Haiku
Departing spring
hesitates,
in the late cherry blossoms
Commentary
In the Indian summer Goldrush blossoms everywhere. It is brightest yellow at the height of summer - in fact, the trees are without leaves then, only the flowers are seen - and slowly, as the rains set in, the leaves reappear and the Goldrush makes a half-hearted attempt at retaining colour. It fails miserably, managing only a sad off-white, before the green takes over altogether.
The setting in the haiku is obviously different, but it is always the gradualness of the change that I am struck by and I think Buson captures it admirably. The fact that he manages it in a haiku only adds to the effect.
— Radhika
Moreover
I am not into painting - never have been. However, an opportunity to visit the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presented itself yesterday. Among the other things on display, was a set of 20 paintings by one Stanton MacDonald-Wright. All of these sought to “represent” a haiku. Only a few of them were literal relative to the haiku - most were an abstraction. I played a small game - reading a haiku arbitrarily and then going around trying to see which painting it corresponded to. (This was possible since the haikus were listed separately and numbered.) To my surprise, some of the more abstract ones were the easiest to correlate and somehow seemed instinctively ‘right’. The above haiku was one of them.
Also, I like to think that the connection with the words helped me appreciate the painting better.
About the painter: Stanton MacDonald Wright (1890-1973), co-founder of Synchromism, was apparently strongly influenced by Japanese culture and art. These 20 paintings were done in woodblock - a Japanese technique.
http://www.stantonmacdonald-wright.com and http://www.lacma.org are interesting.
Google gives some leads on Synchromism - http://www.xrefer.com/entry/145636
— Radhika
Martin adds
On the haiku:
In Japan in the 15th century, a poetic form named “renga” blossomed.
Renga is a poem several poets create cooperatively. Members alternately add verses of 17 syllables (5, 7, and 5 syllables) and those of 14 syllables (7 and 7 syllables), until they complete a poem generally composed of 100 verses.
Renga was an dignified academic poem. Members were traditionally demanded to present their verses following the medieval aesthetics and quoting the classics.
In the 16th century, instead of renga, it was haikai - humorous poem - that became popular. Haikai (haikai-renga) is a poem made of verses of 17 and 14 syllables like renga, but it parodies renga introducing modern vulgar laughter. Haikai poets used plays on words and treated preferably things of daily life renga hadn’t found interesting.
The first verse of renga and haikai is called “hokku”. Haikai poets sometimes presented their hokkus as independent poems. These were the origin of haiku.
– Ryu Yotsuya, “History of the Haiku”
http://www.big.or.jp/~loupe/links/ehisto/eavant.shtml
Noteworthy is the fact that today’s poem, in translation, does not conform to the 5-7-5 syllable pattern. This is not a mistake - the syllable count restriction is very different in English and Japanese, and 17 English syllables can convey a lot more than 17 Japanese ones.
The following essay on English haiku goes into more detail on this:
http://www.ahapoetry.com/keirule.htm
http://www.ahapoetry.com/haiku.htm is an excellent collection of haiku links
The chapter on Buson, from the aforequoted ‘History of the Haiku’:
http://www.big.or.jp/~loupe/links/ehisto/ebuson.shtml
And a biography of Buson: