Haiku Reality, Vol. 12, No 20, Summer 2015

Ed. and Art Work: Robert D. Wilson               

BEST OF ISSUE (Second Choice)
Najbolji haiku broja (drugoplasirani)

Pravat Kumar Padhy, India (Indija)

milky way –
lightening splits
the darkness

mlečni put -
munja rascepila
mrak

tr. Sasa Vazic

Pravat Kumar Padhy from India has composed an evocative, action-biased (koto, objective) hokku using the the Milky Way Galaxy as its focus. The Milky Way, called Amanogawa by the Japanese, meaning, River of Heaven, can be interpreted in this poem concretely and metaphorically, depending on one's cultural memory, experience, and subjective conceptualization. Is it really a flow of milk? Is it an actual river with fish and  water?

Padhy makes good use of juxtaposition in contrasting line one with lines 2-3. Does he really see the galaxy as lightening splitting the darkness, or does the lightening splitting the darkness represent something appearing in the night-time sky at the same time the poet is viewing the Milky Way, which somehow, calls to mind his conceptualization of the galaxy? The intricacy and beauty of a true hokku in the tradition of Basho, Buson, Doho, Chiyo-ni, or Issa, is its ability to say more using an economy of words via the usage of Japanese aesthetics prior to the Westernization of hokku by Shiki, who renamed his concept, haiku, a failed experiment that is without a universally-accepted definition, thus negating it as a genre.

Pravat Kumar Padhy iz Indije je napisao snažan hoku zasnova na radnji (koto, objektivan) u čijem fokusu je galaksija Mlačni put. Mlečni put, koji Japanci zovu Amanogawa, što znači Nebeska reka, može se u ovoj pesmi tumačiti i bukvalno i metaforički, zavisno od naše kulturne memorije, iskustva i načina poimanja sveta. Radi li se stvarno o mleku koje teče? Da li je on zaista reka sa ribama i vodom?

Padhy dobro koristi jukstapoziciju suprotstavljajući prvi stih sa druga dva. Da li on stvarno vidi galaksiju kao munju koja cepa mrak ili ta munja predstavlja nešto što se javlja na noćnom nebu u trenutku kada pesnik posmatra Mlečni put, što na neki način ukazuje na način na koji on pojmi galaksiju? Složenost i lepota pravog hokua u tradiciji Bašoa, Busona, Dohoa, Čio-ni ili Ise je njegova sposobnost da kaže mnogo sa malo reči korišćenjem japanske estetike pre nego što ga je Šiki vesternizovao i promenio mu ime u haiku, propali eksperiment bez opšteprihvaćene definicije, što ga čini nevažećim žanrom poezije.

tr. Sasa Vazic