THE TECHNIQUE OF EMPTINESS IN HAIKU POETRY AND THE WHITE SPACE IN JAPANESE INK WASH PAINTINGS

Abstract

Regarding the relationship between poetry and painting in Oriental culture, there that a poem could be a painting, and a painting could evoke poetic ideas. However, there has been modest research devoted to exploring this relationship. Based on interdisciplinary comparative theory in comparative literature and close investigation into the corpus of 102 haiku poems and 98 ink wash paintings in Japan from the 17th to 19th century, the paper aims at investigating the intersection between haiku poetry and ink wash paintings. The findings show that the similarity between the two art forms refers to the emptiness in haiku poems and the white space in ink wash paintings. It is expected that the research would shed a light on the approach to study haiku poetry and offer initial ideas to interpret ink wash paintings which are a well-established art form but have not received substantial research in Vietnam. Besides, the researcher hopes that the practical results would contribute to a deeper insight into the theory of comparative typology in modern comparative literature, paving the way for further relevant studies.