generation to generation, a wedding kimono belonging to a distant great-great-grandmother and carefully kept in a chest by the bride, who will definitely wear it to her own wedding - attributes that establish connection and continuity of time. In Japanese applied art, there is a special technique for aging things to impart value and significance to them. Therefore, for the Japanese reader, Basho’s first line “the old pond” is filled with poetry, especially since the pond is a creation of human hands, which only when it ages acquires its true meaning. For the Russian reader, in the first line it was important to convey that silence, which is realized in all its depth and completeness only when it is broken by a splash of water, a fleeting, brief sound. In addition, in a poem devoid of the usual signs of verse for the Russian reader - rhyme, meter, stanza - the very first line should have signaled that the reader was dealing with poetry, not prose. In addition, by choosing the epithet “drowsy,” Bryusov surprisingly succinctly conveys the state of frozen time, a stopped moment. The world seems to be immersed in sleep, motionless, devoid of sounds and movement, so the splash of water only emphasizes how deep the silence of the world is. Moreover, in order to convey the feeling of eternity, a frozen moment, Bryusov resorts to the form of a chapter.
the goals of the present tense “jump”, the movement being performed continues forever and at the moment of the present, captured in the poem and at the moment of eternity, where the poet transfers this continuous movement, endowing sound and silence with the qualities of a constant state of the world, where silence and sound merge, forming one endlessly lasting now, that is, eternity. This feeling is especially strengthened by the indication of the multiplicity of movement - “frogs are jumping into the depths,” which is paradoxically resolved by a single sound - “a splash of water is heard,” although logically the poem should have ended with the line “splashes of water are heard.” With a paradoxical grammatical inconsistency, Bryusov conveys in translation the defining feature not only of haiku, but of poetic thinking and its figurative expression in general: poetry
characterized by a different logic, a different language, figuratively, and not logically, naturally conveying the picture of the world. Actually, Japanese haiku, as well as meditative riddles of koans, are aimed precisely at teaching the reader or listener to think differently, to see the world differently, because only poetry and figurative words are able to penetrate into the cosmic essence of things. The koan leads to this through meditation, philosophical reflection, and haiku by awakening the ability to see the world poetically, this is a state of insight (“Satori” in Buddhist meditation practice), when the hidden secrets of the world are revealed for a moment. Just like in the haiku by Matsuo Basho (translation by Vera Markova): Lightning at night in the darkness.
The surface of the lake suddenly flared up with sparks (7;166).
LITERATURE
1. Bart R. Empire of Signs. - M., 2004. - P. 87109.
2. Bryusov V. Ya. Collection. Op.: in 7 volumes - Vol.2. - M., 1973.
3. Grigorieva T.P. Japanese literature (second half of the 19th century) // History of world literature: in 9 volumes / USSR Academy of Sciences; Institute of World Lit. them. A. M. Gorky. - M.: Nauka, 1983. - T. 7.
4. Dyakonova E. M. Poetry of the Japanese genre of tercets (haiku). Origin and main features // Transactions on cultural anthropology. - M., 2002. - P. 189-201.
5. Konishi Jin'ichi. The world of Haiku - from origins to modern times. - M., 1981.
6. Orlitsky Yu. B. Flowers of someone else’s garden. (Japanese poetic miniature on Russian soil) // Arion. 1998. No. 2. // http: //haiku.ru /frog/orlistky. htm.
7. Japanese tercets. Butterflies flight. - M., 2002.
Davydova Larisa Petrovna, State Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education "Stavropol State University", applicant for the Department of History of Russian and Foreign Literature. Sphere of scientific interests - Russian literature. [email protected]
