Matsuo Bashō: The Poetic Spirit, Sabi, and Lightness
[In the following excerpt, Ueda argues that Bashō's poetic concepts of “fragrance,” “revelation,” “reflection,” and “lightness”—which concern how the “poetic spirit” can be revealed in a poem—are manifestations of the poet's ideas about life, including his religious pessimism, pragmatic optimism, feudalistic conventionalism, and bourgeois liberalism.]
Matsuo Bashō,1 the poet who perfected the haiku as a serious art form, shows a marked resemblance to Zeami in some respects. In a sense he was a medieval poet living in a modern age. He declared his adherence to medieval Japanese poets such as Saigyō and Sōgi, and, like them, he followed the footsteps of Li Po and Tu Fu in his way of life. He was also much attracted to Buddhism, particularly to Zen Buddhism. Medieval Buddhism tried to save men from life's tortures by the motto: “Meditate on death”. Although he never entered the priesthood, Bashō was often a hermit who found meaning in life through contemplation of death. There were, however, some unmistakable traits of modernity in Bashō, too. His haiku, unlike waka2 or the nō, was distinctly an art for common people. It required neither an elaborate costume, classical scholarship, nor courtly elegance of style. Bashō's haiku is characterized, among other things, by colloquialism and humor. It does not describe heaven and hell; it finds its materials in everyday life. It does not grieve over the mutability of life; it gazes at man's mortality with smiling eyes. In Bashō, to “meditate on death” does not necessarily deny the pleasures of life. He sees life and death from a distance, from a place which transcends both.
Bashō wrote no systematic treatise on the art of haiku. Whereas Zeami tried to prevent future deterioration of his art by leaving its secrets only to the best-qualified of his followers, Bashō traveled far and wide, and extended his teaching to anyone interested in haiku. It seems he taught different things to different persons; at times, two of his teachings are so different that the one almost seems to contradict the other. Perhaps Bashō wanted to cultivate his pupils' talents rather than to impose his own theory upon them. Or, perhaps, he did not approve of any fixed doctrine in haiku. The latter point was meditated on by Bashō himself, who developed it into the idea of “permanence and change” in art.
Bashō's comments on “permanence and change” were made on various occasions, and apparently not always with exactly the same implication. Yet his central idea is sufficiently clear in the following remark, recorded by Dohō:3
In the Master's art there is that which remains unchanged for thousands of years; there is also that which shows a temporary change. Every one of his works is ascribable to the one or the other, and these two qualities are the same in essence. This common essence is a true “poetic spirit”. One does not really understand the haiku unless he knows the permanent style. The permanent style is the one which is firmly based on the true poetic spirit, irrespective of the writer's time or of the contemporary fashion … On the other hand, it is a principle of nature that things change in numerous ways. In haiku, too, nothing new will be born unless it transforms itself with time.4
An artist always aims at the universal, yet tries not to lose his identity. Bashō, facing the dilemma, attempts to find a solution in a dialectic. He approves of both styles, permanent and temporary; a “permanent” poem is good because it embodies an eternal truth, and a “fashionable” poem also is interesting because it has freshness. Yet, as Bashō sees it, they are really the same in essence. Everything changes in our life; change is the only permanent thing. We observe seasonal changes, but they are equally the manifestations of the force in nature: flowers, leaves, winds, clouds, snow—they are created by a single spirit in nature. Similarly, there is a “poetic spirit” which lies in all great works of art. This spirit is timeless; only the ways in which it is expressed may change as time goes on. One of Bashō's disciples, Kyorai,5 loosely interprets this as a dualism of “substance” and “manner”. The interpretation is valid only in a limited sense: “substance” must mean certain ingredients which give a timeless quality to the poem, while “manner” should imply an individual way in which this quality is expressed.
The next question, and a very important one, is exactly what Bashō means by the term, a “poetic spirit”. His answer seems to be suggested in one of his most famous passages:
There is one common element which permeates Saigyō's waka, Sōgi's linked verse, Sesshū's painting, and Rikyū's tea ceremony. It is a poetic spirit, through which man follows the creative energy of nature and makes communion with the things of the four seasons. For those who understand the spirit, everything they see becomes a lovely flower, and everything they imagine becomes a beautiful moon. Those who do not see the flower are no different from barbarians; those who do not imagine the flower are no different from beasts. Detach yourself from barbarians and beasts; follow the creative energy and return to nature.6
In other words, Bashō believes that there are two types of men, those who possess a poetic spirit, and those who do not. While the latter type of people are blind to natural beauty, the former seek it in every possible way and thereby try to escape from the collisions of everyday life. Saigyō, Sōgi, Sesshū and Rikyū were engaged in different branches of art; but what made them great was the same—the recognition of beauty in the creation of the universe. The recognition, moreover, was of a particular kind: it was spontaneous, intuitive perception which was possible only when the spectator identified himself with a natural object, or with the energy flowing in the object Hence comes the notion of “return to nature”.
This concept naturally leads Bashō to the idea that an artist should insert no expression of his individual ego into his work. Dohō has recorded:
The Master once said: “Learn about pines from pines, and about bamboos from bamboos.” What he meant was that the poet must detach himself from his will. Some people, however, interpret the word “learn” in their own ways and never really “learn”. “Learn” means to submerge oneself within an object, to perceive its delicate life and feel its feeling, out of which a poem forms itself. A poem may clearly delineate an object; but, unless it embodies a feeling which has naturally emerged out of the object, the poem will not attain a true poetic feeling, since it presents the object and the poet as two separate things. Such is a work of artifice made by the poet's will.7
Beauty in nature is a manifestation of a supreme creative force which flows through all things in the universe, animate and inanimate. This force, it must be stressed, is different from the creative power of an individual physical being. The energy of the universe is impersonal; it produces the sun and the moon, the sky and the clouds, the trees and the grass. The energy of individual man is personal; it roots in his conscious will, in his passions and desires, in his egotism. But man, being part of the universe, also has impersonal energy within him, an energy which he shares with the cosmos. It is this energy which every poet must work with in his creative activity. Bashō, therefore, does not share the view that a poet puts his own emotion into a natural object and gives airy nothing a local habitation and a name. On the contrary, he believes that a poet should annihilate his personal emotion or will for the sake of impersonal energy within him, through which he may return to the creative force that flows in all objects in nature. One may attain this ideal state through a devoted contemplation of a natural object. One should try to enter the inner life of the object, whereupon he will see its “delicate life” and touch its “feeling”. This will be done only in a realm where the subjective and the objective meet, or rather, where the subjective approaches and becomes at one with the objective. A poem is a spontaneous creation of a man in such a state. It is something which naturally comes out of this realm, and not the result of forced will or logical thinking.
