David,
thanks, I'm actually aware of the distinction between syllables & onji
-- I just don't think I've come across a 21-on haiku before! I've long
been against the intrusive 5-7-5 'syllable-standard' in english, and
see it only as a clumsy mistranslation.
I also recalled what a pistil was a few moments after I posted that
message. silly me. the implications of distant japanese linguistic
possibilities are indeed boggling, even if the hypothesising is
available to me only as abstract imagination (I don't read japanese
either, though I study linguistics).
I considered this a bit further:
>a snatch at memory,
>
>a not now stop
and found it quite apt in fact. a snap might even be defined as a
'snatch at memory'; a stopping to observe something, but something in
the past ('not now') that needs to be looked at, stopped, _again_ to
get it into a poem. a 'retina retainer', visual memory placeholder.
or that's how I see it
KS
On 19/03/2008, David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi Kasper and thanks.
>
> This will get horribly complicated but: my understanding is that Japanese
> writers of 'haiku' ('hokku' to Basho) counted 'onji' which are not identical
> to English syllables, I believe 'mora' is the technical word. So a 'haiku'
> would consist of 17 visual signs, 'onji', in a 5-7-5 pattern which were not
> necessarily identical to 17 syllables in the same pattern. The more
> sophisticated writers, like Basho, would exploit this as a kind of
> counterpoint, recall too that the productions of professionals existed as
> commodities in a visual art objects market. This is all of course a gross
> simplification ( I don't read Japanese) of things that are even more
> entangled, or subtle, profound, or confusing, depending on one's point of
> view.
> What little of the provenance of the original too suggests that it may have
> had homoerotic connotations as it was addressed to a favourite pupil, Tojo,
> even though 'pistil' is the female sex -organ ( definitely no to 'petal'
> by the way!) and, whatever else it is about the imagery is certainly meant
> to suggest the female sex organs after intercourse ( my head starts to
> spin when I even consider what might have been happening, linguistically,
> in 17th century Japanese homosexual argot)
>
> The rest is definitely 'post-' but 'post-photograph' (snap) or 'post-image'
> or 'post-recorded' (I hope delivered) rather than 'post-modern'. I think.
> Unless one thinks of it as being sent by e-mail., in which case the post is
> certainly modern.
>
> Yeah, I'm still thinking about this: it's post-imagist.
>
>
> On 19/03/2008, kasper salonen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > haiku are close to my heart, & I'm very fond of your rewrite David.
> > the unusual length of the original japanese (I wasn't aware that Basho
> > had moved out of structure so) is well translated into english -- the
> > length of the second line manages to bring the moment to the brink of
> > confusion between flower & bee: is it the bee, or the peony that's
> > emerging from 'depths'? the slowness also suggests the near-static
> > pace of a flower's bloom.
> > the word that mars the magic mildly is 'pistil', which strikes me as
> > too much of a botanist's term. I think 'petals' would work equally
> > well, or better; although maybe the technicality of the term is
> > intended to link the bee & the peony biologically, thus reinforcing
> > the significance of the emerging.
> >
> > good job there, in any case.
> >
> > the postmodern rest is lost on me.
> >
> >
> > KS
> >
> >
> > On 19/03/2008, David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > > Absolutely Basho
> > >
> > > how slow it lets
> > > a bee emerge from its pistils' depths ~
> > > the peony
> > >
> > > [being theft being
> > > GOTCHA snap-(ped in the act):
> > > translated summer]
> > >
> > > a retina retainer
> > > perching on the language:
> > > a snatch at memory,
> > >
> > > a not now stop
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > David Bircumshaw
> > > Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> > > http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
> > > The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> > > Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
> > >
> >
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> David Bircumshaw
> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
>
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