Before having a baby...
To get a feel for what the nights will be like, walk in circles around the room from five to ten in the evening with a wet bag weighing from 3 to 6 kg. At 10 pm, put down your bag, set the alarm for midnight and go to bed. Wake up at twelve and walk around the room with a bag until one. Set your alarm for 3. Since you won't be able to fall asleep, get up at 2 and drink something. Go to bed at 2:45. Get up at three o'clock with your alarm clock. Sing songs in the dark until four in the morning. Set your alarm for 5 o'clock. Get up and make breakfast. Repeat for five years. Look happy. Remove the flesh from the melon and make a small hole in the side, about the size of a table tennis ball. Use a string to hang it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side. Then take a bowl of soaked cornflakes and try to spoon them into the swaying melon while hopping around like a grasshopper. Continue until half the bowl is gone. Sprinkle the remaining half onto your lap. Now you are ready to feed your twelve month old baby.
To prepare for your baby taking his first steps, spread jam on the sofa and all the curtains. Stick the fish stick behind music Center and leave it there for a couple of months. Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems. Buy a string bag and an octopus. Try to put the octopus in the string bag so that none of the tentacles protrude out. The time to complete the exercise is all morning. Forget about sports cars and buy yourself a family model. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in your glove compartment. Leave it there. Crush a full bag of cookies over the back seat. Run the rake along both sides of the body. That's it, great! You like? Get ready to go out for a walk, then wait outside the bathroom for half an hour. Go outside. Come back in. Get out. Go inside again. Exit and walk along the path. Come back. Walk along the path again. Walk very slowly along the road for five minutes. Every ten seconds, stop and look at cigarette butts, chewing gum, dirty papers and dead insects. Go back. Scream loudly that you've had enough and that you can't do this anymore. Get your neighbors to come out of their houses and stare at you. You are ready to try to take your baby for a walk.

ALEXANDER DOLIN
HISTORY OF NEW JAPANESE POETRY IN ESSAYS AND LITERARY PORTRAITS
(01)

TRADITIONAL GENRES IN JAPANESE POETRY - PAST AND PRESENT

The traditionalist trend in Japanese poetry of the late 19th - early 20th centuries is, of course, a direct heir to the traditions of classical schools tank And haiku. What distinguishes traditionalist poetry from traditional poetry itself? First of all, there is obviously a change in the ideological attitudes of traditionalist authors, who abandoned the previous purely contemplative perception of the surrounding reality in the depiction of nature and man, partly overcoming the conservatism of canonical poetics. Historical reality imperiously invaded the most reserved areas of art and literature, demanding from the artist an adequate understanding of the intellectual and spiritual needs of our time. The principle of “artistic escapism,” detachment from a specific society in the name of unity with the Universe, which formed the basis of Zen aesthetics of the Middle Ages, could no longer correspond to the ideological quests of the new generation of poets.

The first years after the Meiji Revolution, when enthusiasts of the New Style Poetry Movement advocated getting rid of the burden of dilapidated traditions, became “ low season" For tank And haiku. The weak attempts of the old masters to support the fading genres did not meet with sympathy from either readers, critics, or young poets of a pro-Western orientation. The most likely thing would be to assume that traditional poetry is finished and devote all efforts to serving the new art (as happened after the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 in China). However, the fate of Japanese literature and art in the 20th century perfectly confirmed the pattern identified by Hegel: “...At each stage of further definition, the universal raises higher the entire mass of its previous content and not only does not lose anything as a result of its dialectical forward movement, not only does it lose nothing leaves behind himself, but takes with him everything he has acquired and becomes enriched and denser within himself.”

Accelerated development of Japanese literature in the transitional stage from literature Late Middle Ages to literature that was truly modern in form and content led to the emergence of romanticism - albeit to a certain extent secondary in relation to English or French romanticism, but capable of serving as a solid basis for the formation of new aesthetics and poetics as a result of the East-West synthesis. As in Europe, the rise of romanticism in Japan was accompanied by increased interest in the classical heritage and folklore. At the same time, the revival of nationalist sentiments during the Meiji period, associated with the rapid economic and military expansion of the modernizing empire, inspired new life into poetry waka, filling it with new sound. One of the updated directions waka rushed into the mainstream of heroic-romantic civil lyrics. Another direction marked its path by turning to erotic love lyrics, the third by focusing on the theme of bohemian revelry, the fourth proclaimed the transition to new realism as the slogan of the day. Similar trends have emerged in poetry. haiku. The emergence of many different movements and schools testified to the breaking of centuries-old canonical restrictions and the transition to aesthetic system new type.

Traditional Japanese poetry, represented mainly by two classical genres, tank And haiku, established in rigid, almost unchanging forms, existed for many centuries as a closed uta I, a separate aesthetic system. In the same capacity, although with some functional changes, it came to the end of the 19th century. To analyze the typological features of modern poetry tank And haiku it is necessary to highlight those inherent properties, without which consideration at the synchronous level will be one-sided and incomplete.

Poetry tank at least from the beginning of the compilation of imperial anthologies (10th century), its lyrical orientation always seemed to oppose all prose genres, which reflected in the smallest details the vicissitudes of the historical development of society, almost without intersecting or matching them in theme and imagery. Whether in the genre of lyrical diaries ( Nikki) or historical stories ( rekishi monogatari) numerous poetic insertions played an auxiliary, decorative role and were completely devoid of historicism. Even in cases where tank woven into the prose text of the heroic epic ( gunki) and were adjacent to rhythmic prose ( Imbun), they were assigned only the role of emotional accompaniment. With this division of roles, lyric poetry (identified with poetry as such) was separated from the entire mythopoetic structure of the epic and generally developed in relation to prose and drama as a kind of timeless and permanently immutable type of literature. Isolation from other components of the literary process provided poetry with a very special place in the minds of writers and assumed the inviolability of poetics, interpreted as a sacred canon. Accordingly, addition waka (utayomi) was interpreted as a sacred rite, and the “songs” themselves ( uta) were perceived as the quintessence national mentality (nihon no kokoro) and a tool for transmitting the truly Japanese spirit ( Yamato Damasius).

