Open to all!
Closing date: 31st December, 2008
First Prize
NZ$250
2 Runners-up prizes of NZ$100 each
Judge:
Tony Beyer
Send entries to:
The Kokako Tanka Competition,
Patricia Prime, co-editor
42 Flanshaw Road
Te Atatu South
Auckland 8
New Zealand
Please make cheques out to Kokako
Overseas entrants may send cash at their own risk
Conditions of entry
1. Tanka must be previously unpublished and not under consideration elsewhere.
2. Entry fee is NZ$2 per tanka or 3 for NZ$5; for overseas entries, US$1 per tanka, or 4 for US$3. Any number of entries.
3. Send two copies of each tanka, or group of tanka, with your name and address on one copy only.
4. Winning tanka and commended entries will be published in Kokako 10 (April, 2009).
5. Winners will be notified by mail.
6. Any theme is acceptable.
Any queries, email: pprime@ihug.co.nz
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Comfort Procust
The poet Ion Untaru comes to the Universe of Poetry from the rigorous world of numbers. This fact cannot be neglected if we want to see his true portrait. In him coexist two egos (beings). Thirsty spirit for real world, characteristic of all people working in the field of science – he is a graduate of the Economical Sciences Academy of Bucharest - doubled by the poetical nature makes a genuine poet of a sensitive artistical soul which knows to observe beauties and sadness of nature and society.
His artistic personality, strong but contorted as the statuary Laokoon group predicted ever since his first book „Mister Liszt” (Publishing House Amurg sentimental, 1994) appeared, divided into two parts: „Walking with the coach” and „Lamentation of the nightingale”.
His poetical universe is here constituted, and his poems always reflect nature and society. Nature expires him to write exotic and succinct but concentrated haiku poems, while the society is an inexhaustible source of his senryu poems. The expression „One eye is laughing and the other is crying” is very well adapted to these two literary forms, coming from the Country of the Rising Sun.
Both in prose and in poetry the writer Ion Untaru knows how to organically join the two sides of human existence, life and death. He enjoys the incomparable nature, assuming the great or little dramas, so many in fact, of his fellow people. Even though, from the beginning, he seats himself under Bacovia’s zodiacal sign, the Romanian classic closest to haiku.
The graveyards are flooded
We’re closed in our houses
Father and mother and daughter
All of them, praying in vain
Look here sweetheart how cold are
Our hands dead people weep
None of us is really old,
No chance to get out bold
The poet’s soul is rich. It frets, laments, contemplates, admires. His frame of mind is not easy to quantify nor to put into moulds. The man of rigorous, right numbers, after his free verse period, is in a continuous search of forms able to better express the truth. I mean the artistic truth. Like an athlete which begins the marathon to reach the top of his career with a hundred meters. His endeavors can be compared with the hard work of a sculptor passing from his great breadth to miniature works. As the size decreases, the value of the work increases. How much sawdust is made when a sculptor gives life to a child head, for instance? And how many words a poet is to get rid off or to transfigure to eventually get a jewel the size and magnificence of a sonnet, roundel or haiku?
Only a poet who have tried, like the legendary Procust, to bring everything to the same size, to a common denominator, speaking in mathematical terms, does know it. Ion Untaru is one of these poets who times words, gathering them in the fold of fixed form poems.
Such an example is „Flower of Lotus” (Semne, 2006). This book contains 148 poems, each consisting of quatrains. An immense number of verses - 3960. The author has managed to avoid monotony. The mould is the same, but the content is varied. Writing in the atmosphere of his fellow Ion Barbu, the poet of lotus flower (often met in haiku poetry), he resurrects the old Balkan world. A lot of words and syntagms have the aroma of old wine preserved in mulberry wood barrels: old accordions, romances with music perfume, sensation in fauburg, confused bonnet, tapestries of old Bucharest, the fees‘coach in trot, boots, bazaars, grinder, a castle man, a map of a military Roman camp. And so it continues. The summary of „The Old Book” by Geo Bogza can be read as an independent poem. The quasitotality of titles of these 148 poems in a specific immutable form created by him, are poetical by themselves and all of them could be considered poetry: The blind artist was painting a nu, The Solitude of the great pictures, Falling asleep with silence in my hand, History is but a reptile, Violin concerto of a cricket, The grinder at the coin of the street, Great chars with tilts, Silence as a corrugated paper, A Butterfly or may be a fee, I kiss and break this sword. Such poetry does contain some verses particularly beautiful which can exist for themselves, like a pillatian poem written in one verse: My celestial chain of jewels, The Moon was descending like a battle ax, The life is flowing the sky into inkpot...
Next come his sonnets. Ion Untaru has written them ever since the 80’s. In his debut thin booklet, mentioned above, he tried to feel the sea with his finger, publishing two sonnets: „The world axes” and „Matrimonials”. Only a year later, he has achieved the true measure in this field of maximal formal restrictions, allowing him to free his imagination. „Invitation to the castle” (Sagittarius, foreword by Marcel Crihană), contains 132 sonnets. As a pure statistical fact, the „Invitation” has 12 sonnets less than the great Will has written. Their elaboration took place, I suppose, in longer torments. Lucian Blaga says in „Quatrain”: „No song is easy. Day / and night – nothing is easy on earth: / that dew is the sweat of nightingales / which have labored all night singing”.
It is not easy to cut legs, even though they are not of flesh and bones, but of words, and to put them in a mould to stay there for a long time, aiming sometimes at eternity. You confer them, it is a comfortable bed, Procust’s bed. „The Comfort” of the poet, the surgeon of these operations of amputation and implant, is not easy to resume in words. Ion Untaru does this in his manner in his sonnet „Instrumentaire”, opening the volume:
So many words assault
The most engraved hidden from you
Where to find better ones and to whom
to offer them daily without fault?
Smelling almond and too
Dark night in sleep, stars on the vault
Through meanings almost one somersault
You quickly find him like a yahoo
To reach the haiku poem of Japanese origin, which aims at the very essence of poetry, Ion Untaru have passed through various custom barriers. A custom for words. Metaphorically speaking, he worked with an electronic balance and a dropper, knowing how to renounce of every unnecessary word and to retain only noble metal. Because pure gold is reserved only for the Creator, as people say.
It seemed that the last variant was roundel, that Al. Macedonski had improved to the highest degree in Romanian poetry – the beginning of the haiku movement in Romania.
In roundel as well in sonnet the imagination of Ion Untaru has no limits. He dedicates roundel to love, tenderness, to a book which opens with hazard, to the organ man (grinder), bells, two to the rain, three to coffee and so on. To decrease the ardor and selection of themes, would be to reduce them in favor of a fashionable content and its depth. Very expressive is the roundel of spring coming late contained in his volume “The Fountain in which souls are seen”. If we look carefully, we shall find in a single quatrain seven elements common to haiku poetry, with many a kigo:
Once again our spring is late
With shining sun and rain for flowers
With insects, butterflies as a dower
And I miss dear cranes from my gate
It wasn’t to be so. Ion Untaru, together with Radu Patrichi, has created a tanrenga, tanka written by two authors. It’s called “From the secrets of friendship” (Amurg sentimental, 2006) and has been written by the two men who have never met in reality.
Ion’s travel from classical poetry to haiku lasted ten years. All his experience determined him to start on a new literary path. Although he doesn’t know all the secrets of the matter, he has had success from his debut pocketbook “Picking up stars” (Ambasador, Târgu Mureş, 2004) he has published as an independent haijin, having much to tell. In his vision, a poet is like a blossoming sweet cherry tree knocking on the window. Pick me up, people, it seems he is telling us in a specific wordless language. He generously offers us his poems instead of fruits:
Before the mirrorwith cherries to the earsa teen-age girl
Even though the Procust’s (Lilliputians) size of the haiku are not entirely fulfilled, the poet creates his poems with touching fragments of life. Formal imperfection is balanced by internal tension posted on such little space. Look how natural two fiancés are, although represented only by their shadows:
Fiancés on the foot bridgetheir shadowsshake hands
The pocketbooks „Prepeleac with moon” and „Inscriptions on the grain of rice”, issued a year later by the same publishing house, the „Haiku” collection edited by Ioan Găbudean, and the latest one confirm the quality of the haijin Mr. Ion Untaru. It rarely happens that one easily write a haiku. Despite its Lilliputian size, concentrating more and more ideas and feelings by less and less words, as even the poet confesses in this sentence:
The wholesterile mountainfor only one haiku
The poet seems to be secluded. In other times he would have been a hermit, a recluse. As there are no caverns, as he says, he exalted himself in the middle of the city, not in a nacre tower. This means an inside exile, sad, without higher hopes, but fruitful. Because solitude is sine qua non for creation.
If up to now he has not become a well-known haijin, his “Birds and words” will enable him to take a good place in the Haiku Constellation of the Romanian language.
After his honorable economist career, Ion Untaru is building his literary career accounting stars and numbering words.
VASILE MOLDOVAN
(English version by Ion Untaru)
His artistic personality, strong but contorted as the statuary Laokoon group predicted ever since his first book „Mister Liszt” (Publishing House Amurg sentimental, 1994) appeared, divided into two parts: „Walking with the coach” and „Lamentation of the nightingale”.
His poetical universe is here constituted, and his poems always reflect nature and society. Nature expires him to write exotic and succinct but concentrated haiku poems, while the society is an inexhaustible source of his senryu poems. The expression „One eye is laughing and the other is crying” is very well adapted to these two literary forms, coming from the Country of the Rising Sun.
Both in prose and in poetry the writer Ion Untaru knows how to organically join the two sides of human existence, life and death. He enjoys the incomparable nature, assuming the great or little dramas, so many in fact, of his fellow people. Even though, from the beginning, he seats himself under Bacovia’s zodiacal sign, the Romanian classic closest to haiku.
The graveyards are flooded
We’re closed in our houses
Father and mother and daughter
All of them, praying in vain
Look here sweetheart how cold are
Our hands dead people weep
None of us is really old,
No chance to get out bold
The poet’s soul is rich. It frets, laments, contemplates, admires. His frame of mind is not easy to quantify nor to put into moulds. The man of rigorous, right numbers, after his free verse period, is in a continuous search of forms able to better express the truth. I mean the artistic truth. Like an athlete which begins the marathon to reach the top of his career with a hundred meters. His endeavors can be compared with the hard work of a sculptor passing from his great breadth to miniature works. As the size decreases, the value of the work increases. How much sawdust is made when a sculptor gives life to a child head, for instance? And how many words a poet is to get rid off or to transfigure to eventually get a jewel the size and magnificence of a sonnet, roundel or haiku?
Only a poet who have tried, like the legendary Procust, to bring everything to the same size, to a common denominator, speaking in mathematical terms, does know it. Ion Untaru is one of these poets who times words, gathering them in the fold of fixed form poems.
Such an example is „Flower of Lotus” (Semne, 2006). This book contains 148 poems, each consisting of quatrains. An immense number of verses - 3960. The author has managed to avoid monotony. The mould is the same, but the content is varied. Writing in the atmosphere of his fellow Ion Barbu, the poet of lotus flower (often met in haiku poetry), he resurrects the old Balkan world. A lot of words and syntagms have the aroma of old wine preserved in mulberry wood barrels: old accordions, romances with music perfume, sensation in fauburg, confused bonnet, tapestries of old Bucharest, the fees‘coach in trot, boots, bazaars, grinder, a castle man, a map of a military Roman camp. And so it continues. The summary of „The Old Book” by Geo Bogza can be read as an independent poem. The quasitotality of titles of these 148 poems in a specific immutable form created by him, are poetical by themselves and all of them could be considered poetry: The blind artist was painting a nu, The Solitude of the great pictures, Falling asleep with silence in my hand, History is but a reptile, Violin concerto of a cricket, The grinder at the coin of the street, Great chars with tilts, Silence as a corrugated paper, A Butterfly or may be a fee, I kiss and break this sword. Such poetry does contain some verses particularly beautiful which can exist for themselves, like a pillatian poem written in one verse: My celestial chain of jewels, The Moon was descending like a battle ax, The life is flowing the sky into inkpot...
