Introducing Japanese Haiku

This is a representative work of haiku by the famous Japanese haiku poet Matsuo Basho (1644～1694). Haiku is a short poem in the traditional Japanese poetry form and one of the shortest metrical poems in the world. It expresses the author's momentary feelings in an extremely short form, often using metaphors, symbols and other techniques. The language is implicit, meaningful and concise, making it easy to remember and spread. Haiku, as an independent poetry style, was formed in the fifteenth century. Originally called "haixia", it is a type of humorous poetry that mainly expresses the lives of citizens. The haiku saint Matsuo Basho elevated it from humor to sincerity and led it to the artistic conception of lyric poetry, establishing its position in the history of Japanese literature. Haiku has two basic characteristics. First, each haiku has three lines of seventeen syllables, the first line has five syllables, the second line has seven syllables, and the third line has five syllables, which forms the format of "five, seven, five" instead of Rhyme. Second, every haiku must have and can only have one "season title". The so-called "seasonal topics", also known as "seasonal language", are natural phenomena or human phenomena related to the four seasons. It includes two aspects. One is natural phenomena, which uses the wind, flowers, snow, moon, birds, animals, insects, fish, flowers and plants related to the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter as signs and hints, so that readers can know at a glance that the haiku is chanting about things in that specific season of the four seasons. The second is social phenomena, that is, religion, customs, personnel events (including festivals, death anniversaries, commemorations), etc. are used to imply a specific season among the four seasons of the year.

This haiku is the most famous work of Matsuo Basho, and it is also the abbreviation of "Bashō style" (that is, "Bashō style"). Its characteristics are: simple and rigorous, "humorous to sincerity", with leisurely, quiet and It is a representative work of elegance, lingering emotion, delicate beauty, joy in sorrow, sorrow in joy, a perfect blend of elegance and vulgarity, and implicit and timeless language. Japanese scholar Takahama Kyoko introduced in "Understanding and Appreciation of Haiku": "This poem is a major symbol of the establishment of a new era of Basho Haiku. Different from the previous comical and casual haiku, this poem truthfully depicts the real situation and scene, and has a sense of enlightenment. One day, when Basho was staying alone at the Tichuan Caoan, he heard the sound of water coming from the ancient pond in the courtyard. The sound was caused by the frog jumping into the water. Because the surroundings were extremely quiet, the sound of water was especially clear in this haiku. , Basho realized that the life of haiku lies not in comedy and sporadicness, but in such a quiet place."

The characteristics of this haiku are that it is plain in appearance but profound in content, and its form is short but has an aftertaste. endless. Beside the quiet ancient pond, everything is silent and everything seems to be motionless. Suddenly, there was the sound of a frog jumping into the water. The whole poem ends abruptly, as if everything has been said, but also as if nothing has been said. Although this haiku is finished in form, it is not finished psychologically in the reader. It is always telling something to the reader. This kind of statement, if analyzed carefully, includes the following "aftertaste". First, the auditory aftertaste. A frog jumps into a pond. Is the sound of the frog jumping into the water a "plop", a "plop" or some other sound? It makes people speculate. Second, the visual aftertaste. As the saying goes, "One stone stirs up a thousand waves." After the frog jumps into the pond, the water ripples from small to large. The ripples expand and disappear layer by layer, rippling in front of the reader's eyes for a long time, making people daydream. Third, the aftertaste of meaning. British poet Blake once wrote a poem: "A world can be seen in a grain of sand,/A paradise can be seen in a wild flower,/Put infinity in the palm of your hand,/Eternity is stored in a moment." (Translated by Liang Zongdai) vividly expresses the meaning of life in a single moment. At the moment when the artist's inspiration bursts out, the grains of sand and the world, the wild flowers and the heaven, the finite and the infinite, the moment and the eternity, which the rationalists and mechanists insist on strictly and precisely distinguishing, enter into an undifferentiated realm of fit, and the world is restored to unity. Harmony was restored to humanity. Basho's haiku is similar to this, but it is unique.

First of all, haiku expresses the unique Eastern thought of realizing the vitality of life in silence and thus "following nature" and "returning to nature". Everything around the ancient pond is silent, and the water surface of the pond is peaceful, adding an atmosphere of tranquility. In this ancient silence, only those with an extremely peaceful and leisurely state of mind can hear the clear but small sound of a frog suddenly jumping into the water.