The identification of the self and the external object, of course, is an illogical act of intuition and is done in an instant of time. It is, from the poet's point of view, an instantaneous perception of hidden reality. Bashō emphasizes this as Dohō records his words and explains them:
On composing haiku the Master once commented: “If you get a flash of insight into an object, put it into words before it fades away in your mind.” He also said: “Toss out the feeling to the surface of your poem.” These teachings mean that one should set his poetic feeling into form instantly after he gets into the realm, before the feeling cools off. In composing haiku there are two ways: “becoming” and “making”. When a poet who has always been assiduous in pursuit of his aim applies himself to an external object, the color of his mind naturally becomes a poem. In the case of a poet who has not done so, nothing in him will become a poem; he, consequently, has to make out a poem through the act of his personal will.8
Suggesting that poetic creation is a momentary act of inspiration, Bashō advises that a poet should never miss the inspired moment. The moment is when the poet “gets a flash of insight into an object”, a moment of communion between the subjective and the objective. A poem is a result of the poet's unconscious act and not of his will; a poet does not “make” a poem,—something in him naturally “becomes” a poem. The inspired moment, however, does not come upon anyone at any moment; each poet should constantly strive to make it come through meditation and concentration. Yet, when the moment comes, the poet's mind is devoid of personal will; it is completely transparent, whereupon an external object dyes it in its own color and creates a beautiful picture. Bashō uses the term “haiku without other thoughts” in describing the ideal stage of poetic achievement.9 Evidently he refers to a state of mind in which there is no impure element, no personal element of the poet which would stain the whiteness of his soul at the moment.
This concept seems to come close to Baudelaire's idea of “correspondence”.10 Baudelaire, in revolt against the scientific spirit of his time, put forth his mystical method of cognition in his well-known poem, “Correspondences”. Instead of recognizing an external existence through one's subjective awareness, the French poet proposes to wander among symbols of nature and have close communion with it. A scientific analysis can only present an object as an incomplete accumulation of parts; Baudelaire's method enables one to feel an object in its entity, in a superhuman world of harmony. The aspects of correspondence which he points out in “Correspondences” are two: a correspondence between man and nature, and that between different human senses. Both aspects seem to exist in Bashō's concept of poetry. The first we have already seen, and we shall discuss the second a little later.
Bashō's mode of perception is thus quite different from that of science, but it also shows a departure from that of traditional Japanese poetry. Indeed, classical Japanese poetry is filled with communion between man and nature, yet in it man momentarily identifies himself with nature in order to express his emotion. Waka poets “express their emotions through the objects they see and hear,” as a famous Japanese statement on the nature of poetry goes. In Bashō's view, however, external reality is the primary element in poetic creation. We have already seen how Bashō advised a poet to negate his personal will in order to perceive the “delicate life” of a natural object. He remarks in another passage: “Do not neglect natural objects at any time.”11 At the root of his thinking lies the idea: “When we observe them calmly, we notice that all things have their fulfilment.”12 A pine tree lives its own life, a bamboo fulfils its own destiny; a pine never tries to become a bamboo, or a bamboo does not envy the life of a pine. A poet, therefore, should learn from a pine things about a pine, and from a bamboo things about a bamboo. Bashō remarks, as recorded by Dohō:
The Master said: “Changes in nature are said to be the seed of poetic spirit. Calm things show the aspects of permanence. Active things reveal the changes. Unless a poet records each change at that very moment, he will never be able to record it. By the word ‘record’ I mean to record by perceiving or hearing. Blossoms fly, leaves fall, they lie scattered on the ground; unless a poet perceives or hears these phenomena within the phenomena, he will never succeed in recording them in his heart.”13
The idea embodied in the first half of this passage is little different from that of waka, but the second half is typical of haiku. Whereas waka poets would sing of falling blossoms to mourn over their lost love, Bashō thinks that a phenomenon must be seen within the phenomenon and not from a human point of view. In haiku, or at least in the haiku of the Bashō school, we do not find a personal emotion expressed as we do in waka or in Western poetry in general.
Apparently, this view of poetry was rooted in Bashō's attitude toward life. Or, perhaps, Bashō's devotion to poetry motivated his attitude toward life; for, Bashō's view of life is what we may call an aesthetic view. He looks at life in the same manner as one looks at a work of art. We have noted that Bashō discouraged the intrusion of a personal emotion into creative process. In fact he went a step farther; he proposed to minimize the activity of a personal emotion in actual life as well. Personal emotions are difficult to get rid of when we get ourselves involved in the struggles of life; Bashō suggests that we can avoid the involvement if we view our life from an aesthetic distance. We do not try to change our society; we only change our attitude toward society, we face our society in the same manner as we see a painting, hear music, or read a poem. We enjoy a story of war since we are not in a war ourselves; we shall enjoy our life more, in Bashō's view, if we do not follow the utilitarian ways of life. Bashō's ideal life is, in his words, “to enjoy life by being indifferent to worldly interests, by forgetting whether one is young or old”. He continues:
A foolish man has many things to worry about. Those who are troubled with sinful desires and become expert in some art or another are persons with a strong sense of right and wrong. But some who make art the source of their livelihood rouse their hearts in anger in the hell of greed and drown themselves in a small ditch; they are unable to keep their art alive.14
One way to transcend worldly involvements is to become a poet—a haiku poet. Bashō says: “The haiku is like a fireplace in summer or a fan in winter. Contrary to the popular needs, it has no immediate utility.”15
Of course a poet, being a man also, cannot be completely detached from worldly concerns; he has to eat, wear clothes, live in a house. He may do all these things, yet the important thing is not to be bothered with a desire to possess more than enough. This is a significant point at which Bashō's “poetic spirit” differs from hermitism or asceticism. A hermit or an ascetic imposes seclusion or abstinence upon himself. Bashō, on the other hand, does not reject the things of the world; he only advises us to look at them from a distance, without committing ourselves to them. The haiku poet's attitude toward life is that of a by-stander. A man with an impulsive temperament or a strong desire will find it difficult to become a haiku poet; perhaps such a man would better go to religion in order to attain serenity of mind. The haiku requires a passive, leisurely personality by its very nature.
