The scent of the ink stone - E

Ion Codrescu and Klaus-Dieter Wirth refer to the Haiga with the fifth offprint of our Haiku Society. The Romanian art professor Codrescu transformed 82 selected haiku by 82 authors into 82 works of art made of ink using the sumi-e technique. In his foreword, Wirth names mu – the filled emptiness, qi – the harmony of spirit and atmosphere, shodô – the immediately spontaneous nature of the handwork and others such as the “flying white” fei bai among the defining characteristics of a Haiga work of art.
Together, the two editors uphold an “original notion of a haiga as a complex work of art” (quote from p. 8). The special edition of the DHG invites you to get to know 82 works in this Japanese art form. The author's name, German text and English text are on the left-hand side of the book; on the right page of the book is the associated multicolored Haiga. Here are just a few examples of three impressive conversions of the text into an image: 1) "A wing flapping / from paper fog / the ink bird falls" with the text by Maren Schönfeld on pages 26/27; 2) “Lime leaves fall / one he picks up / the late summer wind” with a text by Ruth Karoline Mieger (pages 110/111); 3) "nocturnal blinking / a rower / parting the dark water" (Lyrics: Lydia Royen Damhave). In example 2) the artist lets a late summer sun shine through the small areas surrounded by the letters of his writing. And the example 3) is the background of the book cover. What I find most impressive, apart from a rather small flying heron, is the whispering of Gerd Börner's haiku, which is exclusively written in writing: "Take me with you / I whisper / into the ear of the wind" (p. 30/31).