Although changes in tonality were allowed in principle, ancient lexico-grammatical standards and a fairly few tropes remained unchanged for centuries. Probably, not a single poetic tradition in the world knows examples of such “monogamy,” since even within the framework of canonical restrictions, medieval art was characterized by a tendency to expand and increase variability. Poetry tank, with the exception of isolated exceptions in the 18th - early 19th centuries, very little has changed over the past twelve to fifteen centuries.

Evolution of poetry tank, and then haiku with their extreme minimalism, was aimed at getting rid of any elements of excessive descriptiveness. The basis of the poetics of these genres is the desire for the condensation of imaginative thinking. Its symbol is the world reflected in a drop, or rather, in myriads of similar drops of water. The poetics of classical Japanese verse is distinguished from other national poetic systems by the small number of genres, the comparative poverty of visual means and the amazing constancy of the artistic canon. The clichédness of seasonal images-themes and poetic vocabulary, the standard set of poetic techniques and the focus on classical examples of the “golden age” were typical of both the worst and the worst. best authors waka until the last decade of the 19th century.

An even more amazing phenomenon is the consolidation at an early stage of development of a single and uniform poetic meter for all poetic genres, based on the alternation of syllabic intonation groups of five and seven syllables (mor) - the so-called prosody onsuritsu. Be it the main genres tank And haiku, as well as collective “strung stanzas” rank or minor ( Teka, sadoka, kyoka, senryu, imayo and even imbun), the difference in the “size” of a verse is determined purely conventionally - by how the poem begins: with a five-syllable group of syllables or with a seven-syllable one. If in the poetry of new forms there are echoes onsuritsu can be found in the works of the Symbolists dating back to the twenties last century, then in tank And haiku classical prosody continues to this day.

The amazing conservatism of classical Japanese poetry tank And haiku involuntarily suggests the “ahistorical” nature of this aesthetic system, designed rather to convey the pulsation of the macrocosm through the microcosm of creative consciousness than to reflect socio-historical reality. However, it is also true that the very fact of the existence of such a system is “one of the links or components of the continuous activity of artistic consciousness, one of the private, individual expressions of its historical state and social content.”

Of course, the work of such great poets of the Middle Ages as Saigyo (XII century), Ryokan (XVIII century), Issa (XVIII - early XIX century) and many others was a reflection of the specific historical circumstances that gave rise to it, the result of the influence of the social and cultural environment that formed the artist’s worldview . But it is not easy to isolate the signs of a specific historical time in the contemplative poetry of these authors. For many tank(as for haiku) there is no other time except the change of seasons, so the difference of several centuries is not reflected in the least on either form or content - all authors strictly adhere to canonical prescriptions, so that sometimes a poem of the 12th century is almost indistinguishable from a poem on a similar topic written in half a millennium later. Even those poets who used haiku to keep a kind of diary, they tried to avoid any episodes related to fussy political and social topics, or at least encrypted specific events using a traditional figurative code. Only “the eternal in the current” was considered worthy of being recorded on paper.

Obviously, the ahistorical nature of classical Japanese poetry (as well as classical painting, calligraphy, gardening art, ikebana, tea ceremony), with its focus on seasonal cycles, with its connection to the macrocosm, with its focus on the dissolution of man in Nature, can also be considered as the result of the special historical development of a nation, as a reflection of its religious and philosophical complex of ideas, refracted in various facets of culture. Here, the animistic concepts of Shintoism emerged with all their might, predetermining the inextricable connection of man with the forces of nature, embodied in the pantheon of countless deities. This was also influenced by the concept of the symbolic triad of Heaven-Earth-Man, borrowed from classical Chinese Taoism, which gave rise to the basic theories of geomancy, astrology, medicine, martial arts, and the entire complex of ethics and aesthetics, which ultimately determined the vector of development of Far Eastern civilization.

With no less force were embodied in this aesthetics the foundations of the Buddhist teaching about the universality of the universal Law, the all-pervading essence of the Buddha, the relationship between the macrocosm and the microcosm, and the insight that can be achieved both through meditation and through a creative act, creativity. The concept of rebirth of souls in the earthly vale (samsara) gave rise to the consciousness of frailty, the ephemerality of life and the insignificance of individual existence. The dissolution of the personal principle in the endless stream of births and deaths that fills the universal emptiness (mu) presupposed the utmost objectification of the image, getting rid of subjectivist assessments.

For a European poet and artist, what is primarily important is the creative essence of creativity: the creation of one’s own original work of art according to already existing canons or according to new rules that the artist develops himself. Each historical era in Western civilization puts forward its own laws of art, which replace the outdated ones in the same way as technical achievements replace each other. The evolution of Western culture presupposes its significant renewal and a kind of competitive struggle for new forms.

Meanwhile, for the Japanese poet, who inherited the classical tradition, foreground the reflective side of creativity appears - the understanding of the eternal laws of nature. Reflection as reflection and at the same time reflection is the core of Taoist-Buddhist philosophy and, accordingly, traditional Japanese poetics. Zen Buddhism, which adapted Buddhist metaphysics to earthly reality and needs fine arts(not only in Japan, but initially in China, as well as in Korea and Vietnam), gave final form to the concept of the Artist’s Being in the Universe. Following your Path (before) presupposes comprehension of the Path of the universe. All previous generations of artists and poets, involved in the same spiritual tradition, sought to comprehend a single Path in myriads of particular manifestations. Every work of art, poem, painting or abstract composition of stones in the garden is another attempt to comprehend the Path. The cumulative development of tradition to some extent facilitates the comprehension of the Path for subsequent generations of masters who inherit the sacredly preserved canons - the achievements of their predecessors. At the same time, it places obstacles in the path of those who strive for new horizons.

Collective attempts to comprehend the Path are also possible - for example, in the poetry of “strung stanzas” rank, requiring the participation of several authors, or in the development of martial arts. The same goes for contemplating a painting of this kind, a rock garden, a calligraphic inscription or a successfully composed bouquet, watching a fight between kendo, judo or go masters, reading tank or haiku can lead to the desired Insight - especially if this activity becomes regular and taken seriously. All private paths one way or another lead to the comprehension of the One.

