With a few haiku, I hope will show how the particle of "zo" adds poetic depth to haiku by adding emotional coloring into the phrasing that it is attached to. So, besides being a "kireji" which cuts a haiku, it also modifies meaning by including the emotional state of the writer towards the scenes they are writing about.
"Zo" as a particle shows that the speaker feels strongly about the subject at hand. In the Book "The Japanese Language In Haiku”(俳句における日本語) by Keiroku Yoshioka (吉岡桂六) its meaning is stated as being an utterance that“strengthens assertions and expresses feeling into what the speaker is informing the listener about.”There is this simpler explanation in Classical Japanese, A Grammar”by Haruo Shirane: "is used to strengthen a statement or a question.”
In other words, it means to speak with conviction, and for an English speaker that means using tone to lay deeper meaning into words. So, I'd guess the best way to understand it's function is to think of it as dropping the tone of conviction into language of haiku. This haiku by Yosano Buson is a perfect example of it being used as an expression of a felt emotion:
去年よりまたさびしいぞ秋の暮 (蕪村)
This is a phonetic rendering of the haiku:
Kyohnen yohree mahtah sahbeesheeee zoh / Ahkee noh kureh
And this is the Romanji that puts it into a more discernible form:
Kyonen yori mata sabishii zo Aki no kure
Feeling lonelier than
it ever did last
year,
the end of autumn.
Japanese use bare adjectives to depict emotional states, i. e. lonely (sabishii), whereas English speakers have to include a verb ( i.e“It is lonely.) to make sense to the listener, "to be lonely" is an emotional state, but "to feel lonely" is to express that state in a stronger manner.
"Mata" in Japanese means "again" and in this context can mean "extra" as well, since the speaker is making a comparison with the past it is implied that Buson was lonely the year before too. My translation into "than it ever did" is trying to bring out the sense of pathos using "zo" colors into this phrasing.
"Aki no kure" can also mea "an evening in autumn", but since the haiku mentions time in the broader sense of a year, I find it hard to make any readings connected to the event of a single evening.
Besides using a tone of conviction to express our own deeper emotional states, we also use it when offering encouragement to others as well as when we feel urgency in conveying information to another person; times, I guess you could say, when we feel that we have to make ourselves heard. So do the Japanese.
Shirane describes "zo" is used "to indicate that the speaker is teaching the listener something: "It's a fact that …."“I want you to know that …." and proffers up that an exclamation point should be used to follow these up. This haiku by Kobayashi Issa is an interesting use of how "zo" functions in such a manner:
けふからは日本の雁ぞ楽にねよ (一茶)
Kehfoo kahrah wah neepphohn noh gahn zoh / rakoo nee neh yoh
Kefu kara wa nippon no gan zo Raku ni ne yo
Today hence
you are
Japanese geese!
So settle comfortably down.
My translation is attempting to use voicing and rhyme to catch the quiet conviction one might slip into to bring home a point to someone, and the last line is trying to catch the tone of empathy that the use of the particle "yo" brings to the last line of the haiku. "Yo" is a particle but is not a "kireji" and is very colloquial (which is something that, as this piquant haiku shows, Issa was extremely deft with) and is used as a expression of sympathy.
The haiku is about the migrating flocks of geese who show up from Siberia to spend the winter in Japan and Issa is welcoming them back as they end their long flight to his land.
The two books above also mentioned that "zo" is also used to indicate a question, Yoshioka explains this usage as "when used at the end of an interrogative, the sense of asking a question is signified." Since we will use a tone of conviction when asking questions about something that we either doubt or are surprised about, it's quite easy to understand how this particle does the same for the Japanese.
Yoshika uses this by Ishida Hakyou as an example haiku:
秋の夜の憤ろしき何々ぞ 吉田波郷
Ahkee noh yoh noh eekeedohohrohshee / nahnee nahnee zo
Aki no yoru no ikidooroshi Nani nani zo
An
exasperating
night in autumn:
oh why oh why why?
The first thing to note is that that word "nani" is an interrogative pronoun and is followed by "zo" to denote that as question is being posited.
Late Autumn nights in Japan are quite chilly, and the shock of them can be a bit troubling, especially when the daytime has been rather pleasant and sunny. Rather than read this haiku as being a complaint about the weather, it’s a bit more interesting to read it as being a metaphor, i.e. the night is as exasperating as the feeling you have when you are moved to utter the invective that makes up the last line. I’m attempting to catch the alliteration of the original and hoping to express the conviction within it by adding in a third "why" into the last line.
Another example haiku Yoshioka uses to show "zo" functioning as a question is by Abe Hikari:
つばくろの塒いづこぞ山に月 阿部光
Tsoobahkooroh noh nehgoorah eezookoh zoh / yahmah ni tsookee
Tsubakuro no negura izuko zo Yama ni tsuki
Places the swallows
can fall asleep in
is where?
Moon on
the mountain.
Here again, an interrogative pronoun "izuko" is followed by "zo" to form a question.
Tree swallows often nest in cavities of standing dead trees, so they can be in places where there isn't much leaf cover, which is being implied here to show how bright and wide the moon is out this night. By placing "where" at the end of the opening statement, I'mm bringing out the sense of conviction that is used when we ask questions about things that either surprise of confuse us as it is in the haiku above.
This isn't one of the most popularly used "kireji" but I think these examples shows how it adds meaning and flavoring to words, which is akin to us when we turn diction for poetic effect. That's why they are essential to Japanese haiku and any book in Japanese that discusses the whys and hows of haiku will state they take language out of the realm of the ordinary and turn it into poetry. If you want to truly understand Japanese haiku, you need to pay attention to the particles and verb endings that are "kireji". Only then will you catch the wonderful poetry of it.
