Haiku - what is this? Haiku history and structure

The poetry of each people is unique. But the Japanese always stood apart in the world literature. It was in this country that a unique style of writing poems was created. Such short Haiku poems were called, this name remained in the centuries.

In this article, let's talk about this kind of poetic creativity.

Brief moments of joy and love

In itself, Japanese poetry is permeated with ideas of the joy of being, admiring beauty, nature, reflections on the meaning of human life.

This kind of poetic creativity gained fame in the Land of the Rising Sun from the XIV century. However, these poems gained popularity only two centuries later. Their greatest distribution is due to the fact that Japan has discovered itself for foreigners, and told about their unusual poetry. It happened only in the XIX century.

Then the Japanese poet and literary critic Masaoka Siki proposed the term "haiku" in order to distinguish this kind of poetry. The term has got accustomed and has received a wide circulation.

If today we ask ourselves whether haiku is poetry or not, then any literary critic will give us a positive answer to this question. Yes, it is poetry, but original, executed in a unique oriental spirit, permeated by the Japanese mentality and a special world view.

Nevertheless, today this poetic genre has become a visiting card of a mysterious and beautiful country where sakura blossoms.

The structure of the verse

Japanese haiku traditionally should consist of 17 syllables (which is one column of hieroglyphs). Strictly speaking, they are beautiful both externally and internally, representing an example of the harmony of the universe.

The fifth syllable in each poem should be the strongest in the semantic sense.

As soon as they were translated into Western languages, the translators of the stasis encountered a number of difficulties. The main one was that it is very difficult to translate a poem, having met exactly 17 syllables, so translators had to depart from this feature. Also, poems in Japan are written in one column, and when translated into Western European languages, haiku was recorded as a triptych and even as a quatrain.

By the way, rhyme in this verse is also not used. Sometimes translators of these poems resort to rhyme, although this is wrong from the point of view of classical Japanese art.

The central image of haiku

If we note that a haiku about nature - this is a sample of the classic Japanese poem, then we will be right. Indeed, the central image of any poem is nature, which corresponds to the life of a person, his spiritual impulses and mood.

In this case, the poet should always indicate the time of year: that before him - summer or winter. For this, the so-called "seasonal word" is used, allowing the reader to easily understand: this is haiku about spring or autumn.

Haiku even recorded in a special way, they always printed on separate sheets of paper, so that the reader could reflect on their essence without turning over a piece of paper.

The most famous haiku creator

In Japan, there are still many poets who worked in this genre. These are Arakida Moritake, and Yamazaki Sokan. But, perhaps, the most famous poet of this genre was Matsuo Basho.

Here are some examples of the master's work:

Autumn evening.

Bare tree branches.

They are lonely crows.

***

I see the old pond.

The frog jumps.

The water splashed.

This poet, who lived in the XVII century, created especially lyrical poems filled with tenderness, love, quiet sadness and the belief that one can capture on paper the instants of human existence.

This author has many works. They are dedicated to different seasons, different states of the human soul. But in them the essence of Japanese culture, quiet, but strong and original, is transmitted in a concentrated form.

Why haiku became so popular

The popularity of this type of poetry was associated with the fact that other poetic genres in Japan at that time were strictly regulated. Not everyone could afford to write poetry on military topics or political. A haiku was considered a lower genre, which little attention was paid to important people, so in it, in the lyrical key of that time, poets could express their experiences and feelings.

Thus, haiku is a world of human experiences, concentrated in one column or three lines.

The beauty of such poetry is in the laconic and luminous perception of the world, the ability to convey in a few words the entire palette of human feelings. Where Shakespeare would write a whole dramatic work, and Leo Tolstoy would create a multivolume novel, a poet writing a haiku, can say only one sentence, but it will be immortal, as well as Byron's poem or Homer's poem.

Haiku is our today's life!

The art of the Japanese versification described at present is very popular. Today you can read the haiku on any topic, it may even be a haiku about the school. Distribution and received humorous haiku and even haiku-caricatures.

The Japanese themselves are proud of the fact that their poetic genre has become so famous. Therefore, students in the Land of the Rising Sun even receive special homework to write such poems. Themes are chosen any: football, basketball, volleyball. Haiku is a kind of art that can embrace all spheres of life.

However, classical haiku, devoted to the world of nature and the world of human feelings, still remain popular. It is they who delight and inspire our contemporaries in any country of the world.