For interactive co-creation between the poet and the reader, the artist and the viewer, it is necessary that both parties be involved in common religious and philosophical foundations and own the code, that is, a set of rules for this type of art.

According to the principles of Buddhist philosophy, which adopted the cardinal tenets of Chinese Taoism, the ultimate goal of any type of spiritual activity is to get rid of the consciousness of the presence of the individual principle (wu-xing) and achieve a state of complete detachment (mushin), dissolution of one’s own ego in the universal emptiness (kyom), merging with depicted object in metaphysical transcendental enlightenment. The means to achieve such a goal is non-action (mui), that is, non-interference in the natural course of things, and non-action not only on the physical level, but also on the intellectual, mental and spiritual.

All objects and events in manifested or unmanifested form already exist in the Buddhist macrocosm, in the primordial emptiness, in the illusory world of imaginary reality. The artist is not called upon to create something new and unique, but to reveal what is hidden in the void, to outline the contours of actually or potentially existing objects. The only task of the artist is to catch the rhythm of universal metamorphoses, “tune in” to their wave and reflect in his creation the image born from the pulsation of cosmic energy. This image always exists not in isolation, but in the shell of emptiness, that is, energy space filled with images potentially embedded in it. Hence the importance of the “empty field” - a gap in a picture, a silence in a poem.

What is not said, what is not drawn contains a reference to the unsaid, to the universal beauty, wisdom and harmony of the universe - to everything that individual consciousness, individual artistic talent does not have the power to embrace. Revealing the essence of the world comes down to its knowledge through a specific artistic code in each art form. The more accurately this or that action, state, expression is conveyed using a minimum number of means, the more clearly the presence in this work Eternity and Infinity, the more perfect the image. This is how the poetics of suggestibility arises, which has found optimal expression in classical tank And haiku.

Initial setting to " mirror reflection” of the world, originating in the system of Buddhist psychotraining, ideally assumes an unclouded reflection in a drop of water. The symbolism of “mirror spirit-mind”, “spirit as a water surface” is inherent in all types of Zen arts, but in tank and especially in haiku poetics is built exclusively on the reflection of “the great in the small.”

In the poetic tradition waka back in the 10th century, the compilers of the anthology “Collection of old and new songs of Japan” (“Kokin waka syu") talked about the need to capture and convey the “charm of things” (mono no aware), the charm of existence contained in the visible images of nature. Several centuries later, during the compilation of the New Kokinshu, poetics waka was replenished with the aesthetic category of “secret mystical meaning” (yugen), contained in every object, phenomenon and event. The highest meaning of existence, contained in everyday objects, universal feelings and typical emotional responses, determines genre and stylistic features as tank, so haiku. Not by chance great reformer traditional poetry Masaoka Shiki believed tank And haiku two trunks of poetry growing from a single root.

With such an attitude, the identification of normative canonical themes and the standardization of artistic figurative code becomes inevitable. IN tank And haiku the code is not the same, but the principles of its creation and functioning (seasonal orientation, division into “thematic cycles,” selection of “poetic” vocabulary) are quite comparable. The touchstone of mastery in classical tank And haiku What comes into play is not the creation of an original image of one’s own, but a subtle nuance of the “alien”, traditional, recommended by the poetic canon and at the same time, as if given by life itself, once dictated to the founders of the genre by nature itself (signs of the seasons, seasonal work, etc.).

Myriad tank And haiku countless authors become studies on predictable themes, painted in poetics - albeit with an infinite number of variations in the interpretation of a particular topic. Number tank And haiku, composed during the life of many specific poets, is amazing, ranging on average from ten to forty thousand poems. Such a quantity simply does not allow the reader to read collections of poets “through and through,” no matter how wonderful these sketches are - otherwise there may not be enough life for one poet. These are nothing more than raindrops reflecting the picture of the world. The quantity is often overwhelming. When reading books of such length, the question involuntarily arises: did the author have the reader in mind or did he write mainly for himself and for eternity? Of course, with such a quantity, the problem of selection becomes most pressing. best works.

The problem of selection still faces compilers of anthologies and translators. In historical retrospect, the main representative body tank And haiku, which constituted the classical heritage of Japanese literature before the modern era, is reduced to carefully sorted names, as well as works selected and approved by the commentary tradition. Other poems by the same authors are, of course, present as background and can serve as supplements, but attention was focused mainly on leading authors and recognized masterpieces. Expand the scope of the tradition by introducing a new name and new verses, as did at the end of the 19th century. Masaoka Shiki, it was extremely difficult.

The reader or poetic arbiter (at a tournament or when selecting poems for an anthology) was free to select and compare miniatures that were similar in theme, based on objective criteria that served as classical anthologies and collections, as well as existing works on poetics. Of course, the role of the arbitrator acquired paramount importance. A necessary prerequisite for the functioning of such an aesthetic system (as well as any other type of canonical art) was a fairly deep study of the artistic code by both authors and readers, since suggestive art is interactive and requires strong “feedback.”

In medieval poetics waka prescriptions and recommendations were derived mainly from multi-volume commentaries on classical anthologies. The most serious and most valuable of these sources was considered the “Kokin Denju” (“Interpretation of Kokinshu”), compiled by a team of literati over several centuries. However, there were also small compact treatises that offered their own versions of classical poetics since the 10th century, since the famous preface of Ki no Tsurayuki to the same “Kokinshu”. Anthologies and collections waka were compiled according to classical models. These principles of seasonal and thematic division were subsequently largely borrowed by the authors haiku. The rules for compiling anthologies have remained virtually unchanged to this day, so that even today individual authors dissolve in the general mass of endlessly varying improvisations on a given topic: early snow or blooming plum trees, cuckoo songs and summer heat, scarlet maples and winter desolation...

