Ma he's

[haikurambler]

Hi everyone

Just been asking this question over at Jane's forum and wondered if anyone could throw some light on it here:


How would YOU translate ma?


My position. . . .

Trying to deepen understanding (and skill set) in relation to ma (its been an ongoing, back-burner sort of project for a few months). Currently I'm exploring it from the roots up (again). There are glyphs that contribute towards the meaning of the ideogram. They picture a torii type gateway. We seem to have 'betweeness' as the catchphrase.



This interval 'aspect' of ma appears to be arrived at by defining the glyphs separately, then synthesising the result, and this in relation to Japanese aesthetic usage. We seem to have 'door' and 'sun or day' for the parts. Would you agree with that, yourself? I have a hunch, you see, that there's more to ma than its application in aesthetics - or rather, it may be that understanding is still not fully delivered yet to us 'foreigners' outside of Nippon. If there is a larger context to ma, then this may enlighten some of the deeper issues in the practice and enjoyment of haiku. In fact, haiku may be much more than, to date, has been documented, anywhere - even by the 'experts'?

jp

Image source:
http://www.jp41.com/kanji/ma.html

[Christopher A White]

Dear John,

I think there may have been some academic books published that cover the concept of ma quite thoroughly, though they may be hard to locate. Unfortunately I no longer recall what leads I had to this information...

For now though, you might find plenty to sink your teeth into with this article (forgive all of its typos): http://www.henkoosterling.nl/sens-com.html

It's pretty dense, and full of reference to post-modern philosophy, but I'm fairly sure it could shed quite a bit of light on thinking about ma if you can plod through it.

Chris

[Jack Galmitz]

Much to get through.
For me, the line, whether the poetic or the ______
both separates and joins from the immediate moment it is written, so I do not write with kire in mind or ma in mind; they are already there in the LINE.
Actually, the first letter itself is sufficient, I think, as in any given language it already establishes difference/sameness, anticipation of what is permitted along with it and not; then the phoneme, morphene, these clearly establish the in-between, so again, I do not worry about ma or kire in my poems; the balance, imbalance, stasis/kinesis is always already there.

[haikurambler]

Hi Chris, apologies for the delay. Yes, I've bookmarked your link and appreciate it. Will puruse over the next day or so and see how it goes. . . .

John

[haikurambler]

Hi Jack

The more I've deepened into the mystery that the Nippon 'aesthetic' of ma indicates the more it shows about the plasticity of this imagination-space.The kireji is one way of shaping or conditioning ma-space. Often I see this as a Noh stage. Apt, because of the nature of the silences that move the sequence of the Noh drama along. In the Noh-pauses (every so often all is motionless and silent) the audience get a chance to absorb the implicit inner-life of the theatrical production's content. There is a very good case, I feel, for ignoring all formal considerations and simply keeping a haiku red dirt simple, stripped of all cues and assuming the unconscious will sort things out perfectly adequately for the readers understanding. However, the tradition is not this and so, what is the tradition (and beyond)? This is my query of ma. Another point is that haiku are, again traditionally, read aloud. So, that would be needing to be transcribed in the haiku's written script, so to say. Primarily this is a function of the cutting word (kireji). I'd say our choice of adding punctuation (to stand in for kireji as a surrogate) does make a difference to the experience of a haiku. A profound difference.

John

[isafakir]

thanks for the reference. it is a bit dense.

i wanted to suggest another way to look at it. definitely to understand "ma" is important and its a japanese idea, but to do good haiku, good poetry i believe presupposes a kind of universal awareness of "ma" universal to all who do it, art. otherwise haiku in english is a hopeless idea.

forgive my rant but i find it quite strange that some assert that "ma" is so utterly foreign and incomprehensible to Europeans and Americans and our art literature and poetry. you can't have ever  listened to thelonious monk.   or beethoven's quartet no 15.