On the one hand, the haiku uses the sound of frogs entering the pond to set off the tranquility and leisure of the soul; on the other hand, it uses the jumping sound of frogs awakening in spring to show a kind of vitality full of life awakening and impulse in a quiet and peaceful atmosphere. The breath of spring. After the sound of water passed, the water surface of the ancient pond returned to tranquility. In such a magical moment, movement and stillness achieve a perfect combination - on the surface it is endless silence, but inside it contains the rhythm of life and the infinite mystery of nature, as well as the incomparable passion in the poet's heart, and the lingering aftertaste , the taste is endless. In the relaxed nature of the poet who seems to be calm and talk freely, it also embodies the unique Eastern people's idea of ??"following nature" and "returning to nature" - creation is speechless, everything moves in time, but in the end To return to nature, everything can be done in silence and leisure, following nature and integrating into nature.

Secondly, this haiku embodies some of the philosophy of Zen Buddhism. Zen is a very oriental religion. It has a world view theory of "the unity of Brahma and me". On the one hand, it emphasizes that the world is "empty", and on the other hand, it also attaches importance to experiencing and capturing active life in the "empty" world. And make individual life return to the eternal reality and achieve "the unity of Brahma and me". In order to achieve the state of "the unity of Brahman and self", Zen Buddhism emphasizes the overall grasp of the origin of existence through individual intuitive experience - sudden enlightenment - through the ordinary world of phenomena where "green bamboos are all Dharmakaya; gloomy yellow flowers are nothing but prajna". - It manifests itself as instant eternity, thus entering a wonderful, beautiful, pleasant and mysterious spiritual realm in which Brahman and I are unified, things and self are forgotten, and the universe and the soul are integrated into one. This haiku expresses the poet's intuitive expression and grasp of the truth of the universe - the realm of "the unity of Brahman and self" through ordinary phenomena such as an ancient pond, a frog entering the water, and the sound of water. A silent ancient pond condenses the mysterious and floating "past", while the frog waking up from hibernation symbolizes the vibrant "present". At the moment when the frog jumps into the water and makes a sound, the "past" and the "past" are intertwined. "Now" suddenly merges into one in people's intuitive enlightenment, while the sound of water and the rippling ripples extend infinitely into the vast future. In this way, Basho intuitively expresses the absolute unity of time through the image of a frog entering the water - the past, present and future are unified in a mysterious moment, permeating the undifferentiated "empty" realm of Zen; waking up from hibernation The frog symbolizes the resurrection of life. The water in the ancient pond is the origin of life. The awakened frog jumping into the pond is a symbol of individual life returning to the eternal reality and becoming one with it. In this way, in this short haiku of only seventeen syllables, Basho vividly and profoundly expresses the ideal state of Zen Buddhism through intuitive enlightenment and demonstrates the philosophical relationship between individual life and the universe.

This poem has two artistic characteristics. One is improvisation and naturalness. This kind of poem is often "written by nature, accidentally obtained by a skillful hand". After long-term thinking and long-term deliberation, in a magical moment, triggered by an external object, just like Newton discovered the universal gravitation when he saw an apple falling to the ground. The poet suddenly became enlightened and improvised this magical pen that seemed to come at his fingertips without thinking (the same is true for "Spring grass grows in the pond, and willows in the garden turn into songbirds" in "Climbing the Pond and Up the Tower" by Xie Lingyun, a poet of the Jin Dynasty in my country). The second is to use movement to describe stillness. There are two main ways for poets to write about tranquility. One is to write stillness with stillness, such as "Silence is better than sound at this time" in Bai Juyi's "Pipa Xing". One is to use movement to describe stillness, such as "The noisy forest of cicadas is more quiet, and the mountains with singing birds are even more secluded" in "Enter Ruoye Stream" written by Wang Ji, a poet from the Six Dynasties of China. Matsuo Basho is good at using movement to describe stillness. Another of his famous haiku, "Silence, the sound of cicadas penetrate into the rocks" (translated by Lin Lin) exaggerates the extreme silence with subjective feelings-it actually makes people feel that the sound of cicadas has penetrated into the rocks. . This haiku is no exception. The Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore read it when he visited Japan in 1916 and praised it profusely: "That's enough. There is no need for any more redundant verses. The hearts of Japanese readers seem to have eyes." . The ancient and old pool is forgotten, quiet and dark. The sound of a frog jumping into the water can be clearly heard, showing how quiet the pool is!" This haiku has had a great impact on more than 200 people. Today, years later, the American Haiku Society's publication is titled "Frog Pond"