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Today’s post – “Japanese Poetry and what It Taught Me” – is authored by Igor da Silva Livramento. He’s a fellow academic from UFSC, fellow author, fellow creative-writing advisor, and overall a great fellow. He’s also a composer, music theorist, and producer. Check out his papers on Academia.edu, his music on Bandcamp, and his personal musings on his blog – in Portuguese, Spanish/Castilian, and English. You can also find him on LinkedIn.

Let me begin by saying:

明ぼのや
白魚白き
こと一寸。

I mean:

akebono ya
shirauo shiroki
koto issun.

Which I will translate as:

White light,
white fish,
an inch of bright.

This poem, by the famous haiku writer Matsuo Bashō, gave me so much to think about. But before I discuss that, let me do a brief analysis of the poem.

Analyzing Japanese Poetry

The poem is originally presented vertically with no final dot, like so:

明
ぼ
の
や
白
魚
白
き
こ
と
一
寸

In reading, it should be grouped as I first presented it in the opening of this post. Why? Because it is semantically coherent to do so. Let me explain.

The first verse is: 明ぼのや, which reads as: akebono ya. Ake (明) is the first sign (in kanji), it is written (or drawn) with the signs for sun and moon together – it translates to “dawn”. Then comes ho no (ぼの) in hiragana (transformed to “bono” because of pronunciation rules), which roughly means “flame”. And we finish off with ya (や), an expletive particle. Akebono means “morning light” or “daybreak”, by the ingenious mixing of “dawn” with “flame”, the first flame that opens up the day, when sun and moon are visible simultaneously, with “flame” reminding the red or orange tinge of the early morning sky.

Then comes: 白魚白き, which reads as: shirauo shiroki. Shira (白), from shiro, is the adjective (or, more adequately, qualifier) “white”. It appears twice in the verse, and it uses a slightly modified “sun” sign (as can be seen on the left side of ake in the first verse), as sunlight is so bright it is white. Uo (魚) is the second kanji, meaning “fish”, exhibiting an abstract depiction of a fish. Thus, the first hemistich reads literally “white fish” (as a single word or as two words, it is originally undecidable). Then comes shiro (白) again, plus ki (き), to make shiro work as an adjective, in hiragana.

Finally, we have: こと一寸, which reads as: koto issun. Ko to (こと), the first two hiragana, means “thing”, very broad and open in meaning. Then i, contraction of ichi (一), meaning “one” (as in counting, that is, the number 1), symbolized by the single horizontal line. Plus sun (寸), which means “inch”, a sign representing the distance (about an inch) from the wrist to the point where we feel the heartbeat. So the verse literally translates to “an inch [of] thing” – the “thing” being sunlight reflected on the fish’s scales.

Lessons I Learned from Japanese Poetry

From the extreme simplicity of the poem, we can infer that it requires we, readers, to integrate it into a larger context, supplying such context through our imagination. One such case is a white fish swimming in a pond which, under bright daylight, shining as if the sun was emanating from the pond itself. This is a very common scene in anime and Japanese art, by the way. And it can be understood as living (fish) and non-living (sun) nature coming together as one, even if only in an image.

Or, to use esoteric terms familiar to the western audience: The microcosm reflects the macrocosm (“as above, so below”). That’s why I chose to repeat “white” twice, linking “sun” and “fish”, whilst using “bright” on the last verse, which rhymes to some degree with “white” in its pronunciation, and evokes this idea that the sun is reflected in the fish’s scales.

All this rhymes (in pronunciation) with “light”, which is the one factor responsible for all this natural spectacle: All things visible are only visible due to the existence of light. Specifically, this is natural light, that is, sunlight, which is not only responsible for visibility, but also for life itself, because, without the sun and its light, all life on the planet would freeze to death.

Similarly to the case of Homer’s Iliad, the utter simplicity of this poem teaches me that one can write the simplest, shortest sentences, and still evoke so many feelings and images on the reader. In shorter terms: Trust the reader. Even if they don’t understand what you intended, they will come up with something (that’s the magic of art).

Importantly, the way the kanji retain their etym still visible (their root meaning from ancient times), but now make them work metaphorically, taught me writing can be like cinema: By presenting two or more images in a sequence to the reader, the reader will string them together and derive some meaning from such a sequence, even if the writer does not provide any explicit logic or sequencing to the images.

The red dress swings with every wind blow, cooling her coffee. Resting beside the spoon — it rings.
“Hello?”
A tear rolls down her cheek and splashes — a darker tinge of red on that same dress.
Gone.

An Italian Solution

Giuseppe Ungaretti’s poem titled Mattina (“Morning”) finds a solution altogether different from the Japanese haiku, but with a similar effect in the end:

Mattina

M’illumino
d’immenso.

It can be roughly translated as “I’m illuminated by immensity”, or “I illuminate me with immensity”, or simply “Immensity illuminates me”.

With its fragmentary style, it evokes the morning as a feeling, rather than describing it with precise terms or excessive verbiage. This symbolic gesture relies on the reader’s imagination to supply what’s missing in order to complete the picture, which is good, as every reader will use their own memories and sensations to do so, which will make the text all the more meaningful, as it will result from a more personal experience.

Originally written in 1917, amidst WW, there is certainly irony in writing such a short poem about immensity. The first verse, a verb, attends by what is usually called a reflexive verb, quite standard in Italian (and my native Portuguese), but lacking in English.

The two-line poem follows the settenario, a seven-syllable verse traditional in Italian, as might have been written by any canonical author (like Giacomo Leopardi). It employs what Dante Alighieri, in De vulgari eloquentia [“On vulgar language”], called “womanly” and “nicely combed” words. Thus, it is not a bombastic morning light, but rather a soft, tender warmness, as it mixes the hope in the heart of the living soldier, and the mundane routine of the commoner waking up for another day of work.

The big question is to ask – as Walter Benjamin argued in his marvelous essay “The Task of the Translator” (a prologue to his translations of Charles Baudelaire’s poems) – how the creative life of the source text prolongs (in the original German it literally reads “lives on”), what has been done by the translation, what it points to, what it illuminates, or imitates. In short: What effects of the original it re-produces (literally “makes happen again”) or what solutions it invents in the target language.

In Guise of Conclusion

On a personal (call it ethical or moral) level, both poems taught me to observe nature closely, and, more importantly, patiently.

To see, in a fish swimming in a pond and reflecting sunlight, the very movement of light, as if light itself was materialized there and it swam right in front of my eyes. To contemplate and delight on the baroque spectacle of green produced by different leaves, with their myriad shapes and colors, in every patch of grass and garden of trees. To notice and realize the stones are written by the winds and rains – a writing I can’t decipher, but I can appreciate. To learn again to hear what the wind whispers (or screams) every time it embraces me. To let myself dawn every morning.

What did the haiku and its analysis teach you? And the Italian fragment? Please, do comment. Share your insights, experience, and impressions. It will be much appreciated.