Subject: Haiku, wakas et al..
From: Sundeep Dougal (holden@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in)
Date: Wed Mar 12 1997 - 16:38:07 GMT
Without presuming to know much about haikus or, indeed, even how to
determine the number of syllables in English (since syllables, to my
knowledge, are pronunciation-based), I do remember being pretty worked up
about the 5-7-5 structure myself till it dawned on me that the _Haikus_ I
was reading supposedly by Basho, Buson, Issa etc. are actually
translations, and that's why not necessarily even in the 17-syllable
form.
(Japanese is highly polysyllabic, and translations therefore end up using
a lot more Latinized words, which are generally less sympathetic than the
Anglo-Saxon...)
The strict disciplinee of structure and form therefore is difficult to
achieve in English and since I can't seem to find my copy of RHTRB & SAI,
I am not sure whether Seymour's "Haiku"s are infact claimed to be
translations from Japanese or written in English itself (Seymour, among
other things, is meant to be multilingual too, remember? Or is it my
omniscient image of Seymour--mixing memory with desire!--that makes me
remember him thus? Lemme find my texts and see if Seymour's purportedly
written them in Japanese or English...
On a somewhat unrelated (but hopefully, atleast tangentially interesting)
topic, I came across the following (Apologies to those who have already
read it/think it ought not have been here.) ode to the Waka:
<>!*''#
<>!*''#
^@`$$-
!*'$_
%*<>#4
&)../
|{~~SYSTEM HALTED
Apparently it is read as follows:
Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
Caret at back-tick dollar dollar dash,
Bang splat tick dollar under-score,
Percent splat waka waka number four,
Ampersand right-paren dot dot slash,
Vertical-bar curly-bracket tilde tilde CRASH.
<This poem by Lee Leitner of Infocus magazine.>
Consider:
"Shriek" or "bang" for !. That Siamese-twin thing with a
question mark superimposed is called an "interrobang."
"Up" for upward-pointing caret, "waka" if aimed sideways.
"Twiddle" for tilde.
"String" or "dollar" for $.
"Splat" for asterisk (well, look at it!).
"Dot" for period.
"Cereal" for ampersand.
"Sharp" or "hash" for pound sign (phone company vets call it
"octothorpe," of mysterious etymology).
"Tick" and "back-tick" for the single quote.
Lexicographers hold that "ampersand" derives from "and per se and." You
could look it up.
Ancient printers named the em space "molly" and the en space "nut."
"jot and tittle." Jot is the dot on a letter i and Tittle is the cross of
a letter T.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Sundeep Dougal (Sonny, to friends) Holden Caulfield, New Delhi, INDIA
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