Like the nightingale and Grecian urn odes, it is a safe argument to say that this ode too could have been precipitated by something that John Keats actually experienced. It seems more than plausible to think that he actually came upon a couple of prone lovers who were expressing affection to each other while on a walk through the woods.
Back in Keats' time, London was much smaller and it was much easier to get from an urban area to a rural one than today, so sweethearts escaping to a secluded place in nature would have been quite common I would imagine. Picking up your girlfriend and driving her to a seclude area to make out is facet of modern life in rural America, I don't see why it wouldn't have been any different in London in the early 1800s with the lower classes.
The line of "His Psyche true!" that ends the second stanza strikes me as being quite familiar in tone, Keats as already explained that he knew the "winged boy", what if that was actually true? That he really was acquainted with the male who he saw in the grass? That would explain the use of a surprised exclamation at the end of the line. He knew the male in this tryst and is surprised at discovering who the female in it is, someone who he might have been acquainted with as well.
The logic of it makes it hard to read this any other way, there has to already be an establish prototype of Cupid and Psyche before Keats can make the judgement that the female is Psyche, for if she isn't known, than how can Keats make that statement? The first part of the original Psyche myth is shrouded in secrecy to the point that the only one who knows who the person they married is Cupid, even Psyche who is having regular conjugal visits with him doesn't know he is. So how could Keats know unless this was post marriage known to the world between the two? Plus, the two never were together romantically from the time when Psyche spilled lamp oil on Cupid and scared him away until after Cupid's forgiveness of her which comes by the time their relationship was known.
Cupid, the god of desire and attraction, and Psyche, the goddess of the soul, are linked in marriage, a common bond which we in our times dub "soulmates" . These lines from the "Ode on Melancholy" show that Keats too thought about the relationship between the two much in the same way: "Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be/Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl/A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;"
The original version of the ode that is in a letter to his brother has the last line of the second stanza as "His Psyche true?" and having a question mark instead of an exclamation point might show that Keats didn't know who the female was, but it does shore up the idea that he was thinking a long the lines of Psyche as the embodiment of a "soulmate."
The question mark also confuses the start of the ode where he asks pardon that "thy secrets should be sung/ Even into thine own soft-conched ear:", it's already established who the woman is so it makes no sense to pose this question anywhere after, which is maybe why the printed edition ended up with an exclamation.
The whole "telling a secret" concept is problematic anyway for if this is post marriage known to the world then the two cuddling isn't a secret and it is illogical to read that Keats is telling the goddess herself about her secret that really isn't one, but if you allow consideration of how Keats might have idealized and mythologized the occurrence of him stumbling upon two people in the forest then you can make the logical conclusion of how if Keats had a live love interest that also might have known one of the people in this real life tryst he saw then he probably would spill the beans to her and tell what he saw.
Thanks to Keats' diary of his life in his letters we know that he had some feelings for Isabella Jones and was living next to Fanny Brawne by the time he sent this poem to his brother. Again, it's an easy leap to argue that he would idealize either of these ladies, possibly both, into his own "Psyche" and would either outright tell them about the couple he discovered and let them read this poem where he proves his devotion to the “goddess."
The following stanza that fleshes out Keats' ideal that Psyche was never properly worshiped as a goddess cements that it is impossible to read the previous stanzas as him actually addressing or seeing the goddess because Psyche never was one until after she got married and therefore would have no secrets in love. We have to consider that he used the Psyche myth as a metaphor for stumbling upon two real life lovers and for the situation his own love pursuit was in.
The original myth has Psyche being worshiped as a goddess, William Adlington's translation of the Golden Ass states they were "offered unto her oblations, provided banquets, called her by the name of Venus, which was not Venus indeed, and in her honour presented floures and garlands in most reverend fashion" which is how she got in trouble with Venus in the first place. Of course, being worshipped as a replacement goddess is quite different from the goddess she ended up being so Keats does have a valid point here.
I have lived in a non-Christian county, Japan, for more than a quarter of a century and the way they enact religion here is different. Christianity is more spiritually based and you pray more for your soul and your own redemption, which is not what the people in Japan usually pray for. They pray for things that pertain to their own benefit in this world.
This seems to me what the Greek and Roman religions were about, you prayed to the gods for their favor to grant you something that benefited you materially in this world. This is how I understand Keats' vow to be "thy priest, and build a fane/ In some untrodden region of my mind," he is proselytize himself so the goddess will grant and deliver him a soulmate in love.
The building of a fane follows the original myth where Cupid builds Psyche a secret hideaway after they are married that he flies into every night to be with her. The myth is turned around because it is Keats who is waiting with "A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,/To let the warm Love in! After all, this temple is in "the untrodden region" of Keat's mind.
In the letter to his brother George that included this ode, Keats wrote "I am more orthodox than to let a heathen Goddess be so neglected." I think there is enough in this ode to show that Keats was orthodox enough to understand the beseeching aspect of worship which "heathen" religion allowed and how having a multitude of gods that controlled their own separate divine provinces made it easier for a person to supplicate and hope for divine intervention from them.
If there is a goddess who only deals with the subject of love, then I would feel more secure in having my worship offerings to them to be more fruitful than an omnipotent deity who was in charge of everything little thing in the universe.
That Keats is waiting probably tells us that his is the old story of losing interest in a lukewarm love (Jones) once you've found a warmer one (Brawne). He probably felt that being fulfilled in love was near, which how he was able to mythologize and idealize the happening which brought on the ode.
As for the ode's opening, it's to your advantage to imply that the woman you are pursuing is a goddess, especially if that is what they want to hear from you. The ode speaks directly to the goddess and if the goddess is representation of conjugal love then wouldn't be speaking to the goddess be akin speaking to the one you are seriously in love with? It seems to be the only way to make a connection between the myth, the experience and the worship that is in the poem.
The Haiku Experiment 