In haiku, therefore, there is no passionate emotion, no strong sentiment. There is only the shadow of an emotion, or a vague mood. Instead of joy, there is a formless atmosphere arising from happiness; instead of grief, there is a mood vaguely suggesting quiet resignation. There is, for instance, a famous farewell poem which Bashō composed upon leaving for a distant journey:
Spring is going …
Birds weep, and the eyes of fish
are filled with tears.(16)
A long journey through rural areas of northern Japan was ahead of him, and he was old, sickly, and not sure of his safe return. But there is no personal grief in the poem. Bashō's sentiment is depersonalized. It is spring that goes; it is birds and fish that weep. There is no acute pain; there is only a vague sadness which fills nature. To take another example, here is a poem which Bashō wrote as he mourned over his disciple's death:
In the autumn wind
lies, sorrowfully broken,
a mulberry stick.(17)
Compare this with another poem by Bashō which describes dead grass in winter:
All flowers are dead.
Only a sorrow lies, with
the grass-seeds.(18)
It is roughly the same mood that prevails over these two poems, although the occasions would have evoked widely different emotions in an ordinary person. It was not that Bashō was inhuman; he was only “unhuman”. This element becomes more obvious in his better poems:
Quietness …
The cicadas' voice
penetrates the rocks.(19)
The rough sea …
Far over Sado Isle, extends
the Milky Way.(20)
Gathering the rains
of June, how swiftly flows
the Mogami River!(21)
In these pieces there is little trace of the emotion which the poet originally had on each occasion. All that we get is the feeling of the quiet, the vast, or the swift. The poet never says happy or sad, wonderful or disgusting. He only crystalizes the feeling of nature. Nature has no personal emotion, but it has life. The best of Bashō's haiku catch this life through certain moods which surround it.
This quality at once explains the two fundamental prerequisites of haiku which are observed even today: the seventeen syllable form, and the rule requiring a word suggestive of a season. The haiku is an extremely short poem, normally consisting of three lines with five, seven and five syllables each. The waka is short, too, but it is still long enough to express one's emotion in the form of a statement. The haiku does not permit the poet either to explain, to describe, or to state; an idea, or a sentiment, will never be fully put forth within the space of seventeen syllables. This is a perfect medium for the haiku poet who avoids a systematic presentation of an idea or emotion; it requires him to depersonalize his emotion, if he ever has one, through an object in nature. Here comes in the second prerequisite of haiku, that a haiku must contain a word referring to a season of the year. A personal sentiment, if any, will become a thing of nature in the poem. Furthermore, unlike a waka poet, the haiku writer cannot go through a process in which he starts with his own feeling and then finds an object which will best express that feeling; his best “objective correlative” may not happen to be a thing related to a season. The haiku poet must begin with a natural object or objects outside of himself; even though he has an emotion in himself, he has to submerge it in an outside object, whereupon a certain mood arises which would vaguely suggest the original feeling but never set it in the foreground of the poem.
It is relevant, in this connection, to observe the historical development of Japanese poetry and the origin of the haiku form. When the earliest anthology of Japanese poetry was compiled in the eighth century, there were two verse-forms: the waka with thirty-one syllables and the chōka with an indefinite number of syllables. After the latter form became obsolete, the former went a downward way as it lost freshness and vitality. In the tenth and eleventh centuries the waka was a plaything in the court circles, who, except for a few genuine poets, used the form to display their wit or scholarship, to express their over-sentimental love or sense of life's transience. Some time around 1200 a reaction set in; the new poets, still using the waka form, turned from the poetry of intellect to that of mood, from the verse of statement to that of suggestion. In contrast with an ordinary Japanese poem which follows the usual sentence structure ending with the predicate verb, the poet of this time often ended his poem with a noun, leaving out the predicate verb; the reader was expected to supply the verb by himself, to complete the poem in his own imagination. The poet, instead of composing a self-contained entity, created a poem which left so many things unsaid that the reader felt need to supplement the poem by creating another poem by himself. The linked verse stemmed from this tradition; one set of linked verse was a joint product of several poets who supplemented each other's imagination and completed each other's work. What they aimed at was a creation of some unique mood, delicate, graceful and harmonious. Presently, the opening stanza of linked verse became independent and took the form of what we now call haiku. The independence of haiku from linked verse marked a revolution in the history of Japanese verse. What sort of revolution it was, or how the haiku differed from the waka in mood, will be further discussed later in this chapter, in connection with “lightness”. Let it suffice here to note that the haiku form was not a casual invention of a genius but an offspring of an age-long tradition.
Bashō, however, did not talk much about the rules of haiku form or of a season word, nor did he strictly prohibit a departure from them. In fact he himself composed many poems with more than seventeen syllables, as well as a few poems with no season word. On the other hand, there were certain ideas on verse-writing which Bashō positively insisted on. Chief among them were sabi, shiori, hosomi, “inspiration”, “fragrance”, “reverberation”, “reflection”, and “lightness”. They are different from each other, as the terms are different. But they have one thing in common, the “poetic spirit”. The first three and “lightness” designate certain attitudes toward life, and, as we shall see presently, they all stem from the same basic view of life that underlies the poetic spirit. The remaining four are concerned with the technique of haiku composition; they make clear certain ways in which the poetic spirit can be made manifest in a poem.
The word sabi stems from an adjective sabishi, which literally means “lonely” or “desolate”. Bashō himself never used the term sabi in his writing, but he did use sabishi. One of the instances appears in a poem which he wrote while living alone at a lonely temple:
My sorrowful soul …
Make it feel more lonesome,
you, a cuckoo.(22)
Sorrow is a personal emotion, while loneliness, in this context, is an impersonal mood existent in a cuckoo's voice. The poet, as it were, wants the purification of his soul, the transformation of the personal into the impersonal. Sabi seems to imply such an impersonal emotion—a mood. It is not personal loneliness, but a lonely mood latent in nature. The same point is suggested in Kyorai's well-known passage on sabi:
Sabi refers to the color of a poem. It does not mean the emotion of loneliness embodied in the poem. Sabi is like what we feel about an aged man, whether he fights in battlefield wearing a suit of armor, or attends a banquet with a brocade garment on. Sabi may lie either in a gay poem or in a tranquil one. I shall quote a poem for illustration:
Under the blossoms
two watchmen talk, with their white
heads together.
