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| Thanks to Nerd Paradise for the MS Paint tutorials. |
Lots of kinds of poetry we just don't
hear about these days, right? In general, like, everybody knows about iambic
pentameter (actually, I don't really), but what about the Pyrrhic meter or
the Homeric ode?
For that matter, everyone knows about haiku (俳句), and you might know about the tanka/waka (短歌/和歌), but there are possibly/probably other kinds of Japanese poetry (some of which are also called waka or 和歌) of which you've yet to hear.
Like the "head repeated poem"
or sedōka (旋頭歌). It's been out of
popular use, as I understand it, for nearly 1300 years. Barring any poetry
movements that I don't know about.
...If you're still reading this, then I guess I should actually get a move on and tell you about it. Here goes!
History Facts
Poets used the sedōka during the Nara
period, until -- during the same period -- the style "died on the vine of
abandonment and neglect", as it were (though I've also read people used it until the beginning of the Heian period). For whatever reason, people stopped
using it, even before fashion turned its back on the chōka. You can find some
sedōka in the Kokin Wakashū (early 900s AD, kanji thusly: 古今和歌集)
and in the Man'yōshū (759AD, spelled like this: 万葉集).
They're both poetry anthologies, in case you were wondering.
And now, the following fact, which I shall also place elsewhere. I could put it under Meter (that's below), but I put it here, as it fits too. Here it is: precision for the sedōka, and other kinds of waka, wasn't always strictly adhered to (I know, it's supposed to be Japan, right? Just goes to show, you can't trust stereotypes). People would play around with it.
And for that matter, a sedōka's theme
could be about anything.
The Meter
The sedōka is described as having two
tercets (had to look that one up), a tercet being three lines. In the sedōka's
case, the first line has 5 syllables, the middle one has 7 syllables, and the
last one also has 7 syllables, okay? That's 38 syllables. Okay. So, for some
unnecessary illustration, that's like:
知りたいよ shiritai yo I want to know, I tell you.
青い目が光る aoi me ga hikaru
blue eyes sparkle.
この命はね kono inochi wa ne
this life, you know?
星空 だ hoshizora da it's a/the starry sky
星の光が hoshi no
hikari ga the stars' light
海で踊 るよ
umi de odoru yo dance on
the ocean
Yup, I wrote that just for the sake of this blog post -- poetic, yeah? If not exact to the meter. Just remember, I am not fluent. And I don't know how much sense it makes in English, either.
After the first group of 18 syllables, you're supposed to pause before reciting the second group. The pause's supposed to create a sense of dialogue. Why would you want to do that? See below.
How Do You Use Sedōka?
When people still used the sedōka,
one thing I read they used it for was dialogues. The idea was for each chunk of
poetry to have a different look at the same thing (I read this after I wrote
the above poem)... or at least, that's what you can do. Were there other things? Dunno. Guess I'll have to read
the Man'yōshū and Kokin Wakashu to find out. The University of
Virginia Library has them both, among others, online for free.
Now, in order to add
cultural/psychological weight to this meter, I shall tell you about a
historical figure who wrote sedōka: Kakinomoto
Hitomaro. He's a poet who died in maybe 708 AD -- apparently he was and is
a rather famous poet.
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This
is a picture I found on (gasp! The shame) Wikipedia. It's supposed to be
Kakinomoto
and public domain.
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References
Just so you can do your own fact checking and not have to rely on my ability to
process information (which admittedly tends to need debugging frequently)....
here's the places I used to write this post:
