Haiku poetry in Hungary

 

 

At the beginning of the 20th century, Japanese lyrical poetry, and mainly the influence of the haiku has appeared in Hungarian poetry. Hungarian impressionists got acquianted with English and French haiku translations, and the interwinig of exotic miniature picture, spectacle, musicality, and sound effects made a great impression on them. Those poets, who idolized Baudelaire's, Verlaine's, and Rimbaud's poetry, tried to institutionalize haiku in Hungarian lyrical poetry. Among these poets, Dezső Kosztolányi (1885-1936) is outstanding, because he himself translated a tome of Chinese and Japanese poems, but he delighted the readers with some tanka and haiku under the name of Horigucsi Niko. He did not follow the 17(5+7+5) mora numbers, moreover, sometimes he wrote a poem in four lines instead of three lines. At he end of the lines he applied rhymes which is typically Hungarian. Kosztolányi gave every haiku poem a title as well. Nevertheless, with his haikus he succeeded in creating the mood that we can experience in Japanese poets' haikus.

Naturally in early Hungarian translations was many mistakes, for example in a haiku of Basho: „Hana ni asobu abu" in different Hungarian translations was: fly, honey-bee, wasp, mosquito, but only gadfly not. Now translations áre corrects of course.

Sándor Kányádi (1929-) is an other master of the Hungarian haiku poetry. He is also a significant literary translator, but he himself writes haikus as well which he calls "nail poems" because of their shortness. He takes into consideration the number of syllables, and there are no rhymes in his haikus. Here is an example which he calls a tiny little haiku:

 

your sorrow and joy

my darling, please, entrust to

vernal weeping willow

 

From the beginning of the 80s haiku became more and more popular in Hungary. Hungarian haiku poets write not only under the spell of the classical haiku which sing of the four seasons, but there are also followers of the modern haiku, at least 50 people. The aphoristic haiku is a typical one which has serious philosophical messages.

We can refer to Béla Vihar's (1908-1978) lyrical poetry in which his lyric tone is accompanied by philosophical thoughts:

we are two at the birth

we are two in love, lonely

at the time of death

 

György Faludy (1910-), who had to work in a copper mine in Hungary during the socialism, and then emigrated to the west, has only returned to his home, Budapest, in 1990. He is again a significant literary translator, the dedicated interpreter of the Japanese lyrical poetry. In his own haikus, he draw his own state of mind.

Among the Hungarian poetesses, Ágnes Gergely (1933-) is an excellent form artist, a real poeta doctus. She is the dedicated interpreter of the Japanese prose and poetry, and in her lyrical poetry, besides the limerick, there is haiku as well. We have to mention Dezső Tandori, Ákos Fodor, and Tibor Zalán, who are these days' significant haiku poets.

After the World Haiku Festival 2000, the Hungarian Haiku Club was established in the framework of the Hungarian-Japanese Friendship Company, which organizes meetings in the most beautiful places of the country in every season. These places by all means have some kind of Japanese relations (e.g. Japanese garden, Japanese statue park). The age of the club members are varied: there are people from 7 to 76 years. Members of haiku club are about 60-70 people.

And now here are my haiku in Hungarian, English and Japanese:

Sorry, Japanese I could not represent (GB, Webmaster)

 

Fáradt hajnalon

kényelmesen feküszünk –

bombarobbanás

 

At early morning

we are in bed comfortably –

bomb outrage

 

 

Madárcsicsergés

virágzik a körtefa

gulyásillat száll.

 

Birds are chirrup

peartree is in flower

gulashsoup have ascend

 

Régi kunyhóban

megmerítem vödrömet

a múlt kútjában.

 

Behind an old hut

I drink from the well of

the Past.

 

 

 

Judit VIHAR