The Master said that the sabi color was very well expressed in this poem.23
Kyorai, learning from Bashō, argues that sabi lies not in the substance or technique but in the “color” of a poem. “Color” seems to mean the quality of the mood which the poem embodies. The poem may deal with a lively party scene or a quiet country life; but the materials do not much matter, the important thing is the atmosphere which permeates the poem. A poet may, for example, depict lovely cherry-blossoms in full bloom, yet the “color” of his poem may be that of sabi because the poem also presents two aged men quietly talking under the blossoms. By contrasting white hair with pink blossoms, the poet suggests the coming fall of the blossoms, a destiny for both men and the objects of nature. But the poem by no means laments over the mutability of life; it simply describes a scene, out of which arises a mood ambiguously pointing toward sadness or loneliness. Bashō's way of saying it is that the poem has the color of sabi.
Sabi, then, is a poetic mood vaguely pointing toward a certain view of life. This view of life is called wabi. Wabi originally meant “sadness of poverty”. But gradually it came to mean an attitude toward life, with which one tried to resign himself to straitened living and to find peace and serenity of mind even under such circumstances. People considered sadness as an unavoidable condition of living in this world; they endeavored to overcome it by getting themselves accustomed to the inconveniences of life. Bashō liked to travel, primarily for this reason. He writes:
My straw hat was worn out by rain on the way, and my robe too was crumpled up through the storms I had met here and there. My appearance was so extremely shabby that even I myself felt a little sad. It just occurred to me that many years ago a gifted comicverse writer had traveled in this province. Thereupon I too composed a comic haiku:
In the wintry gust
I wander, like Chikusai
the comic poet.(24)
Here again the poet subdues his grief by looking at himself from a distance. His situation is sad enough from an ordinary man's point of view; he himself says he felt sad. But he steps backwards from vital feelings of life, he looks at his own situation as if it were someone else's; then he realizes that the situation is not sad but even a little humorous. Such an attitude is the later implication of wabi. Sabi, primarily an aesthetic concept, is closely associated with wabi, a philosophical idea. Sabi, as we have observed, is not an emotion but an impersonal mood; the process of depersonalization is done through wabi, in which the poet looks at himself and his emotion from a distance, as if looking at some natural object. Personal sorrow becomes universal loneliness; sadness over transiency of life becomes a vague mood arising from it.
Of shiori Kyorai has repeatedly said: “Shiori in poetry does not mean a poem with the feeling of pity”,25 “shiori and a poem with the feeling of pity are different”,26 and so forth. This implies that shiori and pity are fairly close, and that the people of his time often confused the two. The difference, according to Kyorai, is that shiori does not lie in the topic or diction or material of the poem while pity does. “Shiori”, writes Kyorai, “lies in the form of a poem.”27 And he says elsewhere: “Shiori is a suggested feeling.”28 From these comments we may gather that shiori is a certain mood arising from the poem itself rather than from the ingredients of the poem, and that it is somewhat close to pity but differs from it in that it is not a personal feeling. The complex meaning of shiori may be traced back to its double origin. The term shiori stems from a verb shioru, which means “to bend” or “to be flexible”. Originally, therefore, shiori seems to have been used in describing a poem which is not stiff or straightforward in expression but is flexible in meaning and allows several levels of interpretation. Yet it so happened that there was another verb shioru, written differently and declined differently but pronounced the same, describing a withered flower or a frustrated man. This implication seems to have found its way into the noun shiori and combined itself with the original meaning of the term. Thus shiori, in its later usage, describes a poem which allows several levels of meaning all of which have the common undertone of sadness—if we understand sadness to be an impersonal mood as distinct from pity which is a personal feeling. A poem of pity would contain an intense, personal emotion as we often see in a dirge or elegy. A poem of shiori, on the other hand, would embody an indefinable, ambiguous mood surrounding the feeling of pity; the reader would wonder, for example, whether the poem is about a particular person's death, or about man's mortality in general, or about the passing of summer. The ambiguity of meaning widens the scope of the poem; it elevates a personal feeling to the universal. Kyorai quotes a poem which Bashō thought had the quality of shiori:
The Ten Dumplings
have become smaller too.
The autumn wind …(29)
The Ten Dumplings, so called because they are sold in units of ten by stringing them together, are a special product of a small mountain village in central Japan. It is autumn; travelers have become fewer and fewer. The villagers, who make their living by selling dumplings to travelers, are now in a straitened state; their dumplings, as a consequence, have become smaller. The mood which prevails over the poem is what we may call sadness. But, we ask, what is the sadness directed toward? Toward the local villagers? Toward the fate of mankind, represented by the villagers? Toward the poet himself, the lonely traveler? Toward the summer that has gone? Or toward both man and nature that must change with time? The word “too” and the verbless last line leave the whole meaning ambiguous; nevertheless the mood which comes out of it gives us a uniform impression of sadness. The feeling of pity, which the poet originally felt toward the villagers, is universalized by the ambiguity which the poem embodies. While the mood of sabi is based on a certain philosophical attitude, that of shiori comes out of the ambiguity in meaning. Both of these moods have a certain, almost identical undertone, although, perhaps, shiori has a greater implication of sadness than of loneliness.
Zeami also had a notion similar to shiori and expressed it in a similar term: we remember his metaphor of a withering flower in describing the effect of a superb nō performance. His shiori, however, seems to differ from Bashō's in two main respects. First, it strictly follows the implication of our second verb shioru, which means “to wither”. Zeami's idea, consequently, does not imply flexibility or ambiguity. Secondly, Zeami's shiori always seems to have its contrast in the background: behind shiori there lingers graceful, flowering beauty. We see a blooming flower in a withering one, blossoms on a dead tree. We recognize no such double image in Bashō's shiori. A dead tree is a dead tree; it is beautiful because it has followed its destiny to the end.
