Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,
Welcome at a new episode of our Tan Renga Wednesday, that nice special feature about Tan Renga. Your goal is to create a Tan Renga with a given haiku by adding your two-lined stanza through association.
Here is the haiku to work with:
Winter chrysanthemum,
Wearing nothing
but its own light
© Mizuhara Shūōshi (1892-1981)
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| Winter Chrysanthemum (Japanese Woodblock print by Kono Bairei) |
This episode of our Tan Renga Wednesday is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until February 18th at noon (CET). Have fun!
What a beauty! Thank you Chèvrefeuille, for this gorgeous sketch by Mizuhara Shūōshi, as well as the Japanese Woodblock print by Kono Bairei.
ReplyDelete.
Here is a commentary by Gabi Greve (copied from the World Kigo Database):
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fuyu giku no/matou wa onoga/hikari nomi
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winter chrysanthemums...
all they are wearing is
the light of themselves
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In Western haiku, this work would most definitely be criticized because it uses what is called anthropomorphosis, or personification. They would say, "Chrysanthemums don't WEAR, only humans do." The Japanese word "matou" is even heavier and used for such things as one's best dress, or an overcoat. So, it might have sounded to Kyoshi that the chrysanthemums are "showing off" and that it is Shuoshi who imposes his will on them, which has nothing to do with them.
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Talking about one's own light also sounds like boasting and celebrating one's own ego, similar to liking one's own voice or laughing at one's own joke. However, to me the haiku is pure adoration of these wonderful flowers in an original and beautiful way and, most importantly, in a way that emphasizes how human interference, let alone some busybody's irksome subjectivity, is totally absent.
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