Next come his sonnets. Ion Untaru has written them ever since the 80’s. In his debut thin booklet, mentioned above, he tried to feel the sea with his finger, publishing two sonnets: „The world axes” and „Matrimonials”. Only a year later, he has achieved the true measure in this field of maximal formal restrictions, allowing him to free his imagination. „Invitation to the castle” (Sagittarius, foreword by Marcel Crihană), contains 132 sonnets. As a pure statistical fact, the „Invitation” has 12 sonnets less than the great Will has written. Their elaboration took place, I suppose, in longer torments. Lucian Blaga says in „Quatrain”: „No song is easy. Day / and night – nothing is easy on earth: / that dew is the sweat of nightingales / which have labored all night singing”.
It is not easy to cut legs, even though they are not of flesh and bones, but of words, and to put them in a mould to stay there for a long time, aiming sometimes at eternity. You confer them, it is a comfortable bed, Procust’s bed. „The Comfort” of the poet, the surgeon of these operations of amputation and implant, is not easy to resume in words. Ion Untaru does this in his manner in his sonnet „Instrumentaire”, opening the volume:
So many words assault
The most engraved hidden from you
Where to find better ones and to whom
to offer them daily without fault?
Smelling almond and too
Dark night in sleep, stars on the vault
Through meanings almost one somersault
You quickly find him like a yahoo
To reach the haiku poem of Japanese origin, which aims at the very essence of poetry, Ion Untaru have passed through various custom barriers. A custom for words. Metaphorically speaking, he worked with an electronic balance and a dropper, knowing how to renounce of every unnecessary word and to retain only noble metal. Because pure gold is reserved only for the Creator, as people say.
It seemed that the last variant was roundel, that Al. Macedonski had improved to the highest degree in Romanian poetry – the beginning of the haiku movement in Romania.
In roundel as well in sonnet the imagination of Ion Untaru has no limits. He dedicates roundel to love, tenderness, to a book which opens with hazard, to the organ man (grinder), bells, two to the rain, three to coffee and so on. To decrease the ardor and selection of themes, would be to reduce them in favor of a fashionable content and its depth. Very expressive is the roundel of spring coming late contained in his volume “The Fountain in which souls are seen”. If we look carefully, we shall find in a single quatrain seven elements common to haiku poetry, with many a kigo:
Once again our spring is late
With shining sun and rain for flowers
With insects, butterflies as a dower
And I miss dear cranes from my gate
It wasn’t to be so. Ion Untaru, together with Radu Patrichi, has created a tanrenga, tanka written by two authors. It’s called “From the secrets of friendship” (Amurg sentimental, 2006) and has been written by the two men who have never met in reality.
Ion’s travel from classical poetry to haiku lasted ten years. All his experience determined him to start on a new literary path. Although he doesn’t know all the secrets of the matter, he has had success from his debut pocketbook “Picking up stars” (Ambasador, Târgu Mureş, 2004) he has published as an independent haijin, having much to tell. In his vision, a poet is like a blossoming sweet cherry tree knocking on the window. Pick me up, people, it seems he is telling us in a specific wordless language. He generously offers us his poems instead of fruits:
Before the mirrorwith cherries to the earsa teen-age girl
Even though the Procust’s (Lilliputians) size of the haiku are not entirely fulfilled, the poet creates his poems with touching fragments of life. Formal imperfection is balanced by internal tension posted on such little space. Look how natural two fiancés are, although represented only by their shadows:
Fiancés on the foot bridgetheir shadowsshake hands
The pocketbooks „Prepeleac with moon” and „Inscriptions on the grain of rice”, issued a year later by the same publishing house, the „Haiku” collection edited by Ioan Găbudean, and the latest one confirm the quality of the haijin Mr. Ion Untaru. It rarely happens that one easily write a haiku. Despite its Lilliputian size, concentrating more and more ideas and feelings by less and less words, as even the poet confesses in this sentence:
The wholesterile mountainfor only one haiku
The poet seems to be secluded. In other times he would have been a hermit, a recluse. As there are no caverns, as he says, he exalted himself in the middle of the city, not in a nacre tower. This means an inside exile, sad, without higher hopes, but fruitful. Because solitude is sine qua non for creation.
If up to now he has not become a well-known haijin, his “Birds and words” will enable him to take a good place in the Haiku Constellation of the Romanian language.
After his honorable economist career, Ion Untaru is building his literary career accounting stars and numbering words.
VASILE MOLDOVAN
(English version by Ion Untaru)
Monday, November 17, 2008
WINNERS OF ROMANIAN MONTHLY KUKAI JUNE 2008
We go on to publish our winners. These are the awarded poems at Romanian Kukai contest for June 2008. The theme of the contest was skylark.
First place
the skylark's song
towards the sun
Henriette Berge
Second place
A skylark -
suddenly the blue
so much deep
Eduard Ţară
Soaring –
the song of a lark
opens the sky
Vali Iancu
Nestling lark -
the shadow of a hawk
in the distance
Livia Ciupav
Third place
A skylark
with the first dew drops
clearing his throat
Ioan Marinescu-Puiu
Sleepless night
listening to a lark
lone on the porch
Ion Untaru
Following the field -
the skylarks still drop
towards it
Mircea Teculescu
Dancing with the sky,
dissipation of shadows and trill -
a lark
Victoria Chiţoveanu
Day of June -
uniting with the sky
a lark
Dumitru Radu
Translation made by Magdalena Dale. We are not native English speakers. In this way we will appreciate if you will point out the possible mistakes of the English version of our poems.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
THE RESULTS OF THE INTERNATIONAL HAIKU CONTEST “ONE THOUSAND CRANES” ROMANIA 2008
THE RESULTS OF
THE INTERNATIONAL HAIKU CONTEST
“ONE THOUSAND CRANES”
ROMANIA 2008
93 participants, 32 countries from all the continents (except Antarctica): USA (15), Croatia (11), Romania (11), Brazil (5), Canada (5), Argentina (4), France (4), New Zealand (4), Australia (2), Belgium (2), Bosnia and Herzegovina (2), Germany (2), Japan (2), Serbia (2), Spain (2), Sweden (2), Trinidad and Tobago (2), United Kingdom (2), Austria (1), Bulgaria (1), Finland (1), Hungary (1), India (1), Ireland (1), Italy (1), Kosovo Republic (1), Mexico (1), Nigeria (1), Poland (1), Portugal (1), Switzerland (1), Vietnam (1).
Mrs. Viorica DOBRE, Headmaster of The “Miron Costin” Highschool Iaşi,
Mr. Aleksandr LEVASHOV, Founder of The “International Art Partnership”,
and Mr. Eduard ŢARĂ, Member of The “Romanian Haiku Society”
announce the winning poems of the International Haiku Contest
“One Thousand Cranes” ROMANIA 2008
which were selected by the jury made up of the Founders of the Romanian Kukai Monthly Contest
Mr. Corneliu Traian ATANASIU (Jury President)
and Mrs. Magdalena DALE (Jury Member)
THEME: ORIGAMI
The First Prize
Listening to the flight
of a thousand white paper cranes...
a blind war veteran
Vasile MOLDOVAN
The Second Prize
her first paper swan—
a bit of milkweed floss caught
inside the wing's fold
Ferris GILLI
The Third Prize
old men gathering:
still folding and unfolding
origami cranes
Oana Aurora POSNAIEŞ
Honourable Commendation
origami cranes
going away with the wind –
a morning prayer
Simona DOBRESCU-CRĂCIUN
THEME: MISCELLANEOUS
The First Prize
a long-fallen fir
shorn of needles and branches...
the glint of a star
Scott MASON
Chappaqua, THE
The Second Prize
Blossoms everywhere.
For the first time outdoors
with a white cane.
Frans TERRYN
The Third Prize
mid-autumn stillness
a lonely young crow's wing tips
reddened with the light
Bruce ROSS
Honourable Commendation
Rowing on the
before my eyes and behind me
the shine of Milky Way
Vasile MOLDOVAN
Honourable Commendation
morning on the pond
a cloud and water lily
touching each other
Boris NAZANSKY
The Organizing Committee of the Contest made up of:
Mrs. Viorica DOBRE, Headmaster of The “Miron Costin” Highschool Iaşi,
Mr. Aleksandr LEVASHOV, Founder of The “International Art Partnership”,
and Mr. Eduard ŢARĂ, Member of The “Romanian Haiku Society”
decided to select three poems for the special prizes
Origami Peace Tree Prize
origami frog:
what old pond is he hoping
to find in the dusk?
William J. HIGGINSON
Origami Peace Tree Prize
recycled paper
the origami heron
becoming a swan
Origami Peace Tree Prize
the rainy season--
a paper dragonfly
slowly unfolds
Jim KACIAN
Monday, August 4, 2008
WINNERS OF ROMANIAN MONTHLY KUKAI MAY 2008
We go on to publish our winners. These are the awarded poems at Romanian Kukai contest for May 2008. The theme of the contest was lime tree.
First place
only the lime fragrance
passes the street
Ioan Marinescu-Puiu
Old woman’s house
only the fragrance of lime
passes her threshold
Livia Ciupav
Second place
A lime branch
looking beyond the wall
for the first time
Eduard Ţară
First day school –
in the lime hollow
two satchels
Dan Norea
Third place
Edge of the night
the last lime blossom
in a winding flight
Gabriela Marcian
Bent by the times
forgotten by the poets
the lime in Copou.
Dumitru Roşu
Translation made by Magdalena Dale. We are not native English speakers. In this way we will appreciate if you will point out the possible mistakes of the English version of our poems
Friday, August 1, 2008
HAIKU IN ROMANIA: Vasile Moldovan's Speech for WHAC4. Translation Magdalena Dale, Romania
BEGINNINGS
In Romania, the first knowledge of Nippon poetry was in 1878 at the end of the Romanian Independence War. The first poetic book of haiku appeared in the year 1063 in Vienna and the first haiku thin booklets appeared in 1882 in Paris, France, and in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia in 1887. The Romanian ruler Carol I, received two documents from a Japanese prince, one written with Latin letters and the other one with ideograms, both of them contained verses. The quality of the paper and the finesse of the calligraphy have incited the young ruler’s curiosity. For the interpretation of these strange messages, he turned to the scholar Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, the director of the State Archives. It is said that Hasdeu told the ruler: “Sire, as far as I can tell these are little poems, which I can’t decipher them by myself. I know a Chinese gardener. Please, give my time to find him and construe together the messages.” The Romanian scholar ascertained with surprise, that those texts although written with Chinese ideograms, were in fact Nippon poems, tanka and haiku.
Two great poets of the epoch were visibly influenced by the exotic oriental poetry. V. Alecsandri had confessed to his friend I. Ghica (several times prime minister of Romania) that he intends to travel to Japan, being fascinated by its painting and poetry. His precarious health and his premature end hindered him reaching the country of Sun Rise. At the end of his life he had written the masterpiece of his literary career, the tome “Pastels”. V. Alecsandri has created a new poetical genre in Romanian literature – the pastel (of pictural manner) inspired from the Chinese poetry about nature and Japanese haiku. He had read Chinese poetry in French translation while working in the capital of France as a diplomat.