Hosomi, literally meaning “slenderness”, seems to mean the delicacy of sentiment lying in the depth of a poem. Kyorai says: “Hosomi is not found in a feeble poem.” Then he continues: “Hosomi lies in the feeling of a poem.” The poem he cites for illustration is:
I wonder whether
seabirds too are asleep
on Lake Yogo tonight.(30)
The poet is trying to sleep under a thin quilt in a cold winter night at a certain lakeside village. Suddenly he hears a seabird's cry. At once he compares himself with the seabird, and wonders if the seabirds on the lake are too cold to go to sleep. The poet buries himself in an external object with delicate sensitivity; this is hosomi. It is, as it were, a fine vibration of the poet's heart in response to the smallest stimulus in nature. Hosomi is a sensitive working of the heart which penetrates into the innermost nature of things. It is subtle but not feeble; it has a power coming from the poet's mind concentrated on the smallest phenomenon in nature. Anyone can catch crude emotions such as anger or jealousy, yet it requires utmost sensitivity to grasp a formless mood which surrounds the life of a natural object.
Hosomi is referred to by Bashō in another instance, when he commented on a poem by one of his disciples:
The monkey's shriek
is hoarse, his teeth white.
Over the peak, the moon.
Bashō criticized the poet for his excessive desire to create an unusual scene, and himself composed a haiku for the sake of contrast:
A salted sea-bream,
showing its teeth, lies chilly
at the fish shop.(31)
The writer of the first poem has not put himself in the monkey's position; he is standing a little distance away from the monkey and listening to his shriek. But Bashō has set himself within the object—a sea-bream. Just as the writer of the seabird poem can feel what the seabirds feel, Bashō feels chilly as the salted fish feels chilly at a fish shop in winter. The whiteness of the fish's exposed teeth has caused a delicate vibration of the the poet's heart, establishing a slender but firm relation between the fish and the poet. This quality is explained as hosomi.
“Inspiration” refers to an instantaneous insight into the hidden nature of things. Bashō repeatedly taught his disciples not to miss an inspired moment in composing a poem. “If you get a flash of insight into an object”, we have already heard him say, “put it into words before it fades away in your mind”. “Even though a poet may get a glimpse at the real nature of things”, Dohō explains, “he may either nourish his perception or kill it. If he kills his perception, his poem will not have life. The Master once taught that a poet should compose a poem with the force of his inspiration.”32 Bashō advises that a flash of insight should be crystalized into a haiku before any impure element gets in the way. Dohō records:
The Master said: “A poet should discipline himself every day. When he sits at a poetry contest, he should be able to make up a poem instantly after his turn comes; there should be no lapse of time between him and the writing desk. If the poet quickly puts into words what he has just felt, he will have nothing to hesitate about. The manuscript of a poem is no better than a trash paper when it is finished and is taken down from the writing desk.” This was the Master's strict teaching. At another time he said: “Composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy. It is also like cutting a ripe watermelon with a sharp knife, or like taking a large bite at a pear. Consider all thirty-six poems as light verse.” All these words show the Master's attempt to remove personal will from the artist's work.33
“Inspiration” does not come from the Muse; it comes from the poet's constant training and discipline. When it arrives, it arrives in an instant. The poet should catch the inspired moment and put his experience into words on the spot. What is important is the inspiration of the moment, and not the arrangement of the words as they are put down on a piece of paper. The manuscript of a poem is in itself nothing more than a trash paper; a poem is alive only when it is in the stage of being composed or read on a writing desk. Therefore, once the poem is finished at the inspired moment, do not change words from one to another. Compose the whole set of thirty-six poems in a light mood—that is, not in a grave mood of a philosophical thinker. “Inspiration” is intuitive, and not cogitative. It is not something which the poet wrings out of himself by effort. The poet's effort should be toward the direction of making it possible for such a moment of “inspiration” to visit upon him.
Bashō rejects artifice on the same ground. Artifice kills “inspiration”; it is merely an intellectual play, without an intuitive insight into nature. Bashō calls it “a craftsman's disease”. “Let a little boy compose haiku”, says he. “A beginner's poem always has something promising.”34 Often the poet's too eager effort to write a good poem does harm to his work, because his personal will tends to show in the foreground of the poem. A good haiku cannot be written merely by a long verse-writing experience or by wide knowledge of the technique of haiku. For this reason, “some who have been practising haiku for many years are slower in knowing true haiku than others who are new in haiku but who have been expert in other arts”, Bashō says.35 Here again we see Bashō's idea that all arts are the same in spirit and that this spirit is the most important element in haiku-writing as well as in other arts.
“Fragrance”, “reverberation” and “reflection” are the main principles which rule the relation between parts of a poem. These terms are often used in linked verse, but they are basic ideas in haiku-writing too. Among them “fragrance” is the oldest idea in Japanese aesthetics, frequently used in the waka tradition. “Fragrance” means “fragrance of sentiment”, some vague quality rising out of a mood and appealing to human senses. Bashō seems to have believed that different parts of a poem should be related to one another by “fragrance”, forming an atmospheric harmony rather than logical coherence as a whole. Dohō points out some examples in linked verse:
How bothersome
are the innumerable names
of spring flowers!
A butterfly, slapped,
awakes out of its sleep.
The scene of the second stanza was conceived in harmony with the first, as its writer felt the fragrance of mind in the expression “bothersome” and visualized a butterfly flying up in alarm.36
The first stanza describes the loveliness of spring flowers: all flowers are so beautifully blooming that it is bothersome to remember them by different names. Yet the expression “bothersome” vaguely suggests a certain quality of mood—somewhat unsettled, faintly uneasy, as if something is fluttering in the corner of a beautiful landscape. The second stanza takes over this “fragrance” of mood suggested in the first stanza and introduces the image of a fluttering butterfly. The relation between the two stanzas, therefore, is “fragrance”.
Dohō has many linked haiku which illustrate the principle of “fragrance”, but we shall take just one more example:
A weasel sharply squeaks
somewhere behind the shelves.
Tall bloom-plants,
sewn by no one, grow
thickly in the yard.
The writer of the second stanza could faintly hear a desolate fragrance between the lines of the first stanza and added the scene of a dilapidated house with wild bloom-plants heavily growing in the yard.37
The first stanza has the “fragrance” of a lonely mood: the squeak of a weasel suggests a desolate house in remote wilderness. This particular quality that permeates the mood of the first stanza is strengthened by the image of densely growing bloom-plants in the second. The second stanza follows the first, but again by no logical necessity; it is only a peculiar “fragrance” that unites the two.
