can someone help me with the analysis of Matsuo Basho's "old pond" haiku???i really need it badly...

Question

i've already been searching the analysis of this haiku for days. But i can't find it. Anyway the poetry goes like this:

Literal
Fu-ru (old) i-ke (pond) ya,
ka-wa-zu (frog) to-bi-ko-mu (jumping into)
mi-zu (water) no o-to (sound)
(Fumiko Saisho)

Figurative (various)
The old pond;
A frog jumps in —
The sound of the water.
(Robert Aitken)

Answer 1

Furuike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto
: the site below has a review of the poem in a lot of terms.... I recommend you read that 1st
http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/basho-frog.htm


then this has the history of it....
http://www.xs4all.nl/~daikoku/haiku/meguri/kuhi-2.htm
This is probably the most famous poem in Japan

The whole thing is that originally it evokes so much in a simple form....but now it is like something people shove in young people's faces and say why can't you see the subtleties... well, because you are telling me about it rather than letting me sit and think about it, innit...thank you for giving me the incentive to actually look this up... I have a big book on the shelf and actually never look at it....

Answer 2

As you know, one way to describe a haiku is to say it's a poem that tries to capture a single moment of experience, traditionally an experience involving the natural world.

Some elements of nature -- cherry blossoms would be one prime example -- are especially popular subjects of Japanese poetry. The sound of a frog's voice is one such subject. Many generations of poets before Basho had written frog poems that dealt in some way with the creature's voice. One unfortunate thing that can happen when many, many artists have treated the same subject is that the works of art can, in some sense, get in the way of observing or experiencing the thing itself. Instead of truly seeing or hearing the natural world, our minds can sometimes default to "conventional wisdom" about nature so that we see and hear only what poems or painting have taught us to expect. Basho's frog haiku is extraordinary in part because it represents a moment of genuine, fresh experience. Instead of rehashing some generic observation about the frog's voice, the poet is truly in the moment, authentically experiencing nature as it is, not just as it has been described over and over again.

Answer 3

Another site that might help would be:

http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/basho-frog.htm

which has 30 different translations of this haiku.

One analysis would focus on the ambiguity at the end of line two. Does the frog jump into the water, creating the sound, or does the frog jump into the sound itself?

Some other sites that would help:

http://www.danking.org/evergreen/Fall_2002/JapaneseLit/basho.html
http://www.haikuworld.org/dogwood/fulltext/db_2.html
http://www.uwosh.edu/faculty_staff/barnhill/Basho/Word%20documents/Basho's%20haiku.doc

Answer 4

I think it might be time to change the locks! "Yahoo Dullards: This is a question... not chatting... please note that this is asked in question format, in an open community, to all at YA! If for some reason you get confused and feel this is chatting, feel free to explore the use of an auto battery & jumper cables on various body parts. Have a nice day" - Too funny!