IN haiku the principles of classical poetics were formulated mainly on the basis of Basho’s statements, recorded by his students in memoirs and over time acquired a colossal number of comments. Works of poets of subsequent generations (Yosa no Buson, Kobayashi Issa, etc.) and their theoretical developments acquired meaning and the right to exist only against the backdrop of the behests of the great Basho. For centuries, the old served as the only criterion for evaluating the new, and the authority of the masters of the past, led by Basho, outweighed any arguments in favor of modernizing the genre. This has its own explanation, because haiku one way or another belonged to the category of canonical, strictly regulated art, and Basho for the first time managed to give the entertaining poetic genre for leisure time the character of high humanistic lyrics.

It was Basho who, summarizing the experience of his predecessors and creatively rethinking the principles of classical Zen art, was able to formulate the main aesthetic categories haiku: wabi, sabi, shibumi, karumi fueki ryuko. None of these categories apply only to haiku, not one was a new invention - each of them existed separately or together with one or two others in other types of Zen art in Japan and China, sometimes many centuries before Basho.

Also the main poetic devices were not the invention of Basho, who only summed up the collective experience of poets haiku for almost a hundred years. Basho's merit consisted in his ability to bring together a number of cardinal principles of Zen aesthetics, apply them to the field of versification and turn them into exemplary poetics, which should be admired, strictly following its requirements. Provided that the basic principles were preserved, individual innovations introduced by individual authors or schools were allowed, but in the opinion of a Western reader, even familiar with the basics of classical poetics, the difference between them would be ridiculously insignificant. This could probably have continued for several more centuries, but at the end of the 19th century, when the freethinker Masaoka Shiki took it upon himself to doubt the genius of Basho and the advantages of his school, traditional poetry was subjected to serious tests and emerged from them updated.

Uniformitarianism as the dominant principle in classical poetry was based on the requirement of “imitation of the ancients,” however, at each new stage of historical development until the Second World War, the idea of ​​​​following classical models was filled with new content, and antiquity became a kind of absolute criterion of truth and beauty, allowing one to objectively identify all the advantages and the shortcomings of modernity. The poets of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who unexpectedly found themselves face to face with Western literature, also started from the same platform of the “old classics.” Artistic time V tank And haiku clearly diverged from historical times, which left a strong imprint on the traditionalist poetry of the 20th century.

The concept of “static” is hardly applicable to the state tank And haiku in the Middle Ages, since these genres one way or another evolved in the course of the historical and literary process, giving rise to schools and movements with distinctive features that were more or less obvious to specialists. There were simply many more similarities between schools than differences. Until the end of the 19th century for authors tank And haiku any serious change in visual means and expansion of the boundaries of both genres seemed absolutely unthinkable. Each poet understood that he was creating within the framework of a once and for all canonical closed system, and was clearly aware of his place in this particular school this direction of this genre- and, accordingly, their specific involvement in tradition.

The same attitude towards the canon was characteristic of representatives of other traditional schools in the field of literature, fine arts and martial arts with their hierarchical structure, division according to “degree of skill” and the indisputable authority of the head of the school (iemoto), consecrated by the deeds of a long series of glorious predecessors. Belonging to a school and being related (even if distantly) to the name of a famous master meant much more in the poetic world and the world of art than individual talent. A “Ronin” not assigned to a school had very little chance of recognition, while a mediocre poet who had been a student of a venerable master could safely count on publications in collective anthologies, and in some cases even lay claim to opening his own school. And today poets tank And haiku take pride in their “pedigree,” often going back to the Middle Ages or the Meiji era. Schools had their own family tree"and all together formed a family tree of the genre, which can still be found in encyclopedias and reference books.

Even in the Middle Ages in Japan, amateurism as a cultural phenomenon was virtually eliminated, or at least heavily veiled. It was assumed that any craft, and especially art, before becoming the property of the consumer, must be brought to the utmost degree of perfection, which is possible only at the level of mastering all the artistic potential accumulated in a given area, and sometimes in related ones. Thus, poets in China and Japan were usually excellent calligraphers, often gifted artists and masters of ikebana. The degree of skill also determined the degree of artistic freedom that the master could allow himself. Nevertheless, all types of art existed within the framework of schools and were based on almost unshakable canonical rules, to abandon which completely meant to “go against the grain” and doom oneself to ostracism.

In the 20th century, the erosion of traditions and weakening interest in the classics forced many leaders of traditional schools to simplify the rules and shorten the duration of training, which gave a positive result in terms of preserving popular traditions, but gradually reduced many arts to a purely amateur level. At the same time, liberalization of the canon (sometimes up to complete abolition - for example, in the case of the “proletarian” movement tank") allowed experimenters to shake the fragile structure tank from the inside, weakening its aesthetic base.

According to the correct remark of a Russian literary theorist, “from the point of view of the criterion of repeatability, the primary interest is, naturally, first of all, the constant elements in artistic phenomena and processes, a kind of aesthetic invariants, distinctive feature which are relative immutability in changing conditions and structures.” This type of constant elements of normative poetics in the form of a set of aesthetic categories and artistic techniques constituted the theoretical basis and tools of Japanese poets for many centuries.

The key to preserving a stable canon of national poetry with relatively minor modifications over a huge period of time can be considered the “feedback” between the artist and his audience, due to the unique socio-historical development of the country. The existence of suggestive lyrics, the poetics of allusion and overtone was possible only in a country where the level of both elite and elementary mass culture allowed one to count on universal knowledge classical heritage, where the collective " historical memory” of the people was supported by extensive literary and artistic reminiscences from generation to generation.

As in China, culture in Japan developed cumulatively, absorbing everything that was most valuable from previous eras and recording in writing both great achievements and minor events cultural life, so that the history of the country was read simultaneously as the history of its culture, supported by the cultural tradition of China. Thus, in classical poetry, the “new” contained a reference to the “old” and, by the very fact of its existence, asserted the immortality of the “old”. Thus, a careful analysis reveals the closest connection between the first classical poetics waka, the famous Preface by Ki no Tsurayuki to the anthology “Kokin waka Xiu" with ancient Chinese sources. The technique of “using the original song,” that is, quoting or covertly quoting lines of classical poets in one’s own poem (honkadori) was widely used by authors tank starting from the 12th century. Many haiku Basho contain either an image directly borrowed from Chinese poetry, or an allusion that refers the reader to such an image.