“Reverberation” implies a relation of two parts in a poem in which the mood of one part reverberates in the other. Kyorai explains:
Reverberation in poetry may be compared to the case of two objects in which as soon as the one is hit the other reverberates from it. For instance:
On the long porch
a silver-glazed cup
is smashed to pieces.
Watch the long, slender sword
he is about to draw!
The Master taught me with this example, himself imitating the action of flinging a cup in his right hand and of preparing to draw a sword in his left.38
The first stanza describes a tense scene in which a fierce quarrel has begun among swordsmen at a banquet, whereupon one of them in anger smashed his wine cup on the porch. The poet of the second stanza heard the vibration of this mood and composed a stanza which would vibrate with the first: in the second stanza the mood is even tenser as two warriors prepare to fight. Here is another example quoted by Dohō:
In the blue sky
dimly hangs the moon
as the day breaks.
The first frost has fallen
at Hira, by the autumn lake.
The writer of the second stanza was inspired by the first line of the first stanza and created a clear, fresh, magnificent scene with the autumn lake and the first frost at Hira.39
The first stanza presents a beautiful mood with a wan morning moon, but there is one image, the blue sky, which suggests the feeling of magnitude. This causes a reverberation in the second stanza and introduces the magnificent scene of a large lake extending into an infinite distance in the chilly autumn air. “Reverberation,” then, is like “fragrance” in its function; it relates one part of a poem to another by a certain quality of mood. Yet, whereas “fragrance” accompanies a calm, elegant mood, “reverberation” appears only when the mood is of tension, excitement, grandeur or magnitude. Such a mood, as it were, is so forceful that it causes an echo in a stanza that follows.
As for “reflection”, Bashō's own comment is recorded:
Men are cutting the brushwood
by a grassy path on the peak.
In the dense pine-wood
on the leftside mountain
is the Temple of Kaya.
The Master said: “In view of the reflection from the line ‘Men are cutting the brushwood,’ it would be better to change the opening line of the second stanza to ‘It is hailing. …’”40
The force of the first line in the first stanza is strong, rough and coarse. But “In the dense pine-wood” implies a silent, calm atmosphere. So Bashō thought that the mood of the second stanza did not “reflect” that of the first, and advised to change the line to “It is hailing …”, which would correspond to the roughness of the mood in the first stanza. “Reflection”, again like “fragrance” or “reverberation”, is the reflection of a mood between two different parts of a poem creating a harmony as a whole. Its basic difference from “fragrance” or “reverberation” is that “reflection” can be applied to any mood, quiet or violent.
The concepts of “fragrance”, “reverberation” and “reflection” show that in haiku the relation between parts is based on a vague feeling of similarity in mood. In haiku it is quite possible to bring together two widely different things and still create some strange yet harmonious mood as a whole. The two things may have nothing in common to ordinary eyes, but the imaginative union of the two may create an unusually beautiful fragrance, reverberation or reflection. One of the consequences of this unique idea is the merging of different senses in haiku. The very fact that Bashō used such terms as “fragrance”, “reverberation” or “reflection” in denoting a mood suggests his belief in the interrelatedness of the five senses; from an ordinary point of view a mood would have no smell, no sound, no color. Bashō saw an experience in its total impact; odor, sound and color were one to him. Hence examples of synesthesia are abundant in his work. Among his poems which imply a correspondence between sound and color are:
As evening has come
on the sea, wild ducks' cry
is faintly white.(41)
Quietness …
On the wall, where hangs a painting,
a grasshopper chirps.(42)
The blending of vision and the sense of temperature is seen in such poems as:
Onions lie
washed all in white.
How chilly it is!(43)
The autumn wind
whiter than the rocks of
the Rock Mountain …(44)
Vision and odor are fused in these poems:
Scent of orchids …
It perfumes the wings
of a butterfly.(45)
Their fragrance
is whiter than peach-blossoms:
the daffodils.(46)
The correspondence between sound and smell is shown in the following poems:
The wind fragrantly
sounds, as if to praise
the pines and cedars.(47)
The rippling waves …
They beat time, with the fragrance
of the breeze.(48)
In addition to these, there are many poems in which synesthesia is implied. They juxtapose two different human senses in such a way that a strange fusion of the two will take place. Some of the best poems by Bashō belong to this category:
Quietly, quietly,
yellow flowers fall to the ground.
The sound of the rapids …(49)
The chrysanthemum smell …
In the old town of Nara
many ancient Buddhas.(50)
A cuckoo's cry …
The moonbeams are leaking
through the thick bamboos.(51)
Yellow flowers and the sound of water, the fragrance of chrysanthemums and old Buddhist images, a cuckoo's cry and the moonbeams—there is no immediate relation between the two that constitute these pairs; yet the poet brings the two together—by the principle of “fragrance”, “reverberation” or “reflection”—and creates a uniquely harmonious mood on the whole. The haiku often contains several things contradictory to each other; but still it has an atmospheric unity, the “poetic spirit” permeating its heterogeneous materials. This is the point at which the “correspondence” in haiku differs from its counterpart in French symbolist poetry. French symbolists deliberately try to unite two disparate objects and create the beauty of artifice; their beauty is the perfume of “amber, musk, benjamin and incense”—strong, sensual, artificial, sophisticated, often decadent and even abnormal. The beauty springing out of Bashō's “correspondence” is like the fragrance of a chrysanthemum or orchid—faint, natural, simple, primitive, and never extravagant or shocking. This, of course, stems from his attitude toward life, from his “poetic spirit”, which we have already discussed.