While in Paris, Al. Macedonski, another classic of the Romanian literature, discovered Japanese literature. We have kept four haiku of his in Romanian language in a manuscript. Al. Macedonski has given fame to a fix form of poetry, the roundel. His masterpiece “The poem of the roundels”, published posthumously in 1925 contains more poems about the Japanese art and civilization: “The water roundel from the Japanese yard”, “The roundel of the Japanese Sea”, “Chrysanthemum roundel” and the “Ioshiwara roundel”.
After diplomatic relations were establishment between Romania and Japan in 1902, numerous conferences about Japanese civilization and poetry took place; numerous travel books were edited in Japan. Many of these works contain distinct chapters about tanka and haiku. The first essays about tanka and haiku have appeared in the “Literary Event” magazine from Iasi, in 1904. In the same year, the poet Al. Vlahuta published in the “By the fireside” volume an essay “The Japanese poetry and painting” which contained numerous tanka and haiku poems.
If from Macedonski we have the first haiku in manuscript, Al. T. Stamatiad has published the first haiku poems in Romanian language, (twelve in total) in the “Tender landscape” anthology. The novelty was so great that this anthology was dignified with the highest cultural distinction of the time, “The Romanian Academy Prize”.
A ROMANIAN RESPONSE
But there were also other kinds of echoes. The poet Ion Pillat responded in a very original way. A long time ago he had written the poem “From samisen” inspired from Japanese reality.
Mount Fuji, Mount Fuji,
Over you fly the clouds
White storks, black storks,
With stretched wings
My love is sieved softly
On Kummamoto’s paths,
At Kitzumo, time and time,
The wind covers up all my past with snow
Samisen with two strings,
I touch you trembling, and you tremble too:
Ancient string, young soul,
Both are breaking.
Near the ancient temple in Nikko
There is a lake, and its mirror,
Like a water lily over water lilies,
The gilded countenance of Buddha…
This time he thought of giving a Romanian response to the Nippon haiku. And he created a new genre as short and concentrated as haiku, which was framed in European aesthetics. He wrote a new book, the most original of all, “The one line poems” in the last part of the year 1935 and published it at the beginning of the next year. Unlike the haiku poem, the one line poem had a title. If haiku has 17 syllables, Pillat’s poem has 13 or 14, but if we add the syllables from the title, usually very short, we have the same 17 number of syllables. The single verse of the poem has about half implied caesura, marked by a punctuation sign or a blank space, corresponding to kireji from haiku. In the Foreword, Pillat writes that the one line poem although it resembles haikai is different from it. The Romanian reply of haiku after Ion Pillat, represents:
„A single verse, born and not made, carried around for years, often unconsciously, filtering years of passion, summarizing in it many, unwritten, verses, and so many faces and places, able to render the traveling secret of the poetry, reduced to its single wealth, to be empty and eternal...the poetry which has reached such a despoilment, offers to the reader the highest delectation, but requests in change a constant and intimate collaboration. The less the poet has written, the more the reader has to read... a long poem can be read in a hurry, because each verse helps to understand and enjoy the next one. A single verse is to be read slowly. The letters are read quickly, but the telegram stops us”.
The one line poem, genre created by Ion Pillat, constitutes a living page of literary history. It is a challenge, in the good meaning of the word. Many contemporary Romanian poets have distinguished themselves alike in both genres: Dan Florica, Dumitru Radu, Bogdan I. Pascu, Utta Siegried – Konig, Ioan Marinescu (Romania), Stefan Teodoru and Floretin Smarandache (SUA).
TRANSLATIONS AND TRANSLATORS
The preoccupations for the propagation of the one line poem appeared in the same time with the translations from Japanese literature. The first haiku anthology appeared seventy years ago at Cernautzi (this city is today Ukraine territory). The publisher of the edition, inspired the poet Traian Chelariu, to name the anthology “Nippon soul”. By the quality of the translation and selection, the work presented for the first time the quintessence of the Japanese soul. The book was a real revelation, in our day it has become a rare bibliophile. Traian Chelaru has translated haiku from the German language. He has wanted to respect scrupulously even in the Romanian language, haiku poetics as well as in the Japanese language and in the German language. All haiku have respected the classic pattern 5-7-5 syllables with one exception. The single poem that did not respect entirely this pattern (only one syllable missing) was “exiled” at the bottom of the page with an excuse: “The translation is faithful, but inadequate with 17 syllables of haiku”. This strictness of the first haiku translator in the Romanian language has influenced the poets that have come after. The majority of the haiku Romanian poets try to respect stringently the classic pattern, often in damage of the content.
Seven years later, in 1942, in the midst of war, Al. T. Stamatiad publishes the tanka anthology “Nippon courtesan songs”. One year later, he translated from French an ample tanka and haiku anthology from the beginning until in those days, entitled “Silk scarves”. Although it had appeared in unfavorable time for literature, “Silk scarves” had a good reception from the general readers and from literary critique. As a result of the numerous favorable critiques, the work was distinguished with “The Romanian Academy Award”.
Imposition by the political conjuncture followed a hiatus in haiku reception and writing. In the 1970(s) a new opening to the Nippon lyric occurred. During a decade, three anthologies in seven volumes of tanka and haiku appeared. The editors of these anthologies were Ion Acsan and Dan Constantinescu who translated as Traian Chelariu from the German language. Nowadays Ion Acsan is the honorable president of the Roumanian Society of Haiku. The appearance of these anthologies in many editions produces a real emulation among the poets. Some of them have written haiku before year 1989, such as Nichita Stanescu and Marin Sorescu. Both of them are poets with international confirmation and candidates to the Nobel Prize. However, haiku was written sporadically and with uncertainty. The poets already had the patterns but they didn’t know very well the poetics of haiku. The authorities from that time didn’t like haiku, considering it a subversive literary genre. The allusions, the word-plays brought the politicians anxieties. So, the first works in the Romanian language appeared outside of the country borders.
MAGAZINES AND PRINTING HOUSES, SOCIETIES AND LITERARY CIRCLES
But the real opening to the promotion of haiku occurred in the year 1989 when the totalitarian regime was removed. Towards the end of that year, Florin Vasiliu, a Romanian diplomat who worked for a while in Japan published the book “Haiku constellation. Lyric interferences”. This book represented a real foundation stone for Romanian haiku. Well informed directly from the haiku source, the Romanian essayist wrote a complex work interweaving literary history with poetics of the genre. It is a guide book for the deciphering and writing of the haiku poem, with essential dates that are available even in our days. Some chapters were taken over and developed. Until the end of his life, the Romanian exegete had published twelve history books and haiku poetics. We may say that Romanian poets have a rich bibliography that helps them write haiku, knowing very well, haiku poetics.
In March 1990, Florin Vasiliu founded the “Haiku Magazine of Romanian-Japanese Relationships”, one of the first profile publications in Europe. At the beginning, the magazine was quarterly and was edited in 8,000 copies. For some time now it appears half-yearly and prints only under 1000 copies. In the editing board of the “Haiku magazine” there were renowned writers, like Marin Sorescu in the period when he was the minister of Culture. The editing board of the magazine has formed the nucleus of “Roumanian Society of Haiku” (RSH) formed one year later, on 19 March 1991. The Romanian Society of Haiku (RSH) was set up at the national level and included about 200 members. Shortly after several literary circles were formed in the country. In 1992 the HAIKU publishing house was set up. For a decade, this publishing house gained a good name and published several thin booklets with haiku and one line verse poems, most of them being printed in three languages: Romanian, English and French. When its activity ceased, the poetess Cornelia Atanasiu founded a new one, specialized in haiku, ALCOR.
Later, Haiku Societies were set up around the country… the Haiku Society from Constantza founded by poet and artist Ion Codrescu, was the first, in 1992. Also in 1992, the Haiku Magazine from Constanta, Albatross, began printing in both (Romanian / English).
In 1995, Serban Codrin, a very good poet especially of tanka and renga, founded Tanka, Renga and Haiku School in Slobozia. This school published two magazine: “Orion” and “Little Orion”, the latter having been dedicated exclusively to linked poem (renku).
At Targu Mures, the poet Ioan Gabudean founded the Haiku Club “Ephemeral joys” bringing together about 80 poets, especially from Transilvania. He edited two magazines: “Orpheus” and “Beautiful pictures”, the second one being dedicated to the pupils. He also started AMBASADOR publishing house, whos has printed almost one hundred haiku, senryu and tanka thin booklets and one line poems, most of them in English or French. Haiku magazines have appeared in towns like Piatra – Neamt and Targoviste. From the nine haiku periodical publications, three have survived, concentrating mostly on haiku poets.
OPENINGS
Simultaneously with approval on a national level our poets have tried also to assert themselves on an international level. Early issues of Haiku magazine published a Romanian from…. Sweden. Soon after beginning, the Romanian Society of Haiku and the Haiku Society from Constantza affiliated with the Haiku International Association (HIA).
In 1993, the president of the HIA, Mr. Sono Uchida met with the poets of the haiku literary circle from Bucharest. He was impressed by the expanse of haiku in Romania. Individually, the poets Florin Vasiliu, Ion Codrescu, Marian Nicolae Tomi later visited Japan to learn haiku from its sources. Once they returned home, the three poets shared from their experience gained in the haiku homeland.
In 2004 Marian Nicolae Tomi visited Japan as a First Prize winner of the International “Kusamakura” Haiku Competition in Kumamoto. The experience of his trip has since been materialized in the haiku, tanka and gunsaku book “Flying to Kumamoto”.
Since 1989, the Romanian poets have been published frequently in – “HI”, “Ko”, “Ginyu”, “World Haiku” – Japanese haiku magazines and periodical publications of high reputation like “Asahi Shimbun” and “Mainichi Daily News”. For quite some time now, the Romanians are present also in Japanese online publications specialized in haiga “See Haiku Here” edited by Mr. Kuniharu Shimizu and “Photo-Haiku Hallery” edited by Mitsugu Abe.
1994 was an important year for the development of Romanian- Japanese haiku relationship when the Matsuo Basho tricentenary celebration was held in Romania, two international conferences took place, one in Bucharest and one at Constantza.
The materials which were presented at these commemorative symposiums have appeared in the anthology “Round the pond” edited by the president of the Constantza Haiku Society, featured in a special issue of “Haiku Magazine”. Also, in 1994, Florin Vasiliu, President of the “Romanian Society of Haiku” published the reference work “Matsuo Basho – The saint of haiku”.
At the 1994 HIA competition, eight haiku written by seven poets were distinguished with honorable mentions and were published in a special issue of “HI magazine”.
During 1992, 1994, 2005 and 2007, there were four international meetings held at Constantza, (a sister city of Yokohama). At these international meetings several poets from Japan, S.U.A., France, Germany, Bulgaria, Great Britain, and Ireland took part.
Increasingly, every year, more Tomanian poets win international haiku competitions, prizes and honorable mentions. Sonia Maria Coman, at only eleven years old won a prestigious prize, followed by others which have made her well known in the haiku world. She has the honorary title “haiku ambassador” and thus received a congratulation letter from an American president. Today she is eighteen years old and she has won a scholarship to an American university, where she will study Japanese civilization.
Among the other redoubtable competitors, I shall remember Dan Doman, who at one international competition alone won five haiku awards. The poet Eduard Tara is also a real phenomenon, he has won ten or twelve haiku and tanka competitions every year for some time now.
