Caribbean Haiku of Wisdom: Reading Elis Juliana’s Haiku in Papiamentu Translated into English

Mitsuishi, Yoko

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-05457-1_5

Yoko Mitsuishi³

135 Accesses

Abstract

The chapter offers a transpacific perspective of Caribbean haiku written in Papiamentu, a Creole language spoken only locally in the ABC Islands. Elis Juliana, a prestigious artist and writer in Curaçao, has created his work in the tradition of their folk culture. Mitsuishi approaches his haiku through English translation, the very act of which can be taken as part of Curaçaoan culture, where most people are multilingual. Compared to the traditional Japanese haiku, Juliana’s shows strong interest in morals and community life, as well as love of nature and an ordinary life characteristic of both haiku worlds. This study identifies Juliana’s haiku as inherited wisdom of people that have survived in the Caribbean history as the language Papiamentu itself.

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Notes

1.
Weekly he publishes haiku in the magazine, Anzzjpe di Korsozc, alternating one week in Papiamentu and the next week in Dutch. See Hélène Garrett, “Identity in the Papiamentu Haiku of Elis Juliana,” master’s thesis (University Alberta, 2000), 66. This thesis was published in 2016, and subsequent references to the thesis are to the book version: Garrett, Hélène, Identity as seen in the Papiamentu Haiku of Elis Juliana (Saarbrücken, Deutschland: LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing, 2016), 53.
2.
Igma van Putte-de Windt, trans. Pool, Monique S., “Caribbean Poetry in Papiamentu,” Callaloo 21(Summer 1998): 656.
3.
Aart G. Broek, “Ideology and Writing in Papiamentu: A Bird’s Eye View,” Journal of Caribbean Literature 5 (Summer 2007): 2.
4.
See Eva Martha Eckkrammer, “Papiamentu, Cultural Resistance, and Socio-cultural Challenges: The ABC Islands in a Nutshell,” Journal of Caribbean Literatures 5 (Summer 2007): 84.
5.
The organization “Arte di Palabra” published in 2014 the collection of poems of students from 2000 to 2013, including haiku: Ange Jessurun, ed., Pòtpurí: Arte di Palabra 2014 (Curaçao: Caribpublishing/B.V.Uitgeverij SWP Amsterdam Derecho, 2014).
6.
Some problems with education in Curaçao are explained in 1997, by Paul de Rooy, an ASCD (the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) member from Curaçao: “The greater part of the Curacao population (83.2 percent) speak Papiamentu, their native tongue; 8.6 percent (10,000 persons) speak Dutch; 3.6 percent speak English; 3.1 percent speak Spanish. Children from Papiamentu-speaking homes have relatively poorer scores in the Dutch language education system than children from Dutch-speaking homes.” Quoted in Frances Faircloth Jones, “Special Topic: From Curaçao: Papiamentu at Home Dutch in School,” Educational Leadership (February 1997): 80. They have another problem. In Arba Papiamentu is disappearing. In 2006, in “Language Extinction: Caribbean Conundrum,” Jen Los reports: “English and Spanish are indispensable in the tourism industry—which accounts for almost 80% of the island’s revenues. Aruba’s 100,000 residents play host to more than 1.2 million tourists every year—the vast majority of them English-speaking. The demand for low-wage jobs in the hotel industry has also fed a steady flow of migrant workers from Venezuela and Colombia, just 29 km away. There is growing resentment because many don’t even try to learn Papiamentu.” Jen Los, “Language Extinction: Caribbean Conundrum,” New Internationalist 23 (October 2006): 23.
7.
Eckkrammer, “Papiamentu,” 80.
8.
Garrett, Identity as seen in the Papiamentu Haiku, 33.
9.
Garrett, “Translator’s Introduction,” in Elis Juliana, Haiku in Papiamentu, trans. Hélène Garrett (Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press, 2003), xiii.
10.
Aart G. Broek points out that Juliana’s “strong narrative elements” and “dialogue style” seem to be its direct descendants. See “Ideology and Writing,” 7.
11.
Garrett, Identity as seen in the Papiamentu Haiku, 48.
12.
Jack Kerouac, Scattered Poems (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1971), 69.
13.
James, A Fierce Hatred of Injustice, 69.
14.
Juliana, Haiku in Papiamentu, 3.
15.
Garrett, “Translator’s Introduction,” in Juliana, Haiku in Papiamentu, xiii.
16.
Winston James, A Fierce Hatred of Injustice: Claude McKay’s Jamaica and His Poetry of Rebellion (New York: Verso, 2000), 139.
17.
James, A Fierce Hatred of Injustice, 139–40.
18.
R. H. Blyth, Haiku, 4 vols. (Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1949–52).
19.