The attitude which tries to accept all things as they are in life came to form another aesthetic concept, “lightness”, in Bashō. As he grew old Bashō emphasized this notion so much that it almost appeared as if he thought it the highest ideal of haiku. “By all means endeavor to produce lightness”, he says to one of his disciples, “and tell this to your friends too”.52 “I was delighted”, he says to another, “to find that, among other improvements, lightness has come to prevail in your poetry in general”.53 As for the nature of “lightness”, there is an interesting dialogue in Kyorai's writings:
A certain man asked about the new flavor of haiku. The Master said: “Do not take duck soup; sip fragrant vegetable soup instead.” The man inquired: “How could vegetable soup be compared to duck soup?” The Master smiled and gave no answer. As I was sitting by, I said to the man: “It is no wonder that you should not be tired of duck soup. I have never seen you eating it. You crave for it day and night.” The Master said: “Do not stop even for a moment. If you do, your poetry will become heavy.”54
“Lightness” is a beauty found in common, everyday things. It is not gorgeous but plain, not sophisticated but naive, not greasy but faintly fragrant. It is a simple beauty, as Bashō says elsewhere: “When you compose a poem, be simple and bold …”55 It is free of sentimentalism, as he criticizes a certain poem for being sweet.56 It is a beauty of innocence, as he says: “Simply observe what children do.”57 It is also “shallow”, as he says: “The style I have in mind resembles a shallow sand-bed river. Both the form and content of a poem should be light.”58 “Shallow” does not imply lack of depth in meaning. Poetry is compared to the pure water flowing in a shallow sand-bed river; it is transparent, smooth, and not stagnant. A “shallow” or “light” poem, in other words, is devoid of any intent to teach philosophical ideas or to indulge in deep emotions. That “lightness” does not connote the shallowness of thought or feeling is obvious in the second half of Kyorai's passage as quoted above. Only those who have tasted duck soup may properly appreciate the flavor of vegetable soup; only those who can deeply feel may attain the stage of transcendental “lightness”. The relation between “lightness” and “heaviness” is not antithetical but dialectical.
The nature of “lightness” is further clarified as Bashō mentions an actual example. It is, as cited by Dohō:
Under the trees
soup, fish salad, and all,
in cherry-blossoms.
When this poem was composed, the Master said: “This has a flavor of blossom-viewing poetry in the mood of lightness.”59
Cherry-blossom viewing, of course, had been a common poetic theme since ancient times. But this haiku differs from traditional blossom-viewing poems because it does not praise the loveliness of blossoms nor mourn over the passing of spring, but introduces a down-to-earth subject, food. The mood which comes out of a scene where beautiful blossoms are falling on soup and fish salad is “lightness”.
Thus “lightness”, implying naivete and familiarity in style as well as in subject-matter, makes a distinct departure from the tradition of classical Japanese literature. In fact Dohō writes:
Chinese verse, waka, linked verse and haiku are all poetry. Yet haiku covers all the areas of life, including the things which have not been treated in the other three.60
Chinese poetry, waka and linked verse aim at the creation of heroic or elegant beauty; naturally their materials are limited. Yet haiku, with its “lightness”, accepts all things for its material—a muddy crow, a bird's dropping, or even horse-dung. The beauty of haiku is that of the “poetic spirit” which discovers delicate workings of the universal energy in all things of life. If one looks at things with the “poetic spirit”, even the pettiest, humblest things will become subjects of poetry as precious as the blossoms and the moon. The haiku poet may use colloquialism too, which was a taboo in classical Chinese and Japanese poetry. “One use of haiku”, says Bashō, “is to correct colloquialism.”61 A vernacular word, when it is used in haiku, is no longer crude or indecent; it is “corrected”, it is elevated to the poetic level. Thus the realm of haiku, both in subject-matter and in language, is as broad as the whole range of human life.
A light mood as a distinguishing element of the haiku is re-emphasized by Dohō when he says: “a willow tree in the spring rain completely belongs to the world of linked verse. A crow digging up mud-snails is an exclusive property of haiku poets.” Indeed we cannot imagine a graceful linked verse writer watching a dirty crow digging the muddy rice-paddy. A haiku poet, on the other hand, can write a poem like:
In the rain of June
let us go and see the floating
nest of a little grebe.(62)
No ordinary adult would be tempted to go out in the rain just to see a grebe's nest on the pond. But the poet Bashō, with almost a childlike innocence, enjoys doing so. “Let us go and see” successfully conveys the lightheartedness of the poet, which is in the center of the poem's mood.
The principle of “lightness” results in another characteristic of haiku, humor. The world of man is full of contradictions and struggles, and one is often provoked, angry and desperate. A haiku poet, however, looks at them from a distance, with the sympathy of a man who has calmly given up fighting. Life is a tragedy to those who feel, but is a comedy to those who stop and think. When the haiku poet leisurely watches other people without being involved in their emotions, a smile forms in his face, humor emerges in his work. For instance:
Noiselessly
a peasant makes straw sandals
in the moonlight,
when a neighbor wakes to shake off
the fleas in early autumn.(63)
The first stanza depicts a poor farmhouse scene. The peasant, unable to live on his daytime work alone, makes straw sandals late at night; he works in the moonlight outdoors to save lighting oil, yet he has to be cautious not to disturb sleeping neighbors. The second stanza, while carrying on the modest village scene, introduces a streak of humor by describing a neighbor awakened by fleas and coming out of his shack to shake them off. The poet shows no indignation or sentimentality at the poor peasant life; he only watches it understandingly and smilingly.
The haiku, then, was for Bashō the way to salvation. As he recalls, there were times when he craved for an official post or wanted to become a monk, yet he failed in both and hung to the thin string of haiku.64 Bashō refused to take a practical way of life, but neither could he go along with the Buddhist view of salvation. His standpoint differs from the nō writer's or Buddhist's in that Bashō's “poetic spirit” does not deny the values of the present world for the sake of the world yonder. Buddhism would recommend that man should renounce all the worldly values and enter an enlightened realm ruled by the great cosmic law. Bashō, on the other hand, takes an attitude so passive and all-inclusive that he need not renounce anything. For a Buddhist, life exists because there is death. For Bashō, life exists because there is death, indeed; but at the same time death exists because there is life—life is just as important as death. Bashō's ideas on poetry are ultimately the manifestations of such an attitude toward life. Sabi and wabi are the principles by which man purges his excessive emotions and gains serenity of mind; they enable man to live in this world while transcending it. “Fragrance,” “reverberation” and “reflection” are the ideas by which man unites opposites and resolves struggles; they help man to see a correspondence between himself and nature. “Lightness” is a concept through which man recognizes the true value of common ways of living; it teaches man how to endure hardship with a smile, to sympathize with others with a warm heart. Religious pessimism and pragmatic optimism, medieval asceticism and modern humanism, feudalist conservatism and bourgeois liberalism, all are blended in Bashō's poetry. Bashō includes multitudes; he physically lives among them, while detached from them spiritually. “Attain a high stage of enlightenment and return to the world of common men” was his deathbed teaching.65
The word bashō designates a banana plant, symbolizing the mutability of life with its large, soft leaves. The poet, in adopting it for his pseudonym, attempted to overcome sadness of life by “attaining a high stage of enlightenment” through haiku. Like the water in a shallow sand-bed river, he never stayed at one place either in actual life or in poetry; he traveled extensively throughout his life and wrote numerous haiku as he traveled along. Yet haiku, after all, was not a religion. As he grew old, a doubt came upon him as to whether haiku itself was not one of those human passions which kept him from attaining a higher stage of religious awakening. Day and night he thought of poetry; as he slept he dreamed of walking in the morning clouds and in the evening dusk, and as he awoke he admired the mountains, the water, and wild birds.66 He also writes:
No sooner had I decided to give up my poetry and closed my mouth than a sentiment tempted my heart and something flickered in my mind. Such is the magic power of the poetic spirit.67
Is there a difference between ordinary men's attachment to material interest and Bashō's to poetry? Bashō tried, as Zeami did, to bring art and religion together. But gradually he discovered, as Zeami did, that the two could not become one as long as religion denied some humanistic values which were the motives of art. Did Bashō finally recognize the priority of religion to art when, shortly before his death, he referred to poetry as “sinful attachment”?68 Whatever the answer may be, the fact remains that his great poetry is a combined product of the two: his philosophy of life comparable to religion in its profound understanding of reality, and his art which gave it a full expression.
