Failing Bashō

Off and on since the beginning of the summer I've been reading Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings, a collection of works by Japan's most famous poet, Matsuo Bashō (松尾 芭蕉), translated by Sam Hamill in 1998 and published by Shambhala Press in 2000.  I must admit up front that I began the book looking for pure escapism into natural aestheticism and pithy Zen philosophy.  I have also my entire life longed to travel through the countryside on foot; the appeal of Bashō's travel writing, or haibun ( 俳文 a traditional form of literature combining travel narrative and haiku), was obvious.  As such, I had more or less written the book off as irrelevant to the modern era until the very end, when I reconsidered the haiku on their own terms, this after reading the Afterword, which chronicles the poet's final years as a moody, sometimes misanthropic old man.

Bashō, real name Matsuo Kinsaku (松尾 金作, his pen name was adopted from a shelter a group of his disciples built from plantain trees, 'bashō 芭蕉' in Japanese), is well known for raising the haiku to an art form in its own right.  Before, it mostly served to introduce longer pieces of collaborative poetry known as renga (連歌).  As it came to stand alone as a form of art all to itself, it perfected certain attributes that came to be known worldwide.  Its form is simple, yet highly refined: it must be exactly three lines amounting to seventeen morae (five in the first and third lines, seven in the second), and it must contain a kigo (季語 a seasonal reference word or phrase) and a kireiji (切れ字), literally a "cutting word", sometimes defined as the "ahh effect" in haiku.  There is no straightforward translation into English of this latter pivotal word; it is often translated as a dash.  The most famous of Bashō's haiku, perhaps the most famous haiku ever, illustrates these themes perfectly:

At the ancient pond 

a frog plunges into

the sound of water

As his fame spread, Bashō attained something of a cult status, drawing followers from across Japan and often hosting haiku contests and other literary events.  At the same time, he could turn hermetic in an instant, closing the gates of whatever compound his disciples had most recently erected, and escaping inward via zen meditation.  These anti-social spells would often be followed by a swing toward wanderlust, and he would then set out on foot, usually accompanied by a young companion, to visit monasteries, sites of natural beauty, and old friends scattered across Honshū.  The writings collected here, Narrow Road to the Interior being the longest and most famous, are the author's meticulously edited journals produced from these peripatetic adventures.

Perhaps written form (translated written form, at that) is an improper medium for relaying the grand beauty of 17th century Japan.  Words must surely fail to capture the natural splendor that would have stretched endlessly outward from the wanderer's eye as he traveled in an era before urban development and combustion engine-transportation.  But there may also be a disconnect for me in adapting to a writing so simple (granted artless simplicity, or karumi, is the hallmark of Bashō's writing) that it amounts to an elevated list of mountains and shrines.  The author visits sites of historical battles or famous caves and shrines where Zen masters meditated.  We occasionally hear of the traveler's ailments or of his teary-eyed reminiscence of Chinese poet's lines. But the "action", if you will, is blunt and straightforward, with so little adornment one wishes instead for a painting and some time to make use of their own imagination.  The Knapsack Notebook, the second to last of the haibun, was perhaps the most reflective; mono no aware running deep throughout its passages, it ends with a picture of a lonely sea:  "And that is why, even now, after a thousand years, the waves meet this shore with a melancholy song."  Perhaps the darkest of the four, I was inevitably drawn to it, more evidence that my own biases and preconceptions colored my experience.  Later in life, then, I may return to these writings, prepared to meet them on their own terms, free of my own biased expectations.



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What leaves a stronger impression, for me at least, are the haiku themselves.  Those incorporated into the haibun are often bound to the scenes in which they were composed and have only limited relevance when taken alone.  However, after the travel writings, Hamill provides translations of some 80-odd pages of poetry with the Japanese provided (but sadly only in romanization).  It was reading through these that Bashō really came alive for me.