This year, on the initiative of the poet Valentin Nicolitov, secretary of RSH the first international haiku contest was organized in Romania. The contest was a real success. We were glad that we had received submissions from Japan, thanks to who we owe the existence of haiku. From the six prizes awarded to the foreign poets, two of them were awarded to Japanese poets Shinya Ogata and Ban’ya Natsuishi.
The large participation at this Romanian contest and the quality of the poemsreceived, convinced the organizers to publish an anthology containing best haiku received at the contest, entitled “Crickets and chrysanthemums”. (the title taken from the two prize winning haiku, written by a Japanese poetess and a Romanian poet):
The last cricket
is delaying the departure
of the dying man
Eduard Tara – Romania
Wife ill –
simple supper
with a chrysanthenun
Shinya Ogata – Japan
The proceeding is the result of a moment of inspiration of translator Paula Romanescu. . it talks for itself about the creative power of the communication.
UNIVERSAL AND NATIVE SYMBOL
Roumanian poets have adopted many Japanese themes for haiku. An eloquent proof is also the title of the aforesaid anthology. But, Romanian haiku about crickets were written since the very beginning of Romanian haiku. Sonia Coman made her debut with the thin booklet “Listening to the crickets”, Dan Florica has entitled one of his haiku book “Crickets up to the sky” and Serban Codrin has written a haiku which has become famous “Nights without crickets”.
Ioan Gabudean has also published an ample study about the presence of chrysanthemum,(the national Japanese symbol) in the haiku of Roumanian poets. And his own “Chrysanthemum smile” is a title in the literary circle anthology.
The “moon”… is yet another universal theme, which can be founded in many of the creations of the Romanian haijin; Ioan Gabudean entitles a literary circle anthology “The moon from the lake”.
One of the best anthology of the RSH is called “The moon in a thousands bits”. The title was taken a poem by Eduard Tara which won an award in an international contest in Japan.
The famous frog of Basho was another great inspiration for many of us. This made Florin Vasiliu writes an ample and documented study entitled “The frog in Romanian poets’ haiku”, a study which has been published in the volume of critique “Sparks from haiku hearth”.
After his return from the first European haiku congress, that took place at “The Museum of Roses” in Germany, Laura Vaceanu, the president of the Haiku Society from Constantza has set up live discussions with the theme “Celebrating the roses”. And the examples could go on…
But at the same time Romanian poets are in search of their “own” symbols. Romanian poems sometimes refer to our national costume. If Japanese poets talk of the kimono, we, as Roumanian poets find the embroidered peasant blouse, (which is a feast blouse with remarkable flourish) and other traditional pieces of peasant dress to write about.
Also, instead of Buddhist temples or Shinto shrine, some poets bring specific Romanian Christian cultural references, especially the orthodox.
If these elements of folklore and religion are difficult to access, or when a translation has obscured a meaning, or lost the wanted echo, these references are still important for the Romanian readers. The insertion of native symbols has the gift of conforming haiku to the local atmosphere.
These have the role of the father plant in gardening, to which an offshoot from another garden clings to. The cutting and the father plant will fuse organically and will form a single being. A new being who will be as viable as the parts that constitute the whole are stronger. Each is adapted at the “ground” of another language.
Among the many elements which give local color to Romanian haiku, the lime tree is at the head. During May and June this flowery tree has particular beauty. Its flowers have one of the most delicate perfumes.
Eminescu, Romanian national poet has sung the lime and especially its flowers in eternal verse. In our days, a lime tree which has adumbrated his youth is seen by thousands of visitors which love poetry. This fact has been determinate by poetesses Laura Vaceanu, Alexandra Flora Munteanu and Ana Ruse to elaborate a haiku and tanka anthology dedicated to the lime flowers, out of which I cite a poem by Constantin Severin. To Eminescu:
Touching your lime tree
my hand breath through
thousands of leaves
A pleasant surprise is offered to us by the international haiku magazine Ginyu, number 34, which has published a haiku three part about the lime tree by Magdalena Dale out of which I cite:
Longing song…
lime blossoms scattered
on our way
Convinced by the poetic capacity of this venerated tree by a Romanian, the poetess had the initiative to write a renga book to who’s “hero” (personage, protagonist) is the lime tree. The title of the book is “Fragrance of lime”. In our conviction the lime tree may well become our way in haiku of the many ways possible. For now, certainly it is a seasonal term for the late spring and early summer.
A powerful Romanian specific able to represent us among the haiku admirers from other places, where this miraculous tree is quite lesser known and where it perhaps does not have the same appreciation as it does in our culture.
Using alike the recognized symbols of the literary genre and the national specific ones, the Romanian profile poem may be considerate like a little star belonging to the great international haiku constellation.
HAIKU IN ROMANIA
BEGINNINGS
In Romania, the first concerns for knowing the Nippon poetry date from the consolidation period of the Romanian national state. In 1878 at the end of the Independence War, the Romanian ruler Carol I, received two documents from a Japanese prince, one written with Latin letters and the other one with ideograms. Both of them contained verses. The quality of the paper and the finesse of the calligraphy have incited the young ruler’s curiosity. For the interpretation of these strange messages, he turned to the scholar Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, the director of the State Archives. It is said that Hasdeu told the ruler: “Sire, as far as I can tell these are little poems, which I can’t decipher them by myself. I know a Chinese gardener. Please, give my time to find him and construe together the messages.” The Romanian scholar would ascertain with surprise that those texts although written with Chinese ideograms, were in fact Nippon poems, tanka and haiku.
Two great poets of the epoch were visibly influenced by the exotic oriental poetry. V. Alecsandri had confessed to his friend I. Ghica, several times prime minister of Romania that he intends to travel to Japan, being fascinated by its painting and poetry. His precarious health and his premature end hindered him reaching the country of Sun Rise. At the end of his life he had written the masterpiece of his literary career, the tome “Descriptive poems”. V. Alecsandri has created the descriptive poem in Romanian literature, inspired from the Chinese poetry about nature and Japanese haiku. He had read Chinese poetry in French translation while he had worked in the capital of France as a diplomat.
Still in he left, at Paris, Al. Macedonski, another classic of the Romanian literature, discovered the Japanese literature. We have kept from him four haikus in Romanian language in a manuscript. Al. Macedonski has given fame to a fix form of poetry, the rondel. His masterpiece “The poem of the rondels”, published posthumously in 1925 contains more poems about the Japanese art and civilization: “The water rondel from the Japanese yard”, “The rondel of the Japanese Sea”, “Chrysanthemum rondel”, “Ioshiwara rondel”.
After diplomatic relations were establishment between Romania and Japan in 1902 numerous conferences about Japanese civilization and poetry took place; numerous travel books were edited in Japan. Many of these works contain distinct chapters about tanka and haiku. The first essays about tanka and haiku have appeared in the “Literary Event” magazine from Iasi, in 1904. In the same year, the poet Al. Vlahuta published in the “By the stove” volume the essay “The Japanese poetry and painting” which contained numerous tanka and haiku poems.
If from Macedonski we have the first haiku in manuscript, Al. T. Stamatiad has published the first haiku poems in Romanian language, 12 in total. The novelty was so great that the volume “Lyric landscapes” was dignified with the highest cultural distinction of the time, The Romanian Academy Prize.
A ROMANIAN RESPONSE
But there were also other kinds of echoes. The poet Ion Pillat responded in a very original way. A long time ago he had written the poem “From samisen” inspired from Japanese reality.
Mount Fuji, Mount Fuji,
Over you fly the clouds
White storks, black storks,
With stretched wings
My love is sieved softly
On Kummamoto’s paths,
At Kitzumo, time and time,
The wind covers up all my past with snowSamisen with two strings,
I touch you trembling, and you tremble too:
Ancient string, young soul, Both are breaking.
Near the ancient temple in Nikko
There is a lake, and its mirror,
Like a water lily over water lilies,
The gilded contenance of Buddha…
This time he thought of giving a Romanian response to the Nippon haiku. And he created a new genre as short and concentrated as haiku, which was framed in European aesthetics. He wrote a new book, the most original of all, “The one line poems” in the last part of the year 1935 and he published it at the beginning of the next year. Unlike the haiku poem, the one line poem had a title. If haiku has 17 syllables, Pillat’s poem has 13 or 14, but if we add the syllables from the title, usually very short, we have the same 17 number of syllables. The single verse of the poem has about half implied caesura, marked by a punctuation sign or a blank space, corresponding to kireji from haiku. In Foreword, Ion Pillat writes that the one line poem although it resembles haikai is different from it. The Romanian reply of haiku after Ion Pillat, represents:
„A single verse, born and not made, carried around for years, often unconsciously, filtering years of passion, summarizing in it many, unwritten, verses, and so many faces and places, able to render the traveling secret of the poetry, reduced to its single wealth, to be empty and eternal...the poetry which has reached such a despoilment, offers to the reader the highest delectation, but requests in change a constant and intimate collaboration. The less the poet has written, the more the reader has to read... A long poem can be read in a hurry, because each verse helps to understand and enjoy the next one. A single verse is to be read slowly. The letters are read quickly, but the telegram stops us”.
The one line poem, genre created by Ion Pillat, constitutes a living page of literary history. It is a challenge, in the good meaning of the word. Many contemporary Romanian poets have distinguished themselves alike in both genres: Dan Florica, Dumitru Radu, Bogdan I. Pascu, Utta Siegried – Konig, Ioan Marinescu (Romania), Stefan Teodoru and Floretin Smarandache (SUA).
TRANSLATIONS AND TRANSLATORS
The preoccupations for the propagation of the one line poem appeared in the same time with the translations from Japanese literature. The first haiku anthology appeared 70 years ago at Cernauti. This city is today Ukraine territory. The publisher of the edition, inspired the poet Traian Chelariu, entitled the anthology “Nippon soul”. By the quality of the translation and selection, the work presented for the first time the quintessence of Japanese soul. The book was a real revelation, in our day it has become a rarity bibliophile. Traian Chelaru has translated haiku from German language. He has wanted to respect scrupulously even in Romanian language the haiku poetics as well as in Japanese language and in German language. All haiku have respected the classic pattern 5-7-5 syllables with one exception. The single poem that did not respect entirely this pattern (only one syllable misses) it was “exiled” at the bottom of the page with an excuse: “The translation is faithful, but inadequate with 17 syllables of haiku”. This strictness of the first haiku translator in Romanian language has influenced the poets that have come after. The majority of the haiku Romanian poets try to respect stringently the classic pattern, often in damage of the content.
Seven years later, in 1942, in the midst of war, Al. T. Stamatiad publishes the tanka anthology “Nippon courtesan songs”. One year later, he translates from French an ample tanka and haiku anthology from the beginning until in those days, entitled “Silk scarves”. Although it had appeared in unfavorable time for literature, “Silk scarves” had a good reception from the general readers and from literary critique. As a result of the numerous favorable critiques, the work was distinguished with the Romanian Academy Award.
Imposition by the political conjuncture followed a hiatus in haiku reception and writing. In the seventies a new open to the Nippon lyric occurs. During a decade three anthologies in seven volumes of tanka and haiku have appeared. The editors of these anthologies were Ion Acsan and Dan Constantinescu which togheter translated as Traian Chelariu from German language. Nowadays Ion Acsan is the honorable president of the Roumanian Society of Haiku. The appearance of these anthologies in many editions produces a real emulation among the poets. Some of them have written haiku before 1989 year such as Nichita Stanescu and Marin Sorescu. Both of them are poets with international confirmation, candidates to the Nobel Prize. However, haiku was written sporadically and with uncertainty. The poets already had the patterns but they didn’t know very well the poetics of haiku. The authorities from that time didn’t like haiku, considering it a subversive literary genre. The allusions, the wordplays brought the politicians allergies. So, the first works in Romanian language appeared outside of the country borders. The first poetic book of haiku appeared in year1063 in Viena and the first haiku thin booklets appeared in 1982 in France, in Paris and in 1987 in Novi Sad in Jugoslavia.