The apotheosis of normative poetics was the saijiki, compendiums of “poetic vocabulary” that are regularly updated to this day. haiku, containing hundreds and thousands of word images for all seasons.

As in China, “poetic geography” arose in medieval Japan: all landscapes more or less worthy of attention - mountains, rivers, lakes, bays and islands - were repeatedly sung in poetry, so that some place names, such as Mount Fuji, themselves have become a symbol containing references to a number of famous poems, as well as paintings. Enriching “poetic geography” has become an important task for most poets haiku who set out on journeys following the example of the great Basho, and in modern times many poets set themselves exactly the same tasks tank. At the same time, the basics of “poetic geography” were well known to the general reader, who could appreciate the next variation on the theme of Fuji, the Yoshino Mountains or the Matsushima Islands, comparing it with other poems.

The new in the Japanese cultural tradition did not deny the old, did not cross it out, but modified, supplemented and improved, sometimes filling it with a different social content, adapting it to the needs of a different class. It is believed that the origin and development of the genre haiku since the 17th century was the fruit of the efforts of the “third estate”, dissatisfied with the fact that the art of addition tank turned out to be monopolized by the samurai and the court aristocracy. Really, haiku, like many other forms of art of the “changing world” (ukiyo), reflected the process of democratization of urban culture. However, the masters haiku did not abandon aesthetics tank, adopting its basic principles.

The continuity of aesthetics and poetics was largely due to the continuity of various religious and philosophical systems that coexisted within various faiths and sects, the exceptional stability of the worldview of the Buddhist-Confucian-Shinto complex at the level of life philosophy, rituals, and everyday legal consciousness. As a result, clarity of the national “picture of the world” and stability of the scale of values ​​in the artistic understanding of reality were achieved. This kind of conceptual predicament can be considered the dominant feature of Japanese classical poetry as an aesthetic system that confirms a universal pattern: “The character of each literature is determined primarily by the concept of the world and man that lies at its basis. The concept of the world and man at each new historical stage acquired new features and qualities. Developing and enriching itself, it fertilized literature, the creativity of each writer individually.”

Although some researchers of world literature object to the revaluation of dominant principles in aesthetic systems and the determinism of the author’s method, emphasizing the leading role of the writer’s individual talent as driving force literature (see), in Japanese classical poetry the “unfreedom” is completely obvious artistic choice dictated by the canon. The insignificance of innovation in the work of each individual master and in the entire aesthetic system as a whole is offset by the increasing role of traditions and the stability of a number of aesthetic categories that serve as a constant in the historical and literary process.

In any society, the normativity of the artistic system is associated with social institutions, ethical and aesthetic regulations of the era. In Japan, their relative constancy over centuries was the reason for the conservatism of the poetics of classical genres. Just as the inability of Buddhist metaphysics and Confucian moral dogmas to ensure social peace and stability led to the emergence of the ideology of restoration of the “imperial path” and then ultimately to the bourgeois Meiji revolution, the inability of traditional lyrics to convey the pathos of the changes taking place gave rise to the “poetic revolution”, led to the formation of a fundamentally new poetry of the 20th century, both in traditional and non-traditional forms.

Reform tank And haiku was an urgent necessity, and none of the traditionalist poets of the New Age remained aloof from the process of overcoming the classical canon. Many tried to offer their own canon to replace the old one. Others called for removing all possible restrictions, switching from the ancient classical language to colloquial language and writing as it is written, without looking into poetics. In the post-war period, the erosion of the canon led to the maximum liberalization of rules and regulations, so that housewives could easily create tank, and children, starting from primary school, - haiku. tank And haiku moved from a closed art system to an open system, lost any semblance of elitism and turned into mass art for circles and clubs of similar interests. This transition from the quality of poetry to the number of authors led to an extraordinary revival of both genres at the mass level and actually reduced the role of professional poets to that of overly active amateurs. Although formally schools descending from Masaoka Shiki, Takahama Kyoshi or Saito Mokichi still exist, readers are no longer waiting for new stars to appear in the sky tank or haiku, content with regularly holding regional competitions and publishing multi-volume fraternal anthologies.

Traditionalist poetry of recent decades should be considered primarily as one of the most effective ways affirmation of the national identity of the Japanese during the period of economic boom and the formation of a “society of general prosperity”, and then - as a path to national self-identification in a rapidly globalizing world community. Since the 1960s, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party has pursued a policy of wise protectionism in relation to traditional culture- literature, painting, theater and crafts. Significant public and private subsidies were allocated to support and develop the Noh, Kabuki and Bunraku theaters, Gigaku and Gagaku music, Nihonga school painting, calligraphy, ikebana, the tea ceremony and unique arts and crafts.

tank And haiku, which have always served as the “voice of the heart” for the Japanese, rightfully took pride of place among national species art. Mugs tank And haiku is in each of the thousands and thousands of cultural centers, poetry associations tank And haiku There are companies that publish their own almanacs in every major city. On the bookshelves of stores and libraries, luxurious reissues of classics coexist with the works of traditionalist poets of the 20th century - well-known, little-known and completely unknown, who published colorful collections of poetry at their own expense. According to tradition, in January the hearing of the best tank, selected from an all-Japan competition. There are also good poems, but they most often dissolve in the multifaceted mass. The same can be said about large-scale international competitions haiku, which are held in Masaoka Shiki’s homeland, Matsuyama. The lack of professionalism and classical harmony is often compensated by involvement in school and compliance with basic rules.

At the same time, traditional genres have not lost other functions, continuing to serve as a means of self-expression, an emotional outlet for writers, artists, sculptors, architects, as well as poets of various orientations. tank And haiku in the twentieth century, as in the Middle Ages, they were used to keep a lyrical diary, to record particularly important everyday experiences. Were not forgotten tank or haiku-wills conveying dying state of mind author.

