Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,
Welcome at the second CD-Special of Japanese Poetry In The Lowlands. In this month I love to introduce a few of my fellow Dutchmen who also are haiku poet. The Netherlands have a long history with Japan. This goes even back to the time of Matsuo Basho and Yozakura.
In this episode I love to introduce to you Jurgen Diepstraten. I met Jurgen through a Dutch Facebook page about haiku. And I was caught by the first haiku I read written by him. It was a wonderful haiku and I hope that my translation will do that haiku justice.
hoor de tijd verstild
zelfs hier zie je de stilte
weerspiegelt water
stilled time
here one can see tranquility
reflecting in water
© Jurgen Diepstraten (Tr. Chèvrefeuille)
It wasn't an easy task to translate this haiku, but I think I did the Dutch version justice.
I don't know if Jurgen started haiku writing just recently, but in my opinion his haiku are wonderful, maybe sometimes more like senryu, but that doesn't matter, because according to Jane Reichhold is there almost no difference between haiku and senryu.
So here I have an other haiku by Jurgen Diepstraten to inspire you:
ruik de appeltaart
aarzelend omhoog dan maar
mijn oogappel plukt
faint-heartedly
my darling climbs up in the tree
the smell of apple pie
© Jurgen Diepstraten (Tr. Chèvrefeuille)
As you can see in the Dutch versions Jurgen writes his haiku in the classical way following the sequence of 5-7-5 syllables. That makes it more difficult to translate them.
Jurgen Diepstraten is a gifted haiku poet and I look forward to what he will write more.
I have tried to create a haiku inspired on the haiku about the apple pie and I came up with the following haiku:
first frost -
a treasure for the birds
fallen apples
© Chèvrefeuille
 |
| Applesauce |
And I found a few nice haiku in my archives:
harvesting apples -
sweeter than sweet a real treat,
grandma's applesauce
drizzling
summerday
longing for the autumn weather -
harvesting apples
longing for the autumn weather -
harvesting apples
© Chèvrefeuille
This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until November 14th at noon (CET).
Thank you so much for introducing us to Jurgen Diepstraten and for translating his haiku. I agree that these are difficult to translate without exceeding the maximum syllable count for haiku and I can understand why you have translated them the way you have. In the second line of the first haiku, Jurgen talks about silence and I would leave this in the translation: 'here one can see silence' (instead of 'tranquility').
ReplyDeleteI particularly enjoy the play on words in his second haiku between 'applie pie' and 'apple of my eye' and I would prefer to retain this word play in the translation of the haiku:
smell the apple pie
hesitantly up she goes
the apple of my eye.
To fully translate Jurgen's words into English would exceed the 5-7-5 syllable count by some margin. I hope this helps.