MAGAZINES AND PRINTING HOUSES, SOCIETIES AND LITERARY CIRCLES
But the real opening to the promotion of haiku occurred in 1989 year when the totalitarian regime was removed. Towards the end of year Florin Vasiliu, Romanian diplomat who worked for a while in Japan published the book “Haiku constellation. Lyric interferences”. This book represented a real foundation stone for Romanian haiku. Informed well directly from the haiku source, the Romanian essayist wrote a complex work interweaving literary history with poetics of the genre. It is a guide book for the deciphering and writing of the haiku poem, guide with essential dates that are available even in our days. Some chapters were taken over and developed. Until the end of his life, the Romanian exegete had published twelve history books and haiku poetics. We may say that Romanian poets have a rich bibliography that helps them write haiku, knowing very well haiku poetics.
In March 1990, Florin Vasiliu founded the Haiku Magazine of Romanian-Japanese Relationships, one of the first profile publications in Europe. At the beginning, the magazine was quarterly and was edited in 8.000 copies. For some time now it appears half-yearly and prints only under 1000 copies. In the editing board of the Haiku magazine there were renowned writers, like Marin Sorescu in the period when he was the minister of Culture. The editing board of the Haiku magazine has formed the nucleus of Roumanian Society of Haiku (RSH) formed one year later, on 19 March 1991. The Romanian Society of Haiku which was set up at the national level and included about 200 members. In a short while after setting up, they formed literary circles in several places in the country. In 1992 the HAIKU publishing house was get up. During a decade this publishing house gained a good name and has published several thin booklets with haiku poems and one line verse poems, most of them being printed in three languages: Romanian, English and French. After this publishing house discontinued its activity, the poetess Cornelia Atanasiu founded a new one, which was specialized in haiku, ALCOR.
Later Haiku Societies were set up in some area of the country… Chorological and as importance the Haiku Society from Constanta is the first. It was founded by poet and drawer Ion Codrescu, in 1992. In the same year also appeared the Haiku Magazine from Constanta, Albatross, which was printed bilingual (Romanian / English).
In 1995, Serban Codrin, a very good poet especially of tanka and renku, founded Tanka, Renku and Haiku School in Slobozia. This school published during several years two magazine: “Orion” and “Little Orion”, the second one had been dedicated exclusively to linked poem (renku).
At Targu Mures, the poet Ioan Gabudean founded the Haiku Club “Ephemeral joys” bringing together about 80 poets, especially from Transilvania. He edited two magazines: “Orpheus” and “Beautiful pictures”, the second one being dedicated to the pupils. In the same time he had led the collection Haiku from publishing AMBASADOR house, publishing house which has printed almost one hundred haiku, senryu and tanka thin booklets and one line poems, most of them in English or French. Haiku magazines have also appeared in towns like Piatra – Neamt and Targoviste. From the nine haiku periodical publication, three have gone on with their activity even now, concentrating around them almost all of the haiku poets.
OPENINGS
Simultaneously with the approval on national level they have tried to assert themselves also on the international level. In the first number of the Haiku magazine was published by a Romanian from…. Sweden. In a short time from setting up, Romanian Society of Haiku and Haiku Society from Constanta affiliate with Haiku International Association (HIA). In 1993, the president of Haiku International Association, Mr. Sono Uchida meets with the poets of haiku literary circle from Bucharest. He was impressed by the large spreading of haiku in Romania. At their turn, the poets Florin Vasiliu, Ion Codrescu, Marian Nicolae Tomi visited Japan for the purpose of learning haiku from its sources. The visits turn out productive. Once they returned home, the three poets shared from their experience gained in the haiku homeland. Marian Nicolae Tomi visited Japan as a result of winning the First Prize given by International “Kusamakura” Haiku Competition in Kumamoto 2004. The experience of his trip has been materialized in the haiku, tanka and gunsaku book “Flying to Kumamoto”, which appeared in some month from the event. Starting from 1989, the Romanian poets have published frequently in Japanese haiku magazines - HI, Ko, Ginyu, World Haiku – or in periodical publications with high reputation like Asahi Shimbun and Mainichi Daily News. For quite some time now, the Romanians are present also in Japanese on line publications specialized in haiga “See Haiku Here” edited by Mr. Kuniharu Shimizu and “Photo-Haiku Hallery” edited by Mitty Abe.
An important year for the development of Romanian- Japanese haiku relationship was 1994. In Romania Basho tricentenary had a great widespread. In the course of this year two international conferences took place, in Bucharest and Constanta and as part of these conferences was celebrated Matsuo Basho. The materials which have been presented at the commemorative symposiums have appeared in the anthology “Round the pond” edited by the president of Haiku Society from Constanta and in a special issue of “Haiku” magazine. Also, in 1994, Florin Vasiliu, the president of Romanian Society of Haiku has published the reference work “Matsuo Basho – The saint of haiku”. At the HIA competition from that year, eight haiku written by seven poets have been distinguished with honorable mentions and have been published in a special issue of HI magazine.
During the time, at Constanta, town which is twined with Japanese town Yokohama took place four international meetings, in 1992, 1994, 2005 and 2007. At these international meetings several poets from Japan, S.U.A., France, Germany, Bulgaria, Great Britain, and Ireland took part.
At the international haiku competitions Romanian poets have obtained from a year to the other more and more prizes and honorable mentions. Sonia Maria Coman, at only eleven years old got a prestigious prize, followed by others which have made her known in the whole world. She has got the honorary prize “haiku ambassador” and she received an open congratulation letter from the American president. At present she is eighteen years old and she has won a scholarship to an American university, where she will study for several years Japanese civilization. Among the other redoubtable competitors I shall remember Dan Doman, which at a single international competition had been awarded five haiku. The poet Eduard Tara is a real phenomenon. For some time, he has wined every year ten or twelve haiku and tanka competitions
In this year, on the initiative of the poet Valentin Nicolitov, secretary of RSH the first international haiku contest was organized in Romania. The contest was a real success. We were glad that we had received submissions from Japan, thanks to which we owe the existence of haiku. From the six prizes awarded to the foreign poets, two of them were awarded to Japanese poets Shinya Ogata and Ban’ya Natsuishi. It is a sign that haiku poetry has been penetrating into Romania too. In this domain which is in a continuous expansion takes a reciprocal communications as the system of communicating vessels.
The large participation at this Romanian contest and the quality of the poems have determinate the organizers to publish an anthology with the best haiku received at the contest, entitled “Crickets and chrysanthemums”. The title has appeared from two prize winning haiku, written by a Japanese poetess and a Romanian poet.
The last cricket Wife ill -
is delaying the departure simple supper
of the dying man with a chrysanthemum
Eduard Tara – Romania Shinya Ogata – Japan
The proceeding is the result of a moment of inspiration of translator Paula Romanescu. . It talks for itself about the creative power of the communication.
UNIVERSAL AND NATIVE SYMBOL
Roumanian poets have taken over many Japanese themes of haiku. An eloquent proof is also the title of the aforesaid anthology. But, for example, about crickets it was written from the very beginning of the Romanian haiku. Sonia Coman made her debut with the thin booklet “Listening to the crickets”, Dan Florica has entitled one of his haiku book “Crickets up to the sky” and Serban Codrin has written a haiku which has become famous “Nights without crickets”. Ioan Gabudean has published an ample study about the presence of chrysanthemum, national Japanese symbol in Roumanian poets’ haiku. Also, he has given title “Chrysanthemum smile” to one of the literary circle anthology. The moon is another universal theme, which can be founded in many of the creations of the Romanian haijins. Ioan Gabudean entitles a literary circle anthology “The moon from the lake”. One of the best anthology of the RSH is called “The moon in a thousands bits”. The title was taken a poem by Eduard Tara which was awarded in an international contest in Japan. The famous frog of Basho was another reason inspiration for many of us. This thing made Florin Vasiliu writes an ample and documented study entitled “The frog in Romanian poets’ haiku”, a study which has been published in the volume of critique “Sparks from haiku hearth”. After his return from the first European haiku congress, that took place at The Museum of roses from Germany, Laura Vaceanu, the president of Haiku Society from Constanta has set up live discussion with the theme “Celebrating the roses”. And the examples could go on. But at the same time Romanian poets are in search of their own symbols. In their poems sometimes appear notions about national costume. If at Japanese poets we find the kimono, at Roumanian poets we find the embroidered peasant blouse, which is a feast blouse with remarkable flourish and other traditional pieces of peasant dress. Also, instead of Buddhist temples or Shinto shrine, some poets bring cult new elements specific for Christian church especially the orthodox one. If these elements of folklore and religion are difficult to access, or even when the translation has been scored a success or they don’t find the wanted echo, they are still important for the Romanian readers. The insertion of the native symbols has the gift of conforming haiku to the local atmosphere. These have the role of the father plant in gardening, to which an offshoot from another garden clings to. The cutting and the father plant will fuse organically and will form a single being. A new being who will be as viable as the parts that constitute the whole are stronger. Each is adapted at the “ground” of another language.
Among the elements which give local color to Romanian haiku, the lime tree is at the head. This flowery tree in May and June has a particular beauty. Its flowers have one of the most delicate perfumes. Eminescu, Romanian national poet has sung the lime and especially its flowers in eternal verse. In our days, a lime tree which has adumbrated his youth is seen by thousands of visitors which love poetry. This fact has been determinate by poetesses Laura Vaceanu, Alexandra Flora Munteanu and Ana Ruse to elaborate a haiku and tanka anthology dedicated to the lime flowers, out of which I cite a poem by Constantin Severin.
To Eminescu
Touching your lime tree
my hand breath through
thousands of leaves
A pleasant surprise is offered to us by the international haiku magazine Ginyu, number 34, which has published a haiku three part about the lime tree by Magdalena Dale out of which I cite:
Longing song…
lime blossoms scattered
on our way
Convinced by the poetic capacity of this venerated tree by Romanian, the poetess had the initiative to write a renga book to who’s “hero” (personage, protagonist) is the lime tree. The title of the book is “Fragrance of lime”. In our conviction the lime tree may become our way in haiku. One of the many ways possible. For now, certainly it is a seasonal term for the late spring and early summer. One term with a powerful Romanian specific able to represent us among the haiku admirers from other places, where this miraculous tree is less known and in any case it doesn’t have the same appreciation as in our culture.
Using alike the recognized symbols of the literary genre and the national specific ones, the Romanian profile poem may be considerate like a little star belonging to the great international haiku constellation.
In Romania, the first knowledge of Nippon poetry was in 1878 at the end of the Romanian Independence War. The first poetic book of haiku appeared in the year 1063 in Vienna and the first haiku thin booklets appeared in 1882 in Paris, France, and in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia in 1887. The Romanian ruler Carol I, received two documents from a Japanese prince, one written with Latin letters and the other one with ideograms, both of them contained verses. The quality of the paper and the finesse of the calligraphy have incited the young ruler’s curiosity. For the interpretation of these strange messages, he turned to the scholar Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, the director of the State Archives. It is said that Hasdeu told the ruler: “Sire, as far as I can tell these are little poems, which I can’t decipher them by myself. I know a Chinese gardener. Please, give my time to find him and construe together the messages.” The Romanian scholar ascertained with surprise, that those texts although written with Chinese ideograms, were in fact Nippon poems, tanka and haiku.
