Page:The Spirit of Japanese Poetry (Noguchi).djvu/48

44 subjective and objective; while some Hokku poems appear to be objective, those poems are again by turns quite subjective through the great virtue of the writers having the fullest identification with the matter written on. You might call such collation poetical trespassing; but it is the very point whence the Japanese poetry gains unusual freedom; that freedom makes us join at once with the soul of Nature. I admit that when such poetical method is carried to the extreme, there will result unintelligibility; but poetical unintelligibility is certainly better than the imbecility or vulgarity of which examples abound, permit me to say, in English poetry. It is the aim of this Japanese poetry that each line of the poem should appeal to the reader’s consciousness, perhaps with the unconnected words, touching and again kindling on the particular association; there is ample reason to say that our poetry is really searching for a far more elusive effect than the general English poetry.

As I said before, the Hokku poems are, unlike the majority of English poems, the expression of the moods or forces of the writer's poetical exertion, and their aim, if aim they have, is hardly connected with the thing or matter actually stated, but it casts a light on the poetical position in which the writer stands; although the phrase might be taken wrongly in the West, our Japanese