Classical Haikus Are Underrated

The difficulty of being objective and evocative

TL;DR: Contrary to what is taught in the West, haikus are not (strictly) about syllables. They are about capturing one small, brief moment in time in a way that is both (1) objective and (2) evocative. In a world where many objective things are boring and many evocative things aren’t objective, this is a lost art. Trying to find those things that are objective and evocative is also, I think, a very good habit to get into. The only way to do it is to be maximally attentive. 

1. The Tension of Haikus

We are often taught (in America at least) that haikus are 5-7-5. In truth, haikus are not defined by this syllable constraint. In 13th-century Japan, poets would get together and write chain poems called renga (Higginson, 1985). The chain has to start somewhere, though. And the first verse of this renga was called a haiku. Because it was supposed to ‘set the scene’ for the renga, traditional haiku involves seasonal words. 

To paraphrase Higginson (1985, ch. 7-9) the art of haiku lies in a core tension. Haikus must (1) describe a single, small moment objectively but (2) in a universally evocative way. It’s that tension between objectivity and evocation that makes haikus so unique.  

Here are several examples. Notice how these make you feel something but without subjective reporting. 

The light of a candle
Is transferred to another candle —
Spring twilight 
-Yosa Buson

***

When I speak
My lips are chilled—
Autumn wind
-Matsuo Bashō

***

With each falling petal
They grow older—
Plum branches
-Yosa Buson

As Higginson (1985, p. 5) described in the Haiku Handbook:

When we compose a haiku we are saying, "It is hard to tell you how I am feeling. Perhaps if I share with you the event that made me aware of these feelings, you will have similar feelings of your own."

Or later (p. 115):

If a writer captures the images of an experience that produced emotion, then the reader—if comprehending and sympathetic—will have a similar emotion based on experiencing the images provided by the writer.

Here again (p. 120):

In the best haiku the author tries to share the experience itself, so that the reader may share in that experience as directly as possible, and not be limited to the author's response to it.

2. Objective and Evocative Is Hard To Do

Now, if you try to write a haiku, it looks really easy. But you’ll notice it’s hard to be evocative just by describing something objectively. And it’s hard to be objective while also aiming for evocation. This quadrant of thought is extremely rare and—I speculate—getting even rarer. 

Many things over-index on objectivity, under-index on evocativeness, and are then called “boring”. Think of instruction manuals. Once you are on the far side of objectivity, it is hard to get to evocation without losing that objectivity. 

And there are a lot of evocative things that aren’t objective. Sad movies and polemics come to mind. Once on the evocative edge, it is hard to add objectivity without dialing down the evocativeness.  

Maybe because objectivity is boring, or because virality means high monetary returns on emotional content (Berger & Milkman, 2012), evocativeness is increasingly eating away at objectivity’s market share. Donald Trump is a great example. Even his lies—e.g: that people went out in their boats to watch Hurricane Harvey—have “an almost operatic quality not readily explainable by political expediency” (Lewandosky, 2021, pg. 105). Since he is maximally evocative, it’s not surprising the media gave him 2 billion dollars of free coverage. More generally, misinformation—the cognitive smog of the Internet—blankets so much headspace in part because it’s evocative (Pennycook & Rand, 2021).

Aside from haikus, there is one form of writing still standing that balances objectivity with evocation: Investigative journalism. But investigative journalism may be dying. ProPublica, The Daily Beast, and the New York Post are all to some extent trying to evoke. The difference is that the last two are more willing to sacrifice objectivity to be evocative. It’s cheaper. You can make shit up. (This is evocation by addition). You can remove key details. (This is evocation by subtraction). The only reason why ProPublica works as something objective and evocative is because they were there. 

That is, I think, the key to having both objectivity and evocativeness: You have to be there.  For investigative reporting, this is obvious. Some of the most impactful stories were so impactful because reporters were there. Their access was extra-ordinary. I am referring to famous pieces that changed society like Watergate or Wikileaks. There’s an obvious logic here. If something is spectacular, then simply describing it objectively will also be evocative. (Think of getting struck by lightning). Though being in spectacular situations or gaining spectacular access is difficult. And none of the haikus above were about anything spectacular. Haikus are objective and evocative but not contingent on experiencing spectacularity. 

3. Attentiveness, Experience Potential, and Haikus

It’s not so much that these haiku masters did more things than you or me. Based on their mobility options and life expectancy, they probably did less.

A crude formula for the total amount of meaning we accumulate in life could be thought of as a weighted sum of two factors for each situation we experience: the inherent Experience Potential of that situation multiplied by the Attentiveness we give it.

ProPublica writers are put in situations with extremely high Experience Potential. Haiku writers often describe quotidian situations but with Attentiveness turned up to 11.

What haikus are good at training you to do is be highly attentive to mundane scenes, so that even the smallest experiences are scaled with meaning. 

It is for this reason that writing a haiku a day is a fun skill to practice—especially in a world where objective things are often boring and evocative things often aren’t objective.