Two great poets of the epoch were visibly influenced by the exotic oriental poetry. V. Alecsandri had confessed to his friend I. Ghica (several times prime minister of Romania) that he intends to travel to Japan, being fascinated by its painting and poetry. His precarious health and his premature end hindered him reaching the country of Sun Rise. At the end of his life he had written the masterpiece of his literary career, the tome “Pastels”. V. Alecsandri has created a new poetical genre in Romanian literature – the pastel (of pictural manner) inspired from the Chinese poetry about nature and Japanese haiku. He had read Chinese poetry in French translation while working in the capital of France as a diplomat.
While in Paris, Al. Macedonski, another classic of the Romanian literature, discovered Japanese literature. We have kept four haiku of his in Romanian language in a manuscript. Al. Macedonski has given fame to a fix form of poetry, the roundel. His masterpiece “The poem of the roundels”, published posthumously in 1925 contains more poems about the Japanese art and civilization: “The water roundel from the Japanese yard”, “The roundel of the Japanese Sea”, “Chrysanthemum roundel” and the “Ioshiwara roundel”.
After diplomatic relations were establishment between Romania and Japan in 1902, numerous conferences about Japanese civilization and poetry took place; numerous travel books were edited in Japan. Many of these works contain distinct chapters about tanka and haiku. The first essays about tanka and haiku have appeared in the “Literary Event” magazine from Iasi, in 1904. In the same year, the poet Al. Vlahuta published in the “By the fireside” volume an essay “The Japanese poetry and painting” which contained numerous tanka and haiku poems.
If from Macedonski we have the first haiku in manuscript, Al. T. Stamatiad has published the first haiku poems in Romanian language, (twelve in total) in the “Tender landscape” anthology. The novelty was so great that this anthology was dignified with the highest cultural distinction of the time, “The Romanian Academy Prize”.
A ROMANIAN RESPONSE
But there were also other kinds of echoes. The poet Ion Pillat responded in a very original way. A long time ago he had written the poem “From samisen” inspired from Japanese reality.
Mount Fuji, Mount Fuji,
Over you fly the clouds
White storks, black storks,
With stretched wings
My love is sieved softly
On Kummamoto’s paths,
At Kitzumo, time and time,
The wind covers up all my past with snow
Samisen with two strings,
I touch you trembling, and you tremble too:
Ancient string, young soul,
Both are breaking.
Near the ancient temple in Nikko
There is a lake, and its mirror,
Like a water lily over water lilies,
The gilded countenance of Buddha…
This time he thought of giving a Romanian response to the Nippon haiku. And he created a new genre as short and concentrated as haiku, which was framed in European aesthetics. He wrote a new book, the most original of all, “The one line poems” in the last part of the year 1935 and published it at the beginning of the next year. Unlike the haiku poem, the one line poem had a title. If haiku has 17 syllables, Pillat’s poem has 13 or 14, but if we add the syllables from the title, usually very short, we have the same 17 number of syllables. The single verse of the poem has about half implied caesura, marked by a punctuation sign or a blank space, corresponding to kireji from haiku. In the Foreword, Pillat writes that the one line poem although it resembles haikai is different from it. The Romanian reply of haiku after Ion Pillat, represents:
„A single verse, born and not made, carried around for years, often unconsciously, filtering years of passion, summarizing in it many, unwritten, verses, and so many faces and places, able to render the traveling secret of the poetry, reduced to its single wealth, to be empty and eternal...the poetry which has reached such a despoilment, offers to the reader the highest delectation, but requests in change a constant and intimate collaboration. The less the poet has written, the more the reader has to read... a long poem can be read in a hurry, because each verse helps to understand and enjoy the next one. A single verse is to be read slowly. The letters are read quickly, but the telegram stops us”.
The one line poem, genre created by Ion Pillat, constitutes a living page of literary history. It is a challenge, in the good meaning of the word. Many contemporary Romanian poets have distinguished themselves alike in both genres: Dan Florica, Dumitru Radu, Bogdan I. Pascu, Utta Siegried – Konig, Ioan Marinescu (Romania), Stefan Teodoru and Floretin Smarandache (SUA).
TRANSLATIONS AND TRANSLATORS
The preoccupations for the propagation of the one line poem appeared in the same time with the translations from Japanese literature. The first haiku anthology appeared seventy years ago at Cernautzi (this city is today Ukraine territory). The publisher of the edition, inspired the poet Traian Chelariu, to name the anthology “Nippon soul”. By the quality of the translation and selection, the work presented for the first time the quintessence of the Japanese soul. The book was a real revelation, in our day it has become a rare bibliophile. Traian Chelaru has translated haiku from the German language. He has wanted to respect scrupulously even in the Romanian language, haiku poetics as well as in the Japanese language and in the German language. All haiku have respected the classic pattern 5-7-5 syllables with one exception. The single poem that did not respect entirely this pattern (only one syllable missing) was “exiled” at the bottom of the page with an excuse: “The translation is faithful, but inadequate with 17 syllables of haiku”. This strictness of the first haiku translator in the Romanian language has influenced the poets that have come after. The majority of the haiku Romanian poets try to respect stringently the classic pattern, often in damage of the content.
Seven years later, in 1942, in the midst of war, Al. T. Stamatiad publishes the tanka anthology “Nippon courtesan songs”. One year later, he translated from French an ample tanka and haiku anthology from the beginning until in those days, entitled “Silk scarves”. Although it had appeared in unfavorable time for literature, “Silk scarves” had a good reception from the general readers and from literary critique. As a result of the numerous favorable critiques, the work was distinguished with “The Romanian Academy Award”.
Imposition by the political conjuncture followed a hiatus in haiku reception and writing. In the 1970(s) a new opening to the Nippon lyric occurred. During a decade, three anthologies in seven volumes of tanka and haiku appeared. The editors of these anthologies were Ion Acsan and Dan Constantinescu who translated as Traian Chelariu from the German language. Nowadays Ion Acsan is the honorable president of the Roumanian Society of Haiku. The appearance of these anthologies in many editions produces a real emulation among the poets. Some of them have written haiku before year 1989, such as Nichita Stanescu and Marin Sorescu. Both of them are poets with international confirmation and candidates to the Nobel Prize. However, haiku was written sporadically and with uncertainty. The poets already had the patterns but they didn’t know very well the poetics of haiku. The authorities from that time didn’t like haiku, considering it a subversive literary genre. The allusions, the word-plays brought the politicians anxieties. So, the first works in the Romanian language appeared outside of the country borders.
MAGAZINES AND PRINTING HOUSES, SOCIETIES AND LITERARY CIRCLES
But the real opening to the promotion of haiku occurred in the year 1989 when the totalitarian regime was removed. Towards the end of that year, Florin Vasiliu, a Romanian diplomat who worked for a while in Japan published the book “Haiku constellation. Lyric interferences”. This book represented a real foundation stone for Romanian haiku. Well informed directly from the haiku source, the Romanian essayist wrote a complex work interweaving literary history with poetics of the genre. It is a guide book for the deciphering and writing of the haiku poem, with essential dates that are available even in our days. Some chapters were taken over and developed. Until the end of his life, the Romanian exegete had published twelve history books and haiku poetics. We may say that Romanian poets have a rich bibliography that helps them write haiku, knowing very well, haiku poetics.
In March 1990, Florin Vasiliu founded the “Haiku Magazine of Romanian-Japanese Relationships”, one of the first profile publications in Europe. At the beginning, the magazine was quarterly and was edited in 8,000 copies. For some time now it appears half-yearly and prints only under 1000 copies. In the editing board of the “Haiku magazine” there were renowned writers, like Marin Sorescu in the period when he was the minister of Culture. The editing board of the magazine has formed the nucleus of “Roumanian Society of Haiku” (RSH) formed one year later, on 19 March 1991. The Romanian Society of Haiku (RSH) was set up at the national level and included about 200 members. Shortly after several literary circles were formed in the country. In 1992 the HAIKU publishing house was set up. For a decade, this publishing house gained a good name and published several thin booklets with haiku and one line verse poems, most of them being printed in three languages: Romanian, English and French. When its activity ceased, the poetess Cornelia Atanasiu founded a new one, specialized in haiku, ALCOR.
Later, Haiku Societies were set up around the country… the Haiku Society from Constantza founded by poet and artist Ion Codrescu, was the first, in 1992. Also in 1992, the Haiku Magazine from Constanta, Albatross, began printing in both (Romanian / English).
In 1995, Serban Codrin, a very good poet especially of tanka and renga, founded Tanka, Renga and Haiku School in Slobozia. This school published two magazine: “Orion” and “Little Orion”, the latter having been dedicated exclusively to linked poem (renku).
At Targu Mures, the poet Ioan Gabudean founded the Haiku Club “Ephemeral joys” bringing together about 80 poets, especially from Transilvania. He edited two magazines: “Orpheus” and “Beautiful pictures”, the second one being dedicated to the pupils. He also started AMBASADOR publishing house, whos has printed almost one hundred haiku, senryu and tanka thin booklets and one line poems, most of them in English or French. Haiku magazines have appeared in towns like Piatra – Neamt and Targoviste. From the nine haiku periodical publications, three have survived, concentrating mostly on haiku poets.
OPENINGS
Simultaneously with approval on a national level our poets have tried also to assert themselves on an international level. Early issues of Haiku magazine published a Romanian from…. Sweden. Soon after beginning, the Romanian Society of Haiku and the Haiku Society from Constantza affiliated with the Haiku International Association (HIA).
In 1993, the president of the HIA, Mr. Sono Uchida met with the poets of the haiku literary circle from Bucharest. He was impressed by the expanse of haiku in Romania. Individually, the poets Florin Vasiliu, Ion Codrescu, Marian Nicolae Tomi later visited Japan to learn haiku from its sources. Once they returned home, the three poets shared from their experience gained in the haiku homeland.
In 2004 Marian Nicolae Tomi visited Japan as a First Prize winner of the International “Kusamakura” Haiku Competition in Kumamoto. The experience of his trip has since been materialized in the haiku, tanka and gunsaku book “Flying to Kumamoto”.
Since 1989, the Romanian poets have been published frequently in – “HI”, “Ko”, “Ginyu”, “World Haiku” – Japanese haiku magazines and periodical publications of high reputation like “Asahi Shimbun” and “Mainichi Daily News”. For quite some time now, the Romanians are present also in Japanese online publications specialized in haiga “See Haiku Here” edited by Mr. Kuniharu Shimizu and “Photo-Haiku Hallery” edited by Mitsugu Abe.
1994 was an important year for the development of Romanian- Japanese haiku relationship when the Matsuo Basho tricentenary celebration was held in Romania, two international conferences took place, one in Bucharest and one at Constantza.
The materials which were presented at these commemorative symposiums have appeared in the anthology “Round the pond” edited by the president of the Constantza Haiku Society, featured in a special issue of “Haiku Magazine”. Also, in 1994, Florin Vasiliu, President of the “Romanian Society of Haiku” published the reference work “Matsuo Basho – The saint of haiku”.
At the 1994 HIA competition, eight haiku written by seven poets were distinguished with honorable mentions and were published in a special issue of “HI magazine”.
During 1992, 1994, 2005 and 2007, there were four international meetings held at Constantza, (a sister city of Yokohama). At these international meetings several poets from Japan, S.U.A., France, Germany, Bulgaria, Great Britain, and Ireland took part.
