Modalità di collegamento dello haikai del Seicento: kotobazuke e kokorozuke

There is a large number of rules in haikai poetry of Seventeenth century. However, despite the undeniable importance of all these rules, what matters most in a haikai session is the way a poet links his verse to the previous one. In other words, “linking” is the essence of haikai. According to Basho – needless to say, widely considered as a major figure of late Seventeenth century haikai poetry – before he established his own style based on the nioizuke or ‘scent link’, there was mainly two types of link: kotobazuke or ‘lexical link’ (also called monozuke or, litterally, ‘thing link’), valued by the Teimon style poets; and kokorozuke or ‘content link’ (litterally ‘emotional link’), stressed by the Danrin style poets. Starting from Basho’s view, this paper focuses on the definition of kotobazuke and kokorozuke in relation to each other as well as in relation to other important ideas like yoriai, torinashi and mushinshojaku. In order to define more precisely kotobazuke and kokorozuke and at the same time try to clarify that Basho’s classification was at least incorrect, I will consider the fact that both terms may have different meaning in different contexts, from Medieval treatises on renga poetry to Seventeenth century treatises on haikai.

L'articolo definisce le principali modalità di collegamento delle strofe nello haikai del Seicento: il kotobazuke (collegamento lessicale) e il kokorozuke (collegamento semantico). Secondo Basho, unanimemente considerato il massimo poeta di haikai, il kotobazuke era tipico della scuola Teimon mentre il kokorozuke era esaltato dai poeti dello stile Danrin. Partendo da questa concezione l'articolo mira a definire kotobazuke e kokorozuke sia in relazione tra loro sia in relazione ad altre modalità di collegamento.