Page:Japanese Literature (Keene).pdf/57

Rh the case, as far as the total poem is concerned. The next three verses are ostensibly linked because they all treat of early spring; it is then that the hunters decorate their arrows with fern, and then, too, that a haze appears in the air—although the conceit of having the fumes of the horse-dung called haze certainly does not come off so successfully as the lightning image. If one recalls the effortless flowing beauty of the poetry composed at Minase, these carefully contrived bits hardly seem to be worthy of the name of linked-verse. It is small wonder, then, that this form of poetry gradually died out. For linked-verse to be as successful as those made at Minase, it was necessary for at least three poets of exceptional talents to join efforts, and to try, in so far as possible, to subordinate every other consideration to the perfection of the whole. We are reminded in this of a string quartet, where the music can as easily be spoiled by the ostentatious virtuosity of one member as by the incompetence of another. The man who composed the verse about the lightning flash was thinking mainly of creating an effect with his brilliant image; a true master of linked-verse would have foregone this pleasure in favour of the harmony of the entire series. At its best the linked-verse was a unique medium for the expression of the successive images evoked in the minds of different poets, a multiple stream of poetic consciousness, as it were, producing an effect akin to music. The fact that it lacks the formal structure of more conventional kinds of poetry was of help to the Japanese, who have never been strong on the construction of poetry or prose, and who were enabled by the linked-verse to extend their lyricism beyond the brief compass of a tanka or haiku without danger of formlessness. That is, as long as each verse fitted securely into the next, and the poetry was maintained at a high evocative level, there was no need for a carefully worked-out beginning, middle and end, a