Essentially, the haiku presented can be broadly categorized into two types:  the spring and flower themed, and the autumn/winter water themed.  Of course, unabashedly sticking to those that spoke to me personally, I favored the latter.  That is not to say the more upbeat, rejuvenatory haiku I dismissed, but it is the solitude and pensiveness, the depressive, yet celebratory, part of the poet's personality that really shines through. We can imagine that many of these were written when the gates of his compound were sealed tight, visitors strictly verboten, as only a few of those I have collected make even the slightest reference to another human being, as in this poem, a casual, yet elegantly precise, snapshot of femininity:

Wrapping dumplings in

bamboo leaves, with one finger,

she tidies her hair

On the other hand, some are just as notable for their deep irreverence, for example:

A rolling cloud—like

a dog pissing on the run—

dense winter showers

O bush warblers!

Now you’ve shit all over

my rice cake on the porch

The most amazing thing about Bashō’s life is the combination of a wealth of knowledge about antiquity, poetry, Daoism, Zen and other intellectual topics, balanced by a tranquil appreciation of such small mundane pleasures and beauties, like the scene depicted above.  Surely, one gains something new with every reading.  Metaphor is heavy, and sometimes culture-specific, as in the following haiku, where the combination of mist and clouds is reminiscent of sexual desire, but is here used also to draw attention to the fertility of the autumnal fields:

Under the harvest moon,

fog rolling down from foothills,

mist and clouds in the fields

Nonetheless, no matter on what level the reader follows Bashō's verse, the superficial or the profound, it will be done so with supreme pleasure and satisfaction.  The following are those haiku, from the translation by Sam Hammil, that I personally found most enjoyable.

All along this road

not a single soul -- only

autumn evening

On Suruga Road,

the orange blossoms also

have tea’s odor

A snowy evening—

sitting alone with dried salmon,

enjoying chewing

Little river crab—

crawling up my leg while I soak

my feet in springwater.

Drunk from my hands,

icy spring water surprises

my aching teeth

At the poor mountain temple,

the iron pot sounds like weeping

in the cold

For today only,

we’ll grow old together in

the first winter rain

Awakened at midnight

by the sound of the rice jar

cracking from the ice

Drawing purifying

water—like the monks’ footsteps,

so clear and so cool

Seas slowly darken

and the wild duck’s plaintive cry

grows faintly white

With clear melting dew,

I’d try to wash away the dust

of this floating world

In the fish market,

from among the little shrimps,

a cricket sings

Drinking sake

brings on insomnia—

it snowed all night

Now autumn begins,

the sea and all the fields

the same shade of green

The moon disappears

into darkening treetops

collecting the rain

Long conversations

beside blooming irises—

joys of life on the road

From every direction

cherry blossom petals blow

into Lake Biwa

The banana tree,

blown by winds, pours raindrops

into the bucket

Seen in bright daylight,

its neck is burning red,

this little firefly!

Intermittent rain—

no need at all to worry

over rice seedlings

Delight, then sorrow

afterward—aboard the

cormorant fishing boat

Nothing in the cry

of cicadas suggests they

are about to die

The bright harvest moon

keeps me walking all night long

around the pond

Snow fallen on snow,

and this evening, the full moon

of November

On a bare branch,

a solitary crow—

autumn evening

Buried under moss

and ivy leaves, but from within

the tomb, a faint prayer

Falling willow leaves—

my master and I and

tolling temple bells

Hearing they eat snakes,

it’s unnerving to listen

to the pheasant’s cry

 Spring passes

and the birds cry out—tears

in the eyes of fishes

Under full blossom—

a spirited monk and

a flirtatious wife

Old lazy-bones—

slowly roused from a nap by

falling spring rain

After morning snow

onion shoots rise in the garden

like little signposts

A new spring begins

the same old wealth—about

two quarts of rice

On New Year’s Day,

each thought a loneliness as

autumn dusk descends

The new year’s first snow—

how lucky to remain alone

at my hermitage