Increasingly, every year, more Tomanian poets win international haiku competitions, prizes and honorable mentions. Sonia Maria Coman, at only eleven years old won a prestigious prize, followed by others which have made her well known in the haiku world. She has the honorary title “haiku ambassador” and thus received a congratulation letter from an American president. Today she is eighteen years old and she has won a scholarship to an American university, where she will study Japanese civilization.
Among the other redoubtable competitors, I shall remember Dan Doman, who at one international competition alone won five haiku awards. The poet Eduard Tara is also a real phenomenon, he has won ten or twelve haiku and tanka competitions every year for some time now.
This year, on the initiative of the poet Valentin Nicolitov, secretary of RSH the first international haiku contest was organized in Romania. The contest was a real success. We were glad that we had received submissions from Japan, thanks to who we owe the existence of haiku. From the six prizes awarded to the foreign poets, two of them were awarded to Japanese poets Shinya Ogata and Ban’ya Natsuishi.
The large participation at this Romanian contest and the quality of the poemsreceived, convinced the organizers to publish an anthology containing best haiku received at the contest, entitled “Crickets and chrysanthemums”. (the title taken from the two prize winning haiku, written by a Japanese poetess and a Romanian poet):
The last cricket
is delaying the departure
of the dying man
Eduard Tara – Romania
Wife ill –
simple supper
with a chrysanthenun
Shinya Ogata – Japan
The proceeding is the result of a moment of inspiration of translator Paula Romanescu. . it talks for itself about the creative power of the communication.
UNIVERSAL AND NATIVE SYMBOL
Roumanian poets have adopted many Japanese themes for haiku. An eloquent proof is also the title of the aforesaid anthology. But, Romanian haiku about crickets were written since the very beginning of Romanian haiku. Sonia Coman made her debut with the thin booklet “Listening to the crickets”, Dan Florica has entitled one of his haiku book “Crickets up to the sky” and Serban Codrin has written a haiku which has become famous “Nights without crickets”.
Ioan Gabudean has also published an ample study about the presence of chrysanthemum,(the national Japanese symbol) in the haiku of Roumanian poets. And his own “Chrysanthemum smile” is a title in the literary circle anthology.
The “moon”… is yet another universal theme, which can be founded in many of the creations of the Romanian haijin; Ioan Gabudean entitles a literary circle anthology “The moon from the lake”.
One of the best anthology of the RSH is called “The moon in a thousands bits”. The title was taken a poem by Eduard Tara which won an award in an international contest in Japan.
The famous frog of Basho was another great inspiration for many of us. This made Florin Vasiliu writes an ample and documented study entitled “The frog in Romanian poets’ haiku”, a study which has been published in the volume of critique “Sparks from haiku hearth”.
After his return from the first European haiku congress, that took place at “The Museum of Roses” in Germany, Laura Vaceanu, the president of the Haiku Society from Constantza has set up live discussions with the theme “Celebrating the roses”. And the examples could go on…
But at the same time Romanian poets are in search of their “own” symbols. Romanian poems sometimes refer to our national costume. If Japanese poets talk of the kimono, we, as Roumanian poets find the embroidered peasant blouse, (which is a feast blouse with remarkable flourish) and other traditional pieces of peasant dress to write about.
Also, instead of Buddhist temples or Shinto shrine, some poets bring specific Romanian Christian cultural references, especially the orthodox.
If these elements of folklore and religion are difficult to access, or when a translation has obscured a meaning, or lost the wanted echo, these references are still important for the Romanian readers. The insertion of native symbols has the gift of conforming haiku to the local atmosphere.
These have the role of the father plant in gardening, to which an offshoot from another garden clings to. The cutting and the father plant will fuse organically and will form a single being. A new being who will be as viable as the parts that constitute the whole are stronger. Each is adapted at the “ground” of another language.
Among the many elements which give local color to Romanian haiku, the lime tree is at the head. During May and June this flowery tree has particular beauty. Its flowers have one of the most delicate perfumes.
Eminescu, Romanian national poet has sung the lime and especially its flowers in eternal verse. In our days, a lime tree which has adumbrated his youth is seen by thousands of visitors which love poetry. This fact has been determinate by poetesses Laura Vaceanu, Alexandra Flora Munteanu and Ana Ruse to elaborate a haiku and tanka anthology dedicated to the lime flowers, out of which I cite a poem by Constantin Severin. To Eminescu:
Touching your lime tree
my hand breath through
thousands of leaves
A pleasant surprise is offered to us by the international haiku magazine Ginyu, number 34, which has published a haiku three part about the lime tree by Magdalena Dale out of which I cite:
Longing song…
lime blossoms scattered
on our way
Convinced by the poetic capacity of this venerated tree by a Romanian, the poetess had the initiative to write a renga book to who’s “hero” (personage, protagonist) is the lime tree. The title of the book is “Fragrance of lime”. In our conviction the lime tree may well become our way in haiku of the many ways possible. For now, certainly it is a seasonal term for the late spring and early summer.
A powerful Romanian specific able to represent us among the haiku admirers from other places, where this miraculous tree is quite lesser known and where it perhaps does not have the same appreciation as it does in our culture.
Using alike the recognized symbols of the literary genre and the national specific ones, the Romanian profile poem may be considerate like a little star belonging to the great international haiku constellation.
HAIKU IN ROMANIA
BEGINNINGS
In Romania, the first concerns for knowing the Nippon poetry date from the consolidation period of the Romanian national state. In 1878 at the end of the Independence War, the Romanian ruler Carol I, received two documents from a Japanese prince, one written with Latin letters and the other one with ideograms. Both of them contained verses. The quality of the paper and the finesse of the calligraphy have incited the young ruler’s curiosity. For the interpretation of these strange messages, he turned to the scholar Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, the director of the State Archives. It is said that Hasdeu told the ruler: “Sire, as far as I can tell these are little poems, which I can’t decipher them by myself. I know a Chinese gardener. Please, give my time to find him and construe together the messages.” The Romanian scholar would ascertain with surprise that those texts although written with Chinese ideograms, were in fact Nippon poems, tanka and haiku.
Two great poets of the epoch were visibly influenced by the exotic oriental poetry. V. Alecsandri had confessed to his friend I. Ghica, several times prime minister of Romania that he intends to travel to Japan, being fascinated by its painting and poetry. His precarious health and his premature end hindered him reaching the country of Sun Rise. At the end of his life he had written the masterpiece of his literary career, the tome “Descriptive poems”. V. Alecsandri has created the descriptive poem in Romanian literature, inspired from the Chinese poetry about nature and Japanese haiku. He had read Chinese poetry in French translation while he had worked in the capital of France as a diplomat.
Still in he left, at Paris, Al. Macedonski, another classic of the Romanian literature, discovered the Japanese literature. We have kept from him four haikus in Romanian language in a manuscript. Al. Macedonski has given fame to a fix form of poetry, the rondel. His masterpiece “The poem of the rondels”, published posthumously in 1925 contains more poems about the Japanese art and civilization: “The water rondel from the Japanese yard”, “The rondel of the Japanese Sea”, “Chrysanthemum rondel”, “Ioshiwara rondel”.
After diplomatic relations were establishment between Romania and Japan in 1902 numerous conferences about Japanese civilization and poetry took place; numerous travel books were edited in Japan. Many of these works contain distinct chapters about tanka and haiku. The first essays about tanka and haiku have appeared in the “Literary Event” magazine from Iasi, in 1904. In the same year, the poet Al. Vlahuta published in the “By the stove” volume the essay “The Japanese poetry and painting” which contained numerous tanka and haiku poems.
If from Macedonski we have the first haiku in manuscript, Al. T. Stamatiad has published the first haiku poems in Romanian language, 12 in total. The novelty was so great that the volume “Lyric landscapes” was dignified with the highest cultural distinction of the time, The Romanian Academy Prize.
A ROMANIAN RESPONSE
But there were also other kinds of echoes. The poet Ion Pillat responded in a very original way. A long time ago he had written the poem “From samisen” inspired from Japanese reality.
Mount Fuji, Mount Fuji,
Over you fly the clouds
White storks, black storks,
With stretched wings
My love is sieved softly
On Kummamoto’s paths,
At Kitzumo, time and time,
The wind covers up all my past with snowSamisen with two strings,
I touch you trembling, and you tremble too:
Ancient string, young soul, Both are breaking.
Near the ancient temple in Nikko
There is a lake, and its mirror,
Like a water lily over water lilies,
The gilded contenance of Buddha…
This time he thought of giving a Romanian response to the Nippon haiku. And he created a new genre as short and concentrated as haiku, which was framed in European aesthetics. He wrote a new book, the most original of all, “The one line poems” in the last part of the year 1935 and he published it at the beginning of the next year. Unlike the haiku poem, the one line poem had a title. If haiku has 17 syllables, Pillat’s poem has 13 or 14, but if we add the syllables from the title, usually very short, we have the same 17 number of syllables. The single verse of the poem has about half implied caesura, marked by a punctuation sign or a blank space, corresponding to kireji from haiku. In Foreword, Ion Pillat writes that the one line poem although it resembles haikai is different from it. The Romanian reply of haiku after Ion Pillat, represents:
„A single verse, born and not made, carried around for years, often unconsciously, filtering years of passion, summarizing in it many, unwritten, verses, and so many faces and places, able to render the traveling secret of the poetry, reduced to its single wealth, to be empty and eternal...the poetry which has reached such a despoilment, offers to the reader the highest delectation, but requests in change a constant and intimate collaboration. The less the poet has written, the more the reader has to read... A long poem can be read in a hurry, because each verse helps to understand and enjoy the next one. A single verse is to be read slowly. The letters are read quickly, but the telegram stops us”.
The one line poem, genre created by Ion Pillat, constitutes a living page of literary history. It is a challenge, in the good meaning of the word. Many contemporary Romanian poets have distinguished themselves alike in both genres: Dan Florica, Dumitru Radu, Bogdan I. Pascu, Utta Siegried – Konig, Ioan Marinescu (Romania), Stefan Teodoru and Floretin Smarandache (SUA).
TRANSLATIONS AND TRANSLATORS
The preoccupations for the propagation of the one line poem appeared in the same time with the translations from Japanese literature. The first haiku anthology appeared 70 years ago at Cernauti. This city is today Ukraine territory. The publisher of the edition, inspired the poet Traian Chelariu, entitled the anthology “Nippon soul”. By the quality of the translation and selection, the work presented for the first time the quintessence of Japanese soul. The book was a real revelation, in our day it has become a rarity bibliophile. Traian Chelaru has translated haiku from German language. He has wanted to respect scrupulously even in Romanian language the haiku poetics as well as in Japanese language and in German language. All haiku have respected the classic pattern 5-7-5 syllables with one exception. The single poem that did not respect entirely this pattern (only one syllable misses) it was “exiled” at the bottom of the page with an excuse: “The translation is faithful, but inadequate with 17 syllables of haiku”. This strictness of the first haiku translator in Romanian language has influenced the poets that have come after. The majority of the haiku Romanian poets try to respect stringently the classic pattern, often in damage of the content.
Seven years later, in 1942, in the midst of war, Al. T. Stamatiad publishes the tanka anthology “Nippon courtesan songs”. One year later, he translates from French an ample tanka and haiku anthology from the beginning until in those days, entitled “Silk scarves”. Although it had appeared in unfavorable time for literature, “Silk scarves” had a good reception from the general readers and from literary critique. As a result of the numerous favorable critiques, the work was distinguished with the Romanian Academy Award.
