"O snail
Climb Mount Fuji
But slowly, Slowly!"
-Issa
When Zooey enters Seymour and Buddy's room to call Franney and pull her from her funk, Zooey reads a board full of philosophical and literary allusions that had in someway inspired either Seymour and Buddy back when they lived in the Glass House. One of the quotes was the one above. It inspired me not only because it is sort of witty but also because it didn't seem to follow the pattern for composing Haiku I had learned in Elementary School. So I shuffled though series of books of Japanese Haiku and found that they did not follow a pattern at all. And so began the search to understand why.
I found firstly that it was partly because of the translation from japanese to english. The structure of the poem had been skewed in the transformation to english.
Secondly, I found that because of the differences in languages the Japanese style of Haiku is composed slightly different from English Haiku. Japanese Haiku still follows that 5-7-5 pattern that everyone is in love with but instead of the numbers representing syllables, they represent letter sounds. So, for example, the word 'Mount' in English Haiku would count for one syllable while 'mount' in Japanese Haiku is counted for three letter sounds.
I found firstly that it was partly because of the translation from japanese to english. The structure of the poem had been skewed in the transformation to english.
Secondly, I found that because of the differences in languages the Japanese style of Haiku is composed slightly different from English Haiku. Japanese Haiku still follows that 5-7-5 pattern that everyone is in love with but instead of the numbers representing syllables, they represent letter sounds. So, for example, the word 'Mount' in English Haiku would count for one syllable while 'mount' in Japanese Haiku is counted for three letter sounds.
RSS Feed