viens, embrassons-nous

By Ralph Günther Mohnnau

Ralph Günther Mohnnau's extensive oeuvre makes him one of the most important haijin of the present day. From the wealth of his poetry, he has presented a selection of 306 haiku in three volumes on the theme of love and passion. This work is particularly important against the background of the classical Japanese haiku tradition, in which love is hardly dealt with. It is all the more indebted to Ralph Günther Mohnnau, who introduces the reader to the world of love in the classical form of a haiku with playful elegance, with a fine sense for the many facets of love and with masterly linguistic art. He has enriched Far Eastern poetry with a new dimension, all the more precious because it introduces the most human of human experiences and feelings into the three-line gems of Japanese verse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Dec 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781698715902

Ralph Günther Mohnnau

RALPH GÜNTHER MOHNNAU was born in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, 1937. An early interest in the poetry of the Middle Ages and Expressionism, as well as in painting and ballet, led to his studies in English and Roman languages, earning him de-grees in Law and Philosophy from the Universities of Mainz, Freiburg, and the Paris Sorbonne. Further foreign studies took him to Greece, Egypt, North America, China, Africa, Venezuela, Russia and Canary Islands, crediting his personal encounters with Martin Heidegger, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Joan Miró and John Cage as significant influences on his creative work. All told, he has published more than three hundred volumes of his works (German National Library / Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, quote: mohnnau), many of which have been translated into English, French, Spanish, Catalan, Chinese and Japanese. Among which are eight books of poems. He also has written an important novel, Dance of the Condor, and translated Akhenaten's Song of the Sun, classic Sanskrit Love Lyric, and The Love Poems of Sappho. He also acted as author of theater plays and as librettist of four operas, performed internationally. But Mohnnau's particular passion is for the art of Japanese haiku and haibun, of which he has composed more than eighteen thousand – appeared in ninety-four hand-made volumes with the title silence storm and red scents, since 2006. While his most recent anthology, montmartre – red lights, blue night hours, reflects on his student days in 1960s Paris, in the form of the Japanese haibun in three hand-made volumes. Mohnnau lives and works as a freelance author and lawyer in Frankfurt am Main, where he is the founder of the Mohnnau Foundation for Art and Poetry and Alpha Literatur Verlag/Alpha Presse, dedicated to publishing the works of artists and paint-ers and artistically designed books, since 1967.

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© Copyright 2023 Ralph Günther Mohnnau.

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otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-6987-1589-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6987-1590-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023922718

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haiku fascination

Haiku - these three liners, deeply engrained in Japanese poetic art for centuries, have no German equivalent. This particular form is not bound by any one culture, it is simply the essence absolue of poetic expression, embodied in lines of no more than seven syllables, following a syllabic sequence of 5-7-5. However, this form has become increasingly viewed as too rigid among recent haiku poets in Japan as well as the West, and therefore strict adherence to the traditional syllable count is no longer regarded as necessary. Nevertheless, haiku remains the shortest poetic form in all of world literature.

Art sans art, wordless words between words, a glimpse of being without being – haiku does not speak about things, it speaks for things. It stands unadorned, alone. It does not tolerate lofty intent, or egocentricity. The world of haiku is like a bead of dew: nothing it contains, too humble. It is silence without being silent; it reaches beyond the limitations of the material world of rules and reason. Haiku is an instant frozen in crystal, reflecting and evoking eternity, as in Ryôta (1718 - 1787):

ah, the full moon - if

and when I return again

then, please, as a pine

Haiku is sparing with words, it keeps its distance. Its universe is a realm of rapidly waning existence, encompassed by a gentle melancholy breeze. The haiku poet lives in wonder, filled with a passion for all things living. This cannot be better articulated than by the devout master Issa (1763 – 1827):

come, frail little frog

no need to give up the ghost -

Issa is here now

Haiku does not seek to lecture, to condemn, to express feelings. It does not dwell