Against the backdrop of actively developing and “post-modernizing” poetry of new forms with its constantly changing schools and movements, the denial of predecessors and the approval of new Western idols, tank And haiku even in a modernized form beyond recognition, they seem to millions of readers and writers to be a healing spring national tradition. However, the question is whether they can tank And haiku whether it will be resurrected in the future as a complex, highly professional art or whether it will finally move to the position of a popular craft remains open.

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Traditional Japanese poetry, represented mainly by two classical genres, tanka and haiku, established in rigid, almost unchanging forms, existed for many centuries as a closed, isolated aesthetic system.

Classic tanka in written (and even longer in oral) form has existed since the 8th century. and managed to undergo many changes. The themes of such tanka are strictly regulated and, as a rule, they are songs of love or separation, songs written just in case or on the way, in them human experiences occur against the backdrop of the changing seasons of the year and are, as it were, fused (or rather, inscribed) into them.

Classic tanka contain five lines of 5 - 7 - 5 - 7 - 7 syllables, respectively, and this small space does not allow translating into other languages ​​the entire associative series that arises in a Japanese reader (or writer). Since tanka contains key words responsible for the emergence of certain associations, by translating all the meanings of these words into other languages, it is possible to achieve an approximate recreation of the original logical chain. It should also be noted that tankas, although they are a poetic form, do not have rhyme.

The tank form has gone through a lot in its lifetime, there have been ups and downs, various collections have been compiled, the very first of which was “Collection of Myriad Leaves” (“Man’yoshu”, 759), containing 4,500 poems. Gradually, tanka anthologies began to be published by order of the emperor, and tanka itself as a genre developed under the watchful eye of court poets.

By the end of the 19th century, tanka turned into rather monotonous repetitions of the same thing, which caused bitterness among adherents of traditions, and a desire to renounce and indignation among pro-Western poets. But it so happened that at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, two completely different poets (Yosano Akiko and Ishikawa Takuboku) were able to introduce new feelings and views into the strictly regulated volume of tanka, creating images that, although intertwined with the classical ones, carried freshness and unwornness .

In Japanese poetry there is another, no less important genre, which is called haiku (hoku). Haiku are three-line verses of 17 syllables, which were traditionally written on one line.

The origin of the Japanese genre of tercets (originally called Hokku, then Haikai, and from the end of the 19th century - Haiku) is artificial and represents an exception to the rule. Haiku tertices of only 17 syllables were derived from the Japanese classical Tanka or Waka pentacts of 31 syllables through another genre, namely the "linked stanzas" - Renga. Waka (literally "Japanese song") is general concept, which includes mainly the five-line Tanka (literally "short song") and some other forms (the six-line Sedoka and the "long song" of Nagauta), but is often used in a narrow sense as a synonym for Tanka. Waka poetry originated in ancient times and is widely represented in the first Japanese poetry anthology, “Collection of Myriad Leaves,” (Man'yoshu, 8th century). Haiku (literally "opening lines") is the bridge connecting Waka poetry and Haiku poetry, the two most common genres of Japanese poetry. Other poetic genres, although they exist, cannot be compared with Tanka and Haiku in terms of prevalence and influence on the life of the Japanese. haiku japanese tanka

The first Haiku date back to the 15th century. The original Haiku, which at that time were called Haikai, were always humorous; they were like comic couplets of a semi-folklore type on the topic of the day. Later their character completely changed.

The genre of Haikai (comic poems) was first mentioned in the classical poetic anthology "Collected Old and New Songs of Japan" (Kokin waka shu, 905) in the section "Haikai uta" ("Comic Songs"), but it was not yet a genre of Haiku in in the full sense of the word, but only the first approximation to it. In another famous anthology, “The Collection of Mount Tsukuba” (Tsukubashu, 1356), the so-called Haikai no renga appeared, i.e. long chains of poems on a given topic, composed by one or more authors, in which the first three lines were especially valued - Hokku . The first anthology of Haikai no renga proper, “The Collection of Crazy Songs of Chikuba” (Chikuba keginshu), was compiled in 1499. At that time outstanding poets the new genre was revered by Arakida Moritake (1473-1549) and Yamazaki Sokan (1464-1552).

The emergence of the Haiku genre dates back to the 15th-16th centuries. The initial three-line of the Tanka five-line, called Hokku, acquired independent meaning and began to develop as a separate genre. Haiku are the first three lines of a long chain of Renga poems, a kind of amoebaic form usually created by two or more poets, a poetic roll call of voices of three and two lines on a given topic.

Renga is essentially a Tanka five-line of 31 syllables, divided into two parts (pre-caesis and post-caesure), a kind of beginning and continuation, which are repeated a given number of times. The essence of the poem lies not so much in the text itself, but in the subtle but still felt connection between the verses, which in Japanese is called Kokoro (lit. soul, heart, essence). The connection between the first and second parts of the poem, i.e., tercet and couplet, was described, for example, by the word Nioi (“smell,” “aroma”).

Renga - a chain of tercets and couplets (17 syllables and 14 syllables), sometimes infinitely long up to a hundred or more lines, built according to one metric law, when the prosodic unit is a stanza consisting of a group of five and a group of seven syllables (5-7- 5 and 7-7) in line. The quintet was divided into two parts: the “upper” Kami-no-ku with 5-7-5 syllables per line and the “lower” Shimo-no-ku with 7-7 syllables per line. These parts were connected in a sequence of three- and couplets, which were supposed to be created on a given topic; they were supposed to be semantically connected. There were also Renga with an inverse construction of stanzas - first a couplet, then a tercet. Rengas were often composed impromptu at meetings of poets, which could last for days. All tercets and couplets (often written by different authors on a roll call basis) are connected common theme, but do not have a common plot.

Each of them, representing an independent work on the theme of love, separation, loneliness, inscribed in a landscape picture, can be isolated from the general context of the poem without prejudice to its meaning (examples of this form are known in Eastern poetry, for example, chains of panutnas, performed by two semi-choirs, in Malay poetry). But at the same time, each verse is connected with the previous and subsequent verses: it is like a chain of weakly expressed questions and answers, where in each subsequent tercet or couplet a turn of the topic, an unexpected interpretation of the word, is valuable.

