The world of Japanese poetry in Sogi tercet

Abstract

In the work of the Japanese poet Iio Sogi (1421–1502), travel notes occupy a significant place, among which the first was the diary "Shirakawa Kiko" ("Journey to the Shirakawa Outpost", 1468). The article is devoted to the analysis of the Sogi tercet, which opens a collective poem of one hundred "strung songs" (renga). The specifics of literary continuity in the history of medieval verse and the role of renga poetry as a carrier of retrospective knowledge are explored. The use of poetics that developed in the early period of Japanese literature and its canonical metalanguage is noted. With the use of precedent texts, the reminiscent properties of renga as intellectual poetry are revealed, based on associative connections with previous literature. Reminiscence as a form of intertextuality expands the artistic boundaries of lapidary verse and includes it in a system of recognizable norms. It is no coincidence that in each stanza of the renga it is recommended to create a reminiscent move ‒ a reminder, a reference to previous texts that make up the stratification of layers ‒ a whole arsenal of artistic embodiments. Sogi’s innovative positions are also revealed as the founder of a comic chain of songs.