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(★)(Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death)(「Every cherry-blossoms : I slip the inkstone back into my kimono this one last time」～This is the ´death poem´, or ´jisei (辞世)´, of a Japanese haiku poet named Kaisho. Although the consciousness of death is in most cultures very much a part of life, this is perhaps nowhere more true than in Japan, where the approach of death has given rise to a centuries-old tradition of writing such a poem, often at the very moment the poet is breathing his last. Hundreds of Japanese death poems, many with a commentary describing the circumstances of the poet´s death, have been translated into English here, the great majority of them for the first time. As background to the poems, the compiler explores the attitudes and customs surrounding death in historical and present-day Japan, giving examples of how these have been reflected in the nation´s literature in general. The development of the tradition of writing a death poem is then examined --from the poems of longing of the early nobility and the more ´masculine´ verses of the samurai to the satirical death poems of later centuries. Zen Buddhist ideas about death (or the absence of such ´ideas´) are also described as a preface to the collection of Chinese poems by Zen monks on the verge of death included in the book. Finally, some three hundred twenty haiku, of which the verse above is representative, are presented in English translation and romanized Japanese. This part of the anthology contains the death poems of most of the better-known haiku poets, and many by lesser-known poets as well. The poems translated in this volume share the beauty of a poetry that has already gained the admiration of the West ; as death poems, they reflect important aspects of a culture that is still largely unfamiliar to many Western readers. ◆Yoel Hoffmann is professor of Far Eastern Philosophy and Literature at the University of Haifa in Israel. He has studies extensively in Japan, at Hanazono University and Kyoto University, where he completed his doctoral work. Professor Hoffmann has written several books on Buddhism and comparative philosophy.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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