The Reng genre arose in the 12th century. as a pleasant amusement, a literary game, then developed into a sophisticated, serious art with many complex rules. At the end of the 13th century. V historical monument“The Current Mirror” (Ima Kagami), which describes the birth of this genre, introduced the term Kusari renga “poetic chains”.

Depending on the length, such “chains” were called: Tanrenga (“short renga”), Kasen (“thirty-six stanzas” after the name “thirty-six geniuses of Japanese poetry” - Sanjurokkasen), Hyakuin (“hundred-strophe”), etc. “Chains " could be composed by several people, turning into a kind of dialogue in which a special artistic unity should arise. It was necessary to focus only on the previous verse. Depending on how many people took part in creating the “chain,” they were divided into Dokugin (“one person”), Ryo:gin (“two”) and Sangin (“three”).

There was a canon of themes (Dai) for Reng's composition: the moon, flowers, wind. A special kind of indirect connection had to be maintained between individual verses. The most valued were the Renga of the Mikohidari school, which included, for example, the best poet Fujiwara Teika (1162-1241). Renga were also divided into “those with a soul” (Ushin renga), that is, serious, and comic, “without a soul” (Mushin renga). Renga's first major collection is the anthology Tsukuba shu ("Collection of [Mount] Tsukuba", 1357) compiled by Nijo Yoshimoto and Kyu:sei (1284-1378). In the 15th century began to talk about the "Seven Sages of the Ranga", that's what he called them famous poet Sogi Shinkei (1406-1475), one of the sages, owns a theoretical treatise on Renga Sasamegoto ("Whispers", 1488), in which he explained the meaning of the main aesthetic categories. Japanese critics consider Shinsen Tsukuba shu to be the best in the history of the genre: ("Newly compiled collection of [Mount] Tsukuba"). The art of composing Reng consists not only in creating perfect stanzas, but also in the art of counterpoint and composition of the entire chain as a whole, so that the theme plays and shimmers with all the colors in compliance with the rules and canons and at the same time in an original way, like no one else, without contradicting the harmony anywhere the whole.

Reng chains were composed impromptu at poetry meetings, when two or more poets chose one of the canonical themes and composed alternate tercets and couplets.

In the Renga chains, the techniques developed in the poetry of Waka (Engo, edjo), etc. could find a relatively more complete expression, since the large volume of Renga as a whole and the preservation at the same time of the poetic form of Tanka and many of its properties made it possible to view the deployment of a set of associations on comparatively broader material. A similar poetic dialogue goes back to the roll-call songs from the Manyoshu (Mondo) anthology. Gradually, the tercets that were part of Renga acquired independent meaning and began to function as works of the new poetic genre of Haiku, and the Renga genre eventually disappeared from the scene, completely losing its independent meaning. Already in the 16th century. the Renga genre virtually ceased to exist.

The greatest poet of Haiku and the best theorist and historian of the genre at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries. Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) believed that the Renga genre played its formative role in the Haiku genre and ceased to exist with the publication of Sokan’s collection “The Collection of Dog Mountain Tsukuba” (Inu tsukuba shu, 1523), an anthology of comic Haiku - haikai. Humor, jokes, and encouragement were at first the constructive elements that breathed new strength into the fading genre, which is why the earliest Haikai tercets are exclusively humorous in nature. The first comic tercets appear already in the 12th century; a section of tercets appears in the anthology Senzai waka shu: ("The Thousand-Year Collection of Japanese Songs", circa 1188), compiled by Fujiwara Shunzei (1114-1204).

The term Haiku was put forward at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century. the fourth great haiku poet and theorist Masaoka Shiki, who attempted to reform the traditional genre. In the XVII-XVIII centuries. Haiku poetry was influenced by the Zen Buddhist “aesthetics of understatement,” which forces the reader and listener to participate in the act of creation. The effect of understatement was achieved, for example, grammatically (Taigendome), so one of the intonation-syntactic means of Haiku - the last line ends with an inconjugated part of speech, and the predicative part of the statement is omitted. In Haiku poetry, a major role was played by the aesthetic principles formulated by Basho in the form of conversations with students and recorded by them: Sabi ("sadness") and Wabi ("simplicity", "simplification"), Karumi ("lightness"), Toriawase ("combination of objects") , Fuei ryuko ("eternal, unchanging and flowing, present").

But this is a topic for other works. The Disappearance of Reng and the Rise of Haiku Historically, the first three lines of Reng, called Haiku and often standing in the second, inverse, place after the couplet, are the predecessors of the three-line Haiku. With the disappearance of the Renga genre from the poetic scene, the three-line Haiku genre comes to the fore and becomes the most revered and widespread genre in Japanese poetry, along with Tanka. This extremely short poetic form of only 17 syllables would seem vulnerable to influence and deformation.

At first glance, unstable, burdened with a whole system of obligatory formants, it turned out to be much more viable. Rang's genre in this case played the role of an initiator, with his help the Tanka, which previously existed as a single formation (although it had a tendency to break), received with the introduction of two-voices the opportunity to split into two parts. The centrifugal role was played by the possibility of using the two parts of the Tank as separate independent parts of the poem, and the first part, the tercet, began to exist independently. Then, having fulfilled its formative role, the Renga genre left the stage.

The main property of Haiku as a poem is that it is dramatically short, shorter than the Tanka pentaverse, and such compression of space creates a special type of timeless, poetic-linguistic field. The main theme of Haiku is nature, the cycle of seasons; outside of this theme, Haiku does not exist. The quintessence of this theme is the so-called Kigo - a “seasonal word”, emblematically denoting the time of year, its presence in a seventeen-syllable poem is felt by the bearer of the tradition as strictly obligatory. No seasonal word - no Haiku. A “seasonal word” is a nerve node that awakens in the reader a series of certain images.

Literature

• 1. Blyth R. H. Haiku: in four volumes. V.: Eastern Culture; V.2: Spring; V.3: Summer-Autumn; V.4: Autumn-Winter. Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1949--1952. - ISBN 0-89346-184-9
• 2. Blyth R. H. A History of Haiku. Vol. 1, From the Beginnings up to Issa. Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1963. - ISBN 0-89346-066-4
• 3. E.M. Dyakonova. Thing in poetry tercet (haiku) / Thing in Japanese culture. - M., 2003. - P. 120--137.

