Haiku shines brighter than tweet

In mid-July, the former Prime Minister of Belgium and former President of the Council of Europe, Herman Van RompuyIn his capacity as the Japan-EU Friendship Haiku Ambassador, he met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo and announced his intention to make 17-syllable Japanese poetry a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, if Japan so wishes.

The digital boom has benefited haiku, but unlike short texts on social media, Japanese poetry captivates without fanfareand therefore frees the imagination. Herein lies the key to its millennial popularity, both among the inhabitants of the rising sun and the rest of the planet with its eruption in the 20th century.

Juan F. Rivero contextualizes in the foreword of the seed and heart Along with everything there is to know about haiku, it also offers a comprehensive bibliography for those wishing to delve deeper into this popular literature that permeates all Japanese arts. Its purpose in the anthology and a brief introduction to Japanese poetry from its beginnings to 1945—where the book goes—makes it an enjoyable and necessary lesson for any reader who decides to approach Japanese poetry for the first time. .

this division of the volume into five parts -“Roots”; “Classical Poetry: Nara and Heian”; “Medieval Times: Kamakura, Nambokuchö, Muromachi and Azuchi-Momoyama”; “Edo’s poetry”; and “Meiji period and the 20th century until 1945” – correspond to the five major stages of the development of Japanese poetry. Great work with a wide list of authors as well as a variety of styles and suggestions. With special emphasis on the essential role of women in the development of Japanese poetry since the first Japanese lines were written in Turkish, poodleBecause Chinese was the language of prestige, and the male elites were trained in it, courtiers received careful Japanese instruction. And, as Rivero points out, the fact that women didn’t speak Chinese forced the men to communicate with them in Japanese.

a poetic revolution

As it is known, haiku is a short poem of the poet consisting of seventeen syllables, consisting of three lines of five, seven and five syllables. Matsuo Baso A word that was popularized in its present form in the 17th century and originally contained contrasting images, referring to nature and implying the season of the year.

Basho was born in 1644, and although he was not a Buddhist monk, he argued that poetic work was a source of spiritual choice and should reflect on the life and character of writers as well as poetry. The suggestion that verses emerge spontaneously from the contemplation of living things and the emotions of its author is the best summary of what a haiku is, an expression of daily surprise in which the importance of nature and the symbolism of its seasons point to aesthetics. poets’ ideals

Since first anonymous haiku “Susanoo”: “Eight clouds guard / Izumo’s palace, / the eight fenced one; / the eight fences that make my wife happy.”; to the last, “Suzuki Shizuko”: “The flower of the cosmos / if blown / does not die gently”; anthology seed and heart de Alba Editorial summarizes 1,300 years of poetry, a unique selection on the Spanish publishing scene.

Meanwhile, the title is inspired by the heart/seed dichotomy of the poet’s poetic ideas. Ki no TsurayukiIn his preface at the beginning of the 10th century cokinshConsidered the first critical text of Japanese literature, he likened the country’s poetry to the leaves of a plant whose seed is the heart of man. “Confirming that Japan’s poems had the hearts of the people as seeds was to connect them with the spirit and will of an entire people who, with a poet’s voice, left texts in the collective memory,” he explains. . rivero.

The spring kimonos, the chorus of cicadas in summer, the color of hydrangeas in autumn, or the winter character of man, have more hearts than some poisonous nets, and are of course the nourishing seeds of the most beautiful feelings.