Notes
-
Matsuo Bashō (1644-94) was born in a samurai family, but left home as a youth and spent most of his life traveling through various regions of Japan and composing haiku poems along the way. His ideas on the nature of poetry are suggested in his prose works such as “Genjū-an no ki” (The Unreal Dwelling, 1690), “Heikan no setsu” (On Closing the Gate, 1692), “Saimon no ji” (The Rustic Gate, 1693) and “Oi no kobumi” (A Traveler's Scribble, 1709), as well as in his letters to his pupils. But it is in the writings of the two leading disciples under him, Kyorai and Dohō (see notes 3 and 5), that Bashō's poetics fully reveals itself.
-
A form of classical Japanese poetry. Also called the tanka. It consists of five lines, with 5, 7, 5, 7 and 7 syllables each. Since around the ninth century it had been an art almost exclusively for the upper class.
-
Hattori Dohō (1657-1730), one of Bashō's leading disciples. His Sanzōshi (Three Books on the Art of Haiku. Completed not long after Bashō's death, but not published until 1776) is one of the most reliable records of Bashō's teachings on the haiku.
-
Sanzōshi, in Shōmon haiwabun-shū (abbreviated as SH hereafter), 162.
-
Mukai Kyorai (1651-1704), one of the best poets among Bashō's followers. His Kyorai shō (Selected Writings of Kyorai. Published 1775), containing many informal conversations between Bashō and himself, is an excellent material to learn Bashō's ideas on the haiku. The passage in question appears in “Kyorai no monnan ni kotauru no ben”, SH, 423-424. Kyorai wrote another book on the principles of haiku, called Tabine-ron (Sleeping on a Journey, published in 1778).
-
Oi no kobumi, Bashō ichidai-shū (abbreviated as BI hereafter), 572.
-
Sanszōshi, SH, 162-163.
-
Ibid., 164.
-
Ibid., 181.
-
Cf. Yoshie Okazaki, “Banbutsu kōkan” (Correspondences), Okazaki Yoshie chosaku-shū, VI, 53-83.
-
Sanzōshi, SH, 182.
-
“Minomushi batsu”, BI, 614.
-
Sanzōshi, SH, 164.
-
“Heikan no setsu”, BI, 627.
-
“Saimon no ji”, BI, 633.
-
Oku no hosomichi, BI, 587.
-
Oi nikki, BI, 52.
-
Tomaribune-shū, BI, 79.
-
Oku no hosomichi, BI 595.
-
Kanjinchō, BI, 48.
-
Oku no hosomichi, BI, 595.
-
Saga nikki, BI, 606.
-
Kyorai shō, SH, 276-277.
-
Fuyu no hi, BI, 75.
-
Kyorai shō, SH, 277.
-
“Kyoshi no monnan ni kotauru no ben”, SH, 420.
-
Kyorai shō, SH, 277.
-
“Kyoshi no monnan ni kotauru no ben”, SH, 420.
-
Kyorai shō, SH, 277.
-
Ibid., 277.
-
Fūshi, Haikai jiteiki (1750's). Quoted in Bashō kōza, III, 8.
-
Sanzōshi, SH, 163.
-
Ibid., 163.
-
Ibid., 163.
-
Ibid., 163.
-
Ibid., 174.
-
Ibid., 176.
-
Kyorai shō, SH, 273.
-
Sanzōshi, SH, 175.
-
Sanchō sangin hyōgo”, BI, 553.
-
Nozarashi kikō, BI, 88.
-
Bashō-ō shōsoku-shū, BI, 56.
-
Infutagi, BI, 86.
-
Oku no hosomichi, BI, 599.
-
Bashō-ō shinseki-shū, BI, 53.
-
Oi nikki, BI, 80.
-
Ibid., 38.
-
Ibid., 38.
-
Areno, BI, 23.
-
Oi nikki, BI, 70.
-
Saga nikki, BI, 605.
-
Bashō's letter to Sanpū, June 24, 1694. Bashō kōza, VII, 291.
-
Bashō's letter to Dohō, September 23, 1694. Ibid., 320.
-
“Fugyoku ate ronsho”, (1695), Kyorai shō; Sanzōshi; Tabine-ron, 226.
-
Ibid., 226.
-
Kyorai shō, SH, 252.
-
Tabine-ron, SH, 233.
-
“Betsuzashiki jo”, Shōmon haikai zenshū, 529.
-
Sanzōshi, SH, 169.
-
Ibid., 155.
-
Ibid., 182.
-
Ibid., 155.
-
Ibid., 175.
-
“Genjū-an no ki”, BI, 614-615.
-
Sanzōshi, SH, 162.
-
Oi nikki, Shōmon haikai go-shū, 13.
-
“Seikyo no ben”, BI, 638.
-
Oi nikki, Shōmon haikai go-shū, 13.
Get Ahead with eNotes
Start your 48-hour free trial to access everything you need to rise to the top of the class. Enjoy expert answers and study guides ad-free and take your learning to the next level.
Already a member? Log in here.
Bashō
Introduction to Bashō: The Narrow Road to the Deep North and other Travel Sketches