Session 08: Bashō's haikai — Introductory reading

Topics for this session

❖ Twenty haikai, presented as a way to get used to interpreting Bashō's poems

Thoughts*

The biggest difficulty in the interpretation of haiku is to posit the correct context. Sometimes there are headnotes that help. Often there is cultural or literary information that needs to be known and annotated versions of the poetry will provide those. (Over time, some of these become memorized.) Aside from these things, however, it is also necessary just to get a general sense as to which direction is probably right for the reading. That comes with familiarity with haiku as a genre; it has its own colors that are different from modern poetry, waka, Western poems, etc. Therefore, to help generate that context, we start by reading twenty.

Required—to be completed for today's session

✓ There is a PDF on bSpace titled Twenty Basho haikai. It is forty pages long because each poem's page is presented twice:

• In the first instance, the English translation and commentary have been blocked. The headnotes will be in italics at the top, if any. Try to generate an English translation, then check your work, and read the commentary. Ask yourself constantly—What was needed to get to the 'right' interpretation? What should I do for the next poem? What worked? Ask any question that makes you more self-aware of your process of developing an understanding of the poem. Also, ask whether there is a difference between earlier and later poems, but make this secondary to the above considerations.
• In class I will randomly be asking students to explain their process towards understanding —what either worked or didn't work—with a certain poem. Alternatively, I might give you the chance to identify a poem you want to speak about. The poems will be projected on screen, in romaji + Jse (probably), with no English. You are NOT allowed to use notes during this segment of the class. (If this goes well, you can get your notes out later, so bring them.) The purpose is to encourage you to become very familiar with these twenty, familiar enough that you can recall your thinking on them by just seeing the romaji. Thinking them over carefully will help solidify some reading strategies for you, to be used for the full semester. Therefore, read and reread the poems. I consider this to be a fairly long assignment, so get started early. Do not rush or skim for this reading assignment, if you want to get value from it, anyway.

*UNDER CONSTRUCTION: If this has not been erased it means something on this page is incomplete. Perhaps I want to recheck information or perhaps I haven't converted the page from the version of the previous class. It is available but should be taken dubiously.

*THOUGHTS: My hope is that you look at this portion BEFORE a session. If there is content here it might help you focus on the main points of the day. However, I add various things here at various times. When I feel I haven't succeeded in class stating something clearly, I might restate it here. Of if it is a difficult concept in might be given in written form here. I will assume that you have read and rechecked for changes this session in preparation for any midterm or other quiz or test. J144 Spring 2013: I am not quite sure how I will use this section or even if it will exist.