These readings were really interesting to me. I, like probably many people, am familiar with haiku as a poetry style mostly in passing and didn’t know much about the history of it or how it came to be. One of the things that struck me the most was in Shirane’s writing about the earliest haikai style. The focus on seasonal and natural phenomena was something I was aware of, but I didn’t realise what a change this was from the traditionally accepted way of writing at the time. Haikus are seen by many in the West nowadays as a sort of elevated kind of poetry, and I think it is very cool that this style originally developed to be sort of humorous, even inappropriate, and incorporated many new elements of language at the time. I think this drew my attention for two reasons. Firstly, it was surprising and caught my eye because it was unexpected to me. Second, I also think it highlights the importance of not just translation, but also thoughtful and historically informed translation. The role of haikai as cultural development, challenging expectation and propriety, seems to me to be very important to the way we would be translating it.
Furthermore, when Machi Tawara commented on the combination of “old” and “new” that appears in these poems, I also considered the role that literature overall plays. Despite how brief and seemingly limited this style of writing might be, there is a lot more being communicated in them than just the meanings of the words themselves.
Kamryn Schult
(Sorry this is late, I had an issue with the blog and missed the email about when these are due.)
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