“Occam’s razor is, of course, not an arbitrary rule nor one justified by its practical success. It simply says that unnecessary elements in a symbolism mean nothing. Signs which serve one purpose are logically equivalent, signs which serve no purpose are logically meaningless.”
yado tikaku
mume no Fana uFezi
adikinaku
matu Fito no ka ni
ayamatarekeriClose to my home
No plum trees grow-
In boredom
I await his scent-is that it?
I'm wrong, it seems.
Anonymoussource: 2001 waka for japan 2001
KKS I: 34
Poetry has its seed in the human heart and blossoms forth in innumerable leaves of words ... it is poetry which, with only a part of its power, moves heaven and earth, pacifies unseen gods and demons, reconciles men and women and calms the hearts of savage warriors.
Ki no Tsurayuki, Preface to the Kokinshû, Ninth Century
Tsurayuki's words, written over a thousand years ago, are the first description by a Japanese of waka. The word is made up of two parts: wa meaning 'Japanese' and ka meaning 'poem' or 'song'. It was probably coined at about the time Tsurayuki was writing as a way to distinguish the poetry written by the Japanese in their own language from that they read and wrote in Chinese - the source of much of Japan's poetic inspiration.
Today, the type of waka best known outside of Japan is probably the haiku, a sequence of three 'lines' of five, seven and five syllables and describing an aspect of nature. Haiku are now written in many languages other than Japanese, and widely in Japan itself. They are, however, a relatively late form of waka, beginning to be written in the seventeenth century, by which time the Japanese had already been writing poetry for a thousand years.[+] more @ 2001 waka for japan 2001
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Yedda Morison's Darkness (from chapter one of Heart of Darkness -
Joseph Conrad's classic and masterpiece)
click on image to enlarge
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