Imposition by the political conjuncture followed a hiatus in haiku reception and writing. In the seventies a new open to the Nippon lyric occurs. During a decade three anthologies in seven volumes of tanka and haiku have appeared. The editors of these anthologies were Ion Acsan and Dan Constantinescu which togheter translated as Traian Chelariu from German language. Nowadays Ion Acsan is the honorable president of the Roumanian Society of Haiku. The appearance of these anthologies in many editions produces a real emulation among the poets. Some of them have written haiku before 1989 year such as Nichita Stanescu and Marin Sorescu. Both of them are poets with international confirmation, candidates to the Nobel Prize. However, haiku was written sporadically and with uncertainty. The poets already had the patterns but they didn’t know very well the poetics of haiku. The authorities from that time didn’t like haiku, considering it a subversive literary genre. The allusions, the wordplays brought the politicians allergies. So, the first works in Romanian language appeared outside of the country borders. The first poetic book of haiku appeared in year1063 in Viena and the first haiku thin booklets appeared in 1982 in France, in Paris and in 1987 in Novi Sad in Jugoslavia.
MAGAZINES AND PRINTING HOUSES, SOCIETIES AND LITERARY CIRCLES
But the real opening to the promotion of haiku occurred in 1989 year when the totalitarian regime was removed. Towards the end of year Florin Vasiliu, Romanian diplomat who worked for a while in Japan published the book “Haiku constellation. Lyric interferences”. This book represented a real foundation stone for Romanian haiku. Informed well directly from the haiku source, the Romanian essayist wrote a complex work interweaving literary history with poetics of the genre. It is a guide book for the deciphering and writing of the haiku poem, guide with essential dates that are available even in our days. Some chapters were taken over and developed. Until the end of his life, the Romanian exegete had published twelve history books and haiku poetics. We may say that Romanian poets have a rich bibliography that helps them write haiku, knowing very well haiku poetics.
In March 1990, Florin Vasiliu founded the Haiku Magazine of Romanian-Japanese Relationships, one of the first profile publications in Europe. At the beginning, the magazine was quarterly and was edited in 8.000 copies. For some time now it appears half-yearly and prints only under 1000 copies. In the editing board of the Haiku magazine there were renowned writers, like Marin Sorescu in the period when he was the minister of Culture. The editing board of the Haiku magazine has formed the nucleus of Roumanian Society of Haiku (RSH) formed one year later, on 19 March 1991. The Romanian Society of Haiku which was set up at the national level and included about 200 members. In a short while after setting up, they formed literary circles in several places in the country. In 1992 the HAIKU publishing house was get up. During a decade this publishing house gained a good name and has published several thin booklets with haiku poems and one line verse poems, most of them being printed in three languages: Romanian, English and French. After this publishing house discontinued its activity, the poetess Cornelia Atanasiu founded a new one, which was specialized in haiku, ALCOR.
Later Haiku Societies were set up in some area of the country… Chorological and as importance the Haiku Society from Constanta is the first. It was founded by poet and drawer Ion Codrescu, in 1992. In the same year also appeared the Haiku Magazine from Constanta, Albatross, which was printed bilingual (Romanian / English).
In 1995, Serban Codrin, a very good poet especially of tanka and renku, founded Tanka, Renku and Haiku School in Slobozia. This school published during several years two magazine: “Orion” and “Little Orion”, the second one had been dedicated exclusively to linked poem (renku).
At Targu Mures, the poet Ioan Gabudean founded the Haiku Club “Ephemeral joys” bringing together about 80 poets, especially from Transilvania. He edited two magazines: “Orpheus” and “Beautiful pictures”, the second one being dedicated to the pupils. In the same time he had led the collection Haiku from publishing AMBASADOR house, publishing house which has printed almost one hundred haiku, senryu and tanka thin booklets and one line poems, most of them in English or French. Haiku magazines have also appeared in towns like Piatra – Neamt and Targoviste. From the nine haiku periodical publication, three have gone on with their activity even now, concentrating around them almost all of the haiku poets.
OPENINGS
Simultaneously with the approval on national level they have tried to assert themselves also on the international level. In the first number of the Haiku magazine was published by a Romanian from…. Sweden. In a short time from setting up, Romanian Society of Haiku and Haiku Society from Constanta affiliate with Haiku International Association (HIA). In 1993, the president of Haiku International Association, Mr. Sono Uchida meets with the poets of haiku literary circle from Bucharest. He was impressed by the large spreading of haiku in Romania. At their turn, the poets Florin Vasiliu, Ion Codrescu, Marian Nicolae Tomi visited Japan for the purpose of learning haiku from its sources. The visits turn out productive. Once they returned home, the three poets shared from their experience gained in the haiku homeland. Marian Nicolae Tomi visited Japan as a result of winning the First Prize given by International “Kusamakura” Haiku Competition in Kumamoto 2004. The experience of his trip has been materialized in the haiku, tanka and gunsaku book “Flying to Kumamoto”, which appeared in some month from the event. Starting from 1989, the Romanian poets have published frequently in Japanese haiku magazines - HI, Ko, Ginyu, World Haiku – or in periodical publications with high reputation like Asahi Shimbun and Mainichi Daily News. For quite some time now, the Romanians are present also in Japanese on line publications specialized in haiga “See Haiku Here” edited by Mr. Kuniharu Shimizu and “Photo-Haiku Hallery” edited by Mitty Abe.
An important year for the development of Romanian- Japanese haiku relationship was 1994. In Romania Basho tricentenary had a great widespread. In the course of this year two international conferences took place, in Bucharest and Constanta and as part of these conferences was celebrated Matsuo Basho. The materials which have been presented at the commemorative symposiums have appeared in the anthology “Round the pond” edited by the president of Haiku Society from Constanta and in a special issue of “Haiku” magazine. Also, in 1994, Florin Vasiliu, the president of Romanian Society of Haiku has published the reference work “Matsuo Basho – The saint of haiku”. At the HIA competition from that year, eight haiku written by seven poets have been distinguished with honorable mentions and have been published in a special issue of HI magazine.
During the time, at Constanta, town which is twined with Japanese town Yokohama took place four international meetings, in 1992, 1994, 2005 and 2007. At these international meetings several poets from Japan, S.U.A., France, Germany, Bulgaria, Great Britain, and Ireland took part.
At the international haiku competitions Romanian poets have obtained from a year to the other more and more prizes and honorable mentions. Sonia Maria Coman, at only eleven years old got a prestigious prize, followed by others which have made her known in the whole world. She has got the honorary prize “haiku ambassador” and she received an open congratulation letter from the American president. At present she is eighteen years old and she has won a scholarship to an American university, where she will study for several years Japanese civilization. Among the other redoubtable competitors I shall remember Dan Doman, which at a single international competition had been awarded five haiku. The poet Eduard Tara is a real phenomenon. For some time, he has wined every year ten or twelve haiku and tanka competitions
In this year, on the initiative of the poet Valentin Nicolitov, secretary of RSH the first international haiku contest was organized in Romania. The contest was a real success. We were glad that we had received submissions from Japan, thanks to which we owe the existence of haiku. From the six prizes awarded to the foreign poets, two of them were awarded to Japanese poets Shinya Ogata and Ban’ya Natsuishi. It is a sign that haiku poetry has been penetrating into Romania too. In this domain which is in a continuous expansion takes a reciprocal communications as the system of communicating vessels.
The large participation at this Romanian contest and the quality of the poems have determinate the organizers to publish an anthology with the best haiku received at the contest, entitled “Crickets and chrysanthemums”. The title has appeared from two prize winning haiku, written by a Japanese poetess and a Romanian poet.
The last cricket Wife ill -
is delaying the departure simple supper
of the dying man with a chrysanthemum
Eduard Tara – Romania Shinya Ogata – Japan
The proceeding is the result of a moment of inspiration of translator Paula Romanescu. . It talks for itself about the creative power of the communication.
UNIVERSAL AND NATIVE SYMBOL
Roumanian poets have taken over many Japanese themes of haiku. An eloquent proof is also the title of the aforesaid anthology. But, for example, about crickets it was written from the very beginning of the Romanian haiku. Sonia Coman made her debut with the thin booklet “Listening to the crickets”, Dan Florica has entitled one of his haiku book “Crickets up to the sky” and Serban Codrin has written a haiku which has become famous “Nights without crickets”. Ioan Gabudean has published an ample study about the presence of chrysanthemum, national Japanese symbol in Roumanian poets’ haiku. Also, he has given title “Chrysanthemum smile” to one of the literary circle anthology. The moon is another universal theme, which can be founded in many of the creations of the Romanian haijins. Ioan Gabudean entitles a literary circle anthology “The moon from the lake”. One of the best anthology of the RSH is called “The moon in a thousands bits”. The title was taken a poem by Eduard Tara which was awarded in an international contest in Japan. The famous frog of Basho was another reason inspiration for many of us. This thing made Florin Vasiliu writes an ample and documented study entitled “The frog in Romanian poets’ haiku”, a study which has been published in the volume of critique “Sparks from haiku hearth”. After his return from the first European haiku congress, that took place at The Museum of roses from Germany, Laura Vaceanu, the president of Haiku Society from Constanta has set up live discussion with the theme “Celebrating the roses”. And the examples could go on. But at the same time Romanian poets are in search of their own symbols. In their poems sometimes appear notions about national costume. If at Japanese poets we find the kimono, at Roumanian poets we find the embroidered peasant blouse, which is a feast blouse with remarkable flourish and other traditional pieces of peasant dress. Also, instead of Buddhist temples or Shinto shrine, some poets bring cult new elements specific for Christian church especially the orthodox one. If these elements of folklore and religion are difficult to access, or even when the translation has been scored a success or they don’t find the wanted echo, they are still important for the Romanian readers. The insertion of the native symbols has the gift of conforming haiku to the local atmosphere. These have the role of the father plant in gardening, to which an offshoot from another garden clings to. The cutting and the father plant will fuse organically and will form a single being. A new being who will be as viable as the parts that constitute the whole are stronger. Each is adapted at the “ground” of another language.
Among the elements which give local color to Romanian haiku, the lime tree is at the head. This flowery tree in May and June has a particular beauty. Its flowers have one of the most delicate perfumes. Eminescu, Romanian national poet has sung the lime and especially its flowers in eternal verse. In our days, a lime tree which has adumbrated his youth is seen by thousands of visitors which love poetry. This fact has been determinate by poetesses Laura Vaceanu, Alexandra Flora Munteanu and Ana Ruse to elaborate a haiku and tanka anthology dedicated to the lime flowers, out of which I cite a poem by Constantin Severin.
To Eminescu
Touching your lime tree
my hand breath through
thousands of leaves
A pleasant surprise is offered to us by the international haiku magazine Ginyu, number 34, which has published a haiku three part about the lime tree by Magdalena Dale out of which I cite:
Longing song…
lime blossoms scattered
on our way
Convinced by the poetic capacity of this venerated tree by Romanian, the poetess had the initiative to write a renga book to who’s “hero” (personage, protagonist) is the lime tree. The title of the book is “Fragrance of lime”. In our conviction the lime tree may become our way in haiku. One of the many ways possible. For now, certainly it is a seasonal term for the late spring and early summer. One term with a powerful Romanian specific able to represent us among the haiku admirers from other places, where this miraculous tree is less known and in any case it doesn’t have the same appreciation as in our culture.
Using alike the recognized symbols of the literary genre and the national specific ones, the Romanian profile poem may be considerate like a little star belonging to the great international haiku constellation.
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