Taming Trauma. From the Unutterable to the Figurable in the Imaginary of Haiku Faced with the Traumatic Realities of the 20th century

The purpose of this paper is to approach the experience of trauma from some haiku or short Japanese poems relating the Hiroshima disaster, in its immediate and longer term expression. The use of psychoanalytical references will provide a few ways of understanding, particularly in the relationship between creation and the traumatic experience. The main hypothesis of this contribution is to consider the poetic fiction of a haiku as a creative and elaborative process allowing the shift from the unutterable toward the figurable facing a traumatic reality. The poet transmits an unspeakable experience in a thought-imagery that makes it graspable. In this way, the aim is not to heal an unmentionable truth but to make the world a more liveable place.