Definition of haiku - What it is, Meaning and Concept

The term haiku , or haiku , has its etymological root in the Japanese language .The concept refers to a poetic composition consisting of three verses : the first of five syllables , the second of seven syllables and the last verse of five syllables .

This is a type of poetry from Japon .Original haikus emerged from the nature observation , conveying the emotion and amazement of the poet.Many times those haikus included references to the season of the year.

A haiku, in short, is a poem developed in seventeen syllables or, more precisely, in seventeen blackberries (the unit of measure that reflects the syllable amount).These seventeen syllables or blackberries arise from their three verses: 5 + 7 + 5 .

Many times haiku is accompanied by a haiga , a class of painting .Both haiku and haiga are the result of the contemplation of the world.

Haiku became known in the Western world thanks to Zen Buddhism , who resorted to this poetic way to spread his philosophy .Poets like the Irish Seamus Heaney , the American Jack Kerouac and the Spanish Antonio Machado are some of the western authors who created haikus.

It is worth mentioning that Zen is one of the schools of Buddhism called Mahayana .In itself, the term arises from Zenna , the way in which the Japanese pronounce the Chinese word that can be translated as "meditation".Zen represents the quest for wisdom through experience and not rational theory.

While it is common to find this link between haiku and Zen, its origins are different.In a classic work that brings together a large number of eighth-century poems entitled Man ' yoshu , we find many that consist of 31 blackberries in which you can already appreciate the characteristic feature of haiku: nature is an object of poetry in itself, rather than an excuse of our feelings.words, the poem is created from the wonder that nature and its phenomena caused in the Japanese of that time.

The combination of verses whose lengths in blackberries are five and seven is the characteristic of the family of poetic forms of Japan to which the haiku belongs.In the eighth century, this metric form could already be appreciated, although with another name: katauta .When combining two of them a mondoo was generated, which can be interpreted as a dialogue of which two characters participate. mondoo we have a question and its respective answer, and each of these two elements is a katauta .

Over the end of the eighth century began to predominate the tanka , a poetic form characterized by being a song of little length that is formed from two uneven stanzas.The first one is called hokku and has the pattern of katauta (a third of five, seven and five blackberries); the second, on the other hand, is constructed with two verses of seven blackberries.Another name by which the tanka is known is waka .It is also possible to find the renga , a form that contains several tanka , sometimes from more than one author.The humorous renga is called haikai renga , which can be translated as "funny poem".

Let's see a example of haiku: "Dark evening,/mighty winter./Cold that freezes" .As you can see, this composition has three verses ( "Dark evening" is the first, "mighty winter" is the second and "Cold that freezes" is the third).The first verse presents five syllables ( "Tar-de os-cu-ra" ), the second seven syllables ( "in-vier-no-de-ro-so" ) and the fourth five syllables ( "cold that ice" ).Therefore, the structure of the haiku is fulfilled.