Arnold van Gennep in his book (published 1909) The Rites of Passage, asserts the centrality of "limen" "threshold" in all human rites of passage. rites of passage was a very significant contribution to structural anthropology. the whole question of the space between is fundamental to a very great deal of 20th century research into aesthetics. leading in part on the one hand to the whole new discipline of queer studies, analysis of the social reality of being between spaces. i have found this concept of limen, threshold, a fundamental artistic feature across a wide range of cultures. not the same but relating to the same human fundamental, i think "ma" in japanese aesthetics is at its center related to liminality in human experience. all the little rituals we engage in going from here to there. shaking hands, giving selams, graduating ceremonies, circumcision, getting married, holy water font at the front door of the catholic church, inka, grace, lighting the candle at sunset before shabas. passover. easter, newroz bonfire. august first mountain bonfires in switzerland. all these are one way or another "about" the space between this and that.

being between, in between, is a fundamental quality of Our Lady of Flowers, Jean Genet.

yes that is very different from "ma" in haiku. however the poetry of Emily Dickinson is  nothing if not the poetry of the unstated unsaid. the koan MU the gateless gate expresses a fundamental human experience not just a cultural expression. the famous comic genius Nasruddin the Teacher of middle eastern fame, also named Mulla Nasruddin and Doha, has a door over his grave in the town of Aksaray, and no walls. nothing - no it isn't - is true about anything we see and experience.

the Tempest by Shakespeare, the complete abdication of magic power authority expertise, is all about MU, and i would suggest about the ultimate "ma", the unseen unspoken in the everyday commonplace.

i know you can't identify one cultural concept in one culture with that of another in totally unrelated cultures. no two cultures slice the pie the same. but between those slices is human reality. and i think aristotle is correct in identifying aesthetic experience with a universal recognition of commonality: i put myself there and recognize my unseen self. IMHO. 

Robert Frost, to me, describes commonplace and leaves to the reader to understand the unspoken existential reality. Joshu's No Way! [MU!] is our existential fundamental universal. there is no way there and no way back :-)

i believe it is the need to be reconciled with the spaces between the things we people our universes with that is the fundamental driving force behind all poetry and art. and the fundamental aesthetic of haiku poetry is a human universal we all can understand if we do poetry, do music, do theatre. [i am not sure about some avant guard installations which seem more intellectual than artistic but that could be my own failing]. [i once watched a naked cellist play cello on a naked man holding the man between her knees like yo yo ma and was struck by its cleverness]

haiku isn't being clever but using words to show what's between the words, giving significance to everyday things, nature.

hope y'all don't mind my exercising my thoughts.

Dear John,

I think there may have been some academic books published that cover the concept of ma quite thoroughly, though they may be hard to locate.

[haikurambler]

Yes, a dense work but worth the while of its unloading. John's reference is one of the best, to gain a deeper overview of ma. Worth returning to in the light of changes. But the book still needs to be written on ma.

The liminal. The place that is neither here nor there. In---between. We think of this as a narrow space, as we cross. However, as we stand between the worlds of yesterday and tomorrow, this space is boundlessly everything and eternal. Thus, ma also. Mu (nothingness) evokes ma (nothingness in potentia). When we enter a haiku-ma it is like a Noh play. The narrow stage turns into a boundless universe, filled with meaningful events. In the Noh-pauses, this is amplified to a further order of magnitude. This is a working model to contemplate. Also, imagine (in your own focus of ma-space - between stimulus and response) the logical sequence (cognitively) from nothing to something. The birthing/transition-space is ma. In the early stage, ma in potentia, an empty vacuole - at the threshold between nothing and something (which has yet to occur). In fact, the threshold of a dream.

Standing on a bridge is a good place to watch the temporal river flow. In this condition we can experience eternity. A timeless place where our best haiku are born - in the same manner as any bright universe out of the darkness of unknowing, of nothingness.

(Read it like a haiku.)

NOTE
Just a first reaction to the last comment. I'll ponder again to see what else arises, Thanks for this.