DailyHaiku - A Daily Shot Of Zen

Translator's Note

Poetry (and generally art) is organic life in itself, because it is based on various rhythms, physical and emotional. Rhythm, the alternation of pauses and sounds, emptiness and fullness, is part of us since our first breath, is our numeric framework, is a principle through which a part is related to the whole. Language too is a question of rhythm.

When we translate into a language that is not our mother tongue, however well we know it, we go blindly on; the ear tells us if a word is “right.” This perfect adaptation between form and matter, word and idea, translates into musical harmony. Translation is a challenge to hear with other ears, to enter the flow of another rhythm and to perceive its pulse and voice. In a certain way, this makes us better know our own mother tongue.

In our thoughts there is always an effort, a striving to understand, solve, communicate, to fragment: poetry, like dreams and music, shows us the intuition of the whole. The translation of a perception into words is “spontaneous and natural” when we are able to welcome it without judgments, as it is, “here-and-now.” Haiku is the maximum possible linguistic condensation of a “here-and-now.” Classic poetry tells us a story and we follow it using rational functions—for example, verbal comprehension or the logical sequence of what is said—but haiku makes us use perception, creativity, and imagination before translating into rationality. What's more important in haiku is the unsaid, the void among the words, silence. Translation, both of one's own haiku and those of other haijin, should express this unsaid, possibly in the same way.

Antonella Filippi

Antonella Filippi is a writer and poet living in Italy. Her haiku have been published in Italy, UK, USA, and Japan. Her last haiku book is Autumn rose (Italian, English, French, Japanese). She is member of the main Italian Haiku Association (www.cascinamacondo.com) and member of the jury of Cascina Macondo's International Haiku Contest in Italian. Passionate with science and literature, she also works as editorial director and scientific director for different companies and teaches in a school of complementary medicine.