Where Basho Sees the Sights

Bashō's Narrow Road: Spring and Autumn Passages by Matsuo Bashō
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I found this to be an occasionally entertaining book, but it is probably more useful as a resource for instruction than for pleasure reading.

TBH, I was disappointed when I got it out of the mail; I thought when I ordered it that it was a book just of haiku and linked verse, and that's in here, but that's just a small part of it. Most of it is a sort of travelogue across the north of Japan in 1689, with haiku (and related forms) sprinkled throughout. However, this work is famous and well worth reading just to become familiar with it--which got it to three stars in my estimation--but it wasn't until the last 20 pages that I liked it more than that. But lemme explain.

There are a lot of helps in this book, including a foreword, an introduction, a map, and an index, all of which are useful, and very complete notes on the lefthand side of every two-page spread, facing the full text on the right. All good stuff. But I'd be lying if I said it got me anywhere near full comprehension. Even with the notes, it feels like significant prior knowledge is expected, because I was often just as confused after as before. Your mileage may vary.

The travel diary isn't much to my taste. Mostly just stuff like "we visited a guy for three days and drank wine before we found a guide and went to the next town." The places he went to all had views or temple ruins or a grave or something that were famously, even before this, made the topic of poetry, but so much of the verse that he writes is alluding to earlier poetry that much of the meaning of it just has to be explained. That's always a problem in poetry in translation, but I really felt it here.

HOWEVER--the final twenty pages are a commentary on 36-part linked sequence of poetry (a separate work from the Narrow Road to the Interior text), and it makes the way haikai no renga works much clearer to me. And interesting. Here's my version of it, filled with errors.

Three writers take turns writing lines. The first basically writes a haiku, with syllables of 5/7/5, though it's usually written on a single line. The second person responds with a related pair of lines, with syllables of 7/7. The next writes a related group of 5/7/5 again, followed by 7/7. Each chunk needs to relate to the previous lines, but is supposed to change it or twist it. Each piece has to have something that fixes the season being mentioned (like cherry blossoms for spring and certain farm work for autumn, and so on) though this can be pretty abstract. Or it can be about love instead of a season. And there's a lot more, things like a prohibition of sticking too close to one topic for more than three or four links.

This one starts with "Renting a horse you follow the swallows as we part." The swallows spoken of in this way indicate autumn, and the lines are just suggestive of sadness in parting. The next line--"A field of flowers disturbed where the mountain turns"--just adds to the imagery of their departure. The flowers also show autumn, somehow. The third link mentions wrestling, the fourth a sword, and the fifth an otter, and there are subtle connections between every one. By the end, I was picturing the poetry like a dream, like animated images done in watercolors, each line erasing and reforming the previous image. Link 31 is "The slender figure of a goddess full of grace." Link 32 turns the goddess into a common woman washing clothes in a river. Link 33 switches to a famous battle that ended in a river, and line 34 is about a messenger sent to a temple that is related to the battle from the previous bit.

And so on.

The notes on this part are very helpful. It would mean nothing to me without. I see the hopelessness of ever trying to read such poetry without support; I wouldn't understand a tenth of it. And though it isn't the most satisfying way to read poetry, at least a reader can make sense of it this way and get a taste.

So that's how I got to 4 stars. More of the last part, please. That's what I'm looking for.

Recommended most for those studying this type of poetry. Less so for casual readers.

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