Juliana has not learned about haiku directly from Blyth, according to Garrett in her thesis: “Juliana explains that it was the book by J. van Tooren (1900–1991) entitled Haiku Een Jonge Maan (1973), which inspired him to begin composing (not translating) haiku in Papiamentu, using the rules and techniques of Japanese haiku.” Quoted from an article in Kristóf (1993) magazine in Garrett’s thesis, 36.
20.
Garrett, Identity as seen in the Papiamentu Haiku, 43.
21.
It is the usual way to mention only their first names when we refer to haiku poets in Japan, and I follow the custom.
22.
In Blyth’s Haiku, the original haiku in Japanese, with the Japanese pronunciation expressed in the alphabet, is put before the English translation.
23.
By Yosano Buson, in Blyth, Haiku, Vol. 3, 956.
24.
Buson, in Blyth, Haiku, Vol. 3, 956.
25.
Blyth, Haiku, Vol. 1, 5.
26.
Blyth, Haiku, Vol. 1, 5.
27.
Garrett, Identity as seen in the Papiamentu Haiku, 58.
28.
Blyth, Haiku, Vol. 1, 8–9.
29.
Nanette de Jong, “The Tambú of Curaçao: Historical Projections and the Ritual Map of Experience,” Black Music Research Journal 30 (Fall 2010): 198.
30.
By Kobayashi Issa, in Blyth, Haiku, Vol. 4, 1077.
31.
By Natsume Seibi, in Blyth, Haiku, Vol. 3, 797.
32.
Seibi, in Blyth, Haiku, Vol. 3, 797.
33.
Garrett, Identity as seen in the Papiamentu Haiku, 57.
34.
Blyth, Haiku, Vol. 3, 942.
35.
Blyth, Haiku, Vol. 1, 39.
36.
Though some are ambiguous to be chosen under one category, I classify the following 73 haiku by Juliana into 5 types of wisdom: 1 (#2, #8, #11, #27, #30, #46, #47, #89, #102, #111, #122, #139, #145, #155); 2 (#6, #9, #12, #14, #15, #18, #20, #25, #26, #33, #34, #41, #43, #56, #59, #60, #62, #71, #81, #94, #113, #114, #130, #135, #136, #137); 3 (#1, #10, #19, #22, #23, #87, #98, #104, #183); 4 (#54, #55, #83, #85, #92, #93, #95, #96, #97, #103, #106, #138, #164, #165); 5 (#53, #57, #76, #109, #128, #132, #134, #140, #142, #184).
37.
Jack L. Daniel, Geneva Smitherman-Donaldson, and Milford A. Jeremiah, “Makin’ a Way Outa No Way: The Proverb Tradition in the Black Experience,” Journal of Black Studies 17 (June 1987): 484.
38.
C. A. Akrofi, Twi Mmebusem (Accra: Waterville, 1962), v, quoted in Daniel, Smitherman-Donaldson and Jeremiah, “Makin’ a Way Outa No Way,” 486.
39.
All the subsequent quotations are from Claud McKay, Complete Poems, ed. William J. Maxwell (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004): Lines 8–9 of “Fetchin’ Water”: “’Nuff rock’tone in de sea, yet none/But those ’pon lan’ know ’bouten sun: according to Walter Jekyll, an allusion to the Jamaican proverb, ‘Rock’tone (stone) a river bottom no feel sun hot” (see n. 287); Line 14 of “Retribution”: “Day longer ’an rope”: according to Jekyll, a proverb that means “I’ll be even with you” (see n. 288); Line 14 of “Heart-Stirrings”: “water mo’ ’an flour”: according to Jekyll, “Beggars can’t be choosers” (see n. 289); Lines 19–20 of “Heart-Stirrings” refer to the biblical Proverbs 15:17 and 27:1 (see n. 289); and Line 21 of “Heart-Stirrings”: “you jump from fryin’-pan/’Traight in a fire.”
40.
Sw. Anand Prahlad, Reggae Wisdom: Proverbs in Jamaican Music (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001), 58, 59.
41.
As Juliana himself explains, haiku began as a humorous poem. Later Basho made it more serious art, and the humorous, satirical poem with seventeen syllables has formed another genre called “senryu.” See Kristóf, 1993, 15, quoted in Garrett, Identity as seen in the Papiamentu Haiku, 36. However, humor still remains as one important element of haiku. Blyth includes humor as one of 13 elements of Zen, which he considers to be the state of mind of haiku. See Haiku Vol. 1, Section II, “7: Humor,” 196–203.
42.
Quoted in Blyth, Haiku Vol. 1, 32.
43.
Garrett, Identity as seen in the Papiamentu Haiku, 47.
44.
Garrett, Identity as seen in the Papiamentu Haiku, 47.
45.
Broek, “Ideology and Writing,” 7.

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Department of Socio-Cultural Studies, Toyo University, Tokyo, Japan
Yoko Mitsuishi

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Department of African American & African Studies, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN, USA
Yuichiro Onishi
College of Letters, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan
Fumiko Sakashita

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Mitsuishi, Y. (2019). Caribbean Haiku of Wisdom: Reading Elis Juliana’s Haiku in Papiamentu Translated into English. In: Onishi, Y., Sakashita, F. (eds) Transpacific Correspondence. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05457-1_5

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05457-1_5
Published: 13 March 2019
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-05456-4
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