Classical tanka have existed in written (and even longer in oral) form since the 8th century and have undergone many changes. The themes of such tanka are strictly regulated and, as a rule, they are songs of love or separation, songs written just in case or on the way, in which human experiences occur against the backdrop of the changing seasons of the year and are, as it were, fused (or rather, inscribed) into them.

Classic tanka contain five lines of 5 - 7 - 5 - 7 - 7 syllables, respectively, and this small space does not allow the entire associative series that arises in a Japanese reader (or writer) to be translated into other languages. Since tanka contains key words responsible for the emergence of certain associations, by translating all the meanings of these words into other languages, it is possible to achieve an approximate recreation of the original logical chain. It should also be noted that tankas, although they are a poetic form, do not have rhyme.

The tank form has gone through a lot in its lifetime, there have been ups and downs, various collections have been compiled, the very first of which was “Collection of Myriad Leaves” (“Man’yoshu”, 759), containing 4,500 poems. Gradually, tanka anthologies began to be published by order of the emperor, and tanka itself as a genre developed under the watchful eye of court poets.

By the end of the 19th century, tanka turned into rather monotonous repetitions of the same thing, which caused bitterness among adherents of traditions, and a desire to renounce and indignation among pro-Western poets. But it so happened that at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, two completely different poets (Yosano Akiko and Ishikawa Takuboku) were able to introduce new feelings and views into the strictly regulated volume of tanka, creating images that, although intertwined with the classical ones, carried freshness and unwornness .

In Japanese poetry there is another, no less important genre, which is called haiku (hoku). Haiku are three-line verses of 17 syllables, which were traditionally written on one line.

The first haiku appeared in the 12th century - in a comic form. The first poetry anthologies that appeared in the 8th and 10th centuries (The Collection of Myriad Leaves and The Collection of New and Old Songs of Japan) contain tanka poems written in an interesting manner: one poem was written by two authors, for example, the first three lines were written by one author , the last two are different. Or vice versa, the first author wrote two lines, the second author – three. And by the 12th century, these parts of one poem began to acquire independence, which led to the emergence of renga (“linked stanzas”), a genre based on strict rules. The rules of the rank were preserved thanks to the monument of that time - “The Current Mirror” (Ima kachami).

In the 13th century. serious renga began to be contrasted with comic, side trends in this genre. And after the appearance of the anthology “The New Collection of Mount Tsukuba,” renga became popular among townspeople and the peasantry, they included new layers of language, everyday themes, comic situations and common folk humor. This is how a new popular mass genre arose - haikai renga. And famous poets began the habit of leaving the last word for themselves when saying goodbye through a poetic joke - a haikai.

Later, haiku (i.e., the initial three stanzas of renga with 17 syllables) were separated from the renga chains and acquired independent meaning and a serious character. Comic haiku became a thing of the past with the appearance of the poet Matsuo Basho on the literary scene, and haiku itself became an independent serious genre, which, along with tanka, took a leading place in Japanese poetry and in the work of such poets as Yosa Buson and Kobayashi Issa.

The term “haiku” was put forward at the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries. poet and verse theorist Masaoka Shiki, who tried to reform the traditional genre. In the XVII – XVIII centuries. Haiku poetry was influenced by the Zen Buddhist “aesthetics of overstatement,” which forces the reader and listener to participate in the act of creation. In haiku poetry, a major role was played by the aesthetic principles formulated by Basho in the form of conversations with students and recorded by them: sabi (“sadness”) and wabi (“simplicity,” “simplification”), karumi (“lightness”), tariawase (“combination of objects”) , fuei ryuko (“eternal, unchanging and flowing, present”). These and other principles of poetry were developed at the end of the 19th century by the famous poet and verse reformer Masaoka Shiki and his students: Kawahigashi Hekigodo, Naito Meisetsu and Takahama Kyoshi. Masaoka Shiki's theory of haiku verse had a huge impact on the entire world of classical genres in the 20th century and is felt in the work of many poets today. Masaoka sought to preserve and revive the classical genre of tercets, entering into combat with outdated traditions; his main goal was to create a “true landscape”, and not just a schematic picture of nature.

In the era of passion for everything European, another genre arose in the Japanese culture of versification - kindaishi, which means “poetry of a new era.” In our collection, in addition to two classical genres - the tanka quintuple and the haiku tercet, there is another poetic genre - kindaishi, which arose in the era of passion for everything European. Different critics interpret the term "kindaishi" in their own way, but in general, in this case, we can talk about a poem written in the old literary language of Bungo or in the modern colloquial language of Kogo, in which there is an obvious metrical pattern based on traditional rhythmic patterns , although in different combinations.

Lyrical diary literature (nikki) in Japan has always been considered one of the most important genres, and the first work of this genre is recognized as “The Diary of a Journey from Tosa” (c. 935) by the poet and verse theorist Ki no Tsurasyuki. Diaries, as a rule, were not regular, and the entries were reproduced along with poetry. Poems from the relevant period were used, not just poems by the diarist. Moreover, diary entries were not always named explicitly; the title could be “Tale” or “Collected Poems.” A classic example is “On the Paths of the North” by Matsuo Basho - it is clearly a diary, but as we can see, nothing of the kind is written in the title.

The books "The Diary of Izumi Shikibu" and "The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu", two ladies-in-waiting of the imperial court and the best writers of their era, represent the medieval women's tradition of keeping diaries and, along with the "Diary of an Ephemeral Life" by the writer Mititsuna no haha, as well as the "Diary of a Travel to Tosa" consists of the four best diaries of the Heian era (IX - XI centuries). The diaries also include the poetic “Unsolicited Tale” of the 13th century. writers Nijo. All these inimitable examples of diary literature, pearls of Japanese literature, glorified this genre and created some of its laws. And in the 20th century, nikki found new life in the pages of works such as “Diary Written in Latin” by the wonderful tanka poet Ishikawa Takuboku.