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The "Haiku-Life"

DAY INTO NIGHT marks an auspicious year, the seventieth birthday of its author, Günther Klinge. As in Drifting with the Moon, his first haiku book to be adapted into English, these haiku take a natural course in which the inner and outer life mingle and flow together through the days, the nights, the seasons, and the years.

In May of 1979 I was the guest of Günther Klinge and his gracious wife, and was able to observe the routine of his demanding life, literally to see his haiku in the beauty of the Bavarian landscape, in the flight of swallows against the dazzling white of Alpine peaks

In simple watching

I feel the joy of swallows

celebrating heaven.

Or in the wide green meadows dotted with flowers and cattle

The cowbells ringing

in the tree's immense shadow.

Earth's quiet turning.

Or on their own mountain in the Austrian Tyrol, where his wife and I walked to a plunging waterfall and photographed the wild chamois and one magnificent stag

In a long lament

a stag calls through the forest.

Twilight drifting down.

Haiku and life: How does one hyphenate them into the haiku-life? This is a question that occupies Mr. Klinge's thoughts. For here is an industrialist whose conferences often last until midnight, and whose many offices and plants keep him traveling to several countries; a humanitarian who gives generously of his time and resources; an artist who paints in his studio in Schwabing, who improvises remarkably well on the piano and organ, who experiments with striking photomicrographs. And here is a man who is dedicated to his family and to relatives and friends whose concerns become his concerns.

For such a man the vision of the haiku-life would seem to be as improbable as the wishful longing for some remote and solitary island where one might contemplate the riddles of the universe. Yet this book, selected and edited from a daily haiku journal, bears evidence that his is indeed a haiku-life. But not without its price.

Haiku is one of the most difficult forms of writing, particularly the traditional Japanese haiku form Günther Klinge has chosen, with its rigid pattern of 5-7-5 syllables set in three lines. This pattern must be so imprinted on the mind that the rhythm of it becomes a mold into which incoming sensations and impressions are poured, and immediately take shape . With the many other requirements in writing haiku, an attentiveness and openness to the events in the natural world must be developed . All of this involves one's time.

For Günther Klinge this means he must rise at dawn to allow for a walk in the woods during his drive from his home in Gauting to his office in Munich. His day begins and ends with the writing of haiku, and he allots time to write in the afternoon. In this way he completes at least a first draft of three haiku every day.

Many of his poems grow out of reflection and contemplation, and since philosophic comment is not common in haiku, a number of translations have been set in italics to counterpoint the accompanying haiku.

In moments borrowed from his crowded schedule he spoke about the meaning of some of these. "However difficult it is, we must discipline ourselves to forget even that which is most painful. This yellow leaf demands it."

"Why," I asked him, "does this yellow leaf demand it?"

"There is a connection," he said, "between the yellow leaf and the necessity of transcending pain, but I cannot explain it. I can only say it is there."

Here, then, is an almost mystic connection between ourselves and nature, a link not so much to be rationalized as to be recognized.

For Günther Klinge his daily intervals with haiku are what he calls "points of pause ." They are moments in which the mind and spirit are totally focused, not only on the significance of what is happening in nature, but also on the complexities of human relationships, and on honest self-examination.

Günther Klinge regards haiku as a cohesive force in life, a product of will as much as of inspiration . Therefore this is not a collection of haiku in the usual sense: Written almost as a diary, it has the continuity of time and the timelessness of poetry. It is the work of a poet-observer recording with clarity and compassion the journey from day into night.

ANN ATWOOD