The only substantial
collection in English
of Basho's renku, tanka,
letters and spoken word
along with his haiku, travel
journals, and essays.
The only poet in old-time
literature who paid attention with praise
to ordinary women, children, and teenagers
in hundreds of poems
Hundreds upon hundreds of Basho works
(mostly renku)about women, children,
teenagers, friendship, compassion, love.
These are resources we can use to better
understand ourselves and humanity.
Interesting and heartfelt
(not scholarly and boring)
for anyone concerned with
humanity.
“An astonishing range of
social subject matter and
compassionate intuition”
"The primordial power
of the feminine emanating
from Basho's poetry"
Hopeful, life-affirming
messages from one of
the greatest minds ever.
Through his letters,
we travel through his mind
and discover Basho's
gentleness and humanity.
I plead for your help in
finding a person or group
to take over my 3000 pages of Basho material,
to edit and improve the material, to receive 100%
of royalties, to spread Basho’s wisdom worldwide
and preserve for future generations.
Quotations from Basho Prose
The days and months are
guests passing through eternity.
The years that go by
also are travelers.
The mountains in silence
nurture the spirit;
the water with movement
calms the emotions.
All the more joyful,
all the more caring
Seek not the traces
of the ancients;
seek rather the
places they sought.
50 Passages of Basho speech recorded by his followers
Legend:
Words of Basho in bold
Words of other poets not bold
45 Passages of Basho Speech recorded by his followers reveal his thoughts about life and poetry.
On the Internet in English you will find various lists of “Basho quotations," however almost all of these are haiku given on one line in quotation form, or they are passages from his prose journals or essays. The passages in this article are different: they are words Basho never wrote down, but only spoke. Doho, Kyorai, Shiko, and other followers recorded hundreds of passages uttered by their master.
In this article I have divided the passages into three sections
Statements about life and poetry About specific poems here given Spoken on his death bed
Statements about Life and Poetry
The changes in Heaven and Earth are the seeds of poetry.
Poetry is the experience of the heart which go and returns.. . you should know that a poem combines things
A verse not organized is 1000 wiggles of a tongue tip
Learn about a pine from a pine, about a bamboo from a bamboo
It is easy to write for everyone under heaven;
for one person or two, difficult.
To find loneliness interesting is
the outcome of traveling a path
Rise high to enlighten the heart then return to the common
The skillful have a disease; let a three-foot child get the poem
The attachment to Oldness is the very worst disease a poet can have.
Newness is the flowering of poetry. Oldness is an aged tree that no longer blossoms
Be sick and tired of yesterday’s self
Now in my thoughts the form of poetry is as looking into a shallow stream over sand, with Lightness both in the body of the verse as well as in the heart’s connection.
This is the path of a fresh lively taste with aliveness in both heart and words
Only this, apply your heart to what children do
In poetry is a realm which cannot be taught. You must pass through it yourself. Some poets have made no effort to pass through, merely counting things and trying to remember them. There was no passing through the things.
In the verses of other poets, there is too much making and the heart’s immediacy is lost. What is made from the heart is good; the product of words shall not be prefered.
We can live without poetry, however, without harmonizing with the world’s feeling and passing not through human feeling, a person cannot be fulfilled.
Moreover, without good friends, this would be difficult.
Settling for standards and searching for reason
places one in the middle grade of poets;
one who defies standards and forgets reason
is the wizard on this path.
Many of my followers write haiku equal to mine, however in renku is the marrow of this old man.
You should see from practice that
your following stanza suits the previous one
as an expression of the same heart-connection.
Link verses the way children play. When we look, really look at Chuang-tzu renku resembles the Way of that ancient sage.
(Told by Otokuni)
One night Old Man Basho and his followers were gathered in the hut. Discussing elegance, one person spoke out, “I have read ancient works in bits and pieces, but never really explored Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book. I do feel attracted to it.” Hearing this, Basho said,
Well, if exploring it becomes important to you, I hope you will find a NEW approach to her heart.
(Told by Doho)
Entering the Truth through Poetry, we can nurture the Energy (ki ), or kill it. Once we kill the Energy, we cannot ride it.
The master said,
Make Poetry ride the Energy. If you get the timing wrong, you ruin the rhythm.
This is to damage and kill the Energy.
At another time, he said
If you must suppress your own Energy to write a poem, good.
All that he taught was to coax, enliven, and nurture the Energy.
(told by Boncho)
The Old Man from the East said with a laugh:
When we think of our own vulgarity, even court ladies have trouble with self-expression. When we consider our hearts to be dull, prostitutes find it all the more difficult to associate with others.
About specific poems
No one alive surpasses Kikaku in exaggeration, so let us forgive him.
Hoarse shriek monkey’s white fangs moon over the peaks
Basho said,
“This verse is Kikaku.”
Salted bream their gums so cold a fish store
‘Gums of salted bream’ is the poetry of my old age. The lower segment, “A fish store,” saying only that, is my style.
Poetry benefits from the realization of ordinary words
Under the trees soup, vinegar salad, and blossoms hurray!
“As I gained some feeling for the rhythm in this verse
on blossom-viewing, I produced Lightness.”
On the saddle sits their ‘little monk’ — daikon-gathering
“To have the little boy stand out in relation to the daikon-gathering was the making of this verse”
Unlike our faces may your haiku be first blossoms
The physical form first of all must be graceful then a musical quality makes a superior verse.
Kyokusui begins and Basho follows:
Well, well. . . I sit on earthen floor with no fleas
My name is a joke in my native place
As I looked into the situation in Kyokusui’s stanza,
I considered what sort of person this would be,
then gave him a human character.
Mixed bathing in a Suwa hot spring twilight dim,
Among them a tall mountain ascetic
The following stanza fits in with the previous one, and along with that, it stands out to the eyes.
As I looked into the situation in Kyokusui’s stanza,
I considered what sort of person this would be,
then gave him a human character.
--------------------------------
High above paulownia tree
the moon clear and cold
Closing the gate
and silently going to bed,
interested in that
Basho said,
“The single stanza CLOSING THE GATE
settles my belly center”
------------------------------------------
A new bride, without neighbors knowing, brought to our house
From standing screen shadow a tray of sweets peeks out
“ The “tray of sweets” stands out to the eyes, not from our appreciation for this image, but rather from the connection to the previous stanza through the heart with Newness.”
--------------------------------------
A 17-year-old from Basho’s hometown wrote:
Do not let spring wind knock over the doll carriage
Basho said,
“The poet from Iga has produced a scene with the innocence of little children. How it makes me yearn for long ago.”
Shado wrote
Rays of the sun
shining on the garbage sparrow mama.
Basho said,
Study this poem to discover why we should
favor Lightness and detest Heaviness
Two nights before the onset of his final disease, Basho wrote:
White chrysanthemum not a speck of dust rises to meet the eye
“This is a verse about the beauty of Sonome’s elegance. Because I knew that today’s one meeting would be the remnant of a lifetime, I thought to watch for a vision in this hour.”
the phrase ‘a bird in the clouds’ tears my bowels to pieces
On his Deathbed
Here Basho’s follower and companion Shiko tells what Basho said on his deathbed, in Osaka,
four days before the end. Basho chose two teenagers, his grandnephew Jirobei and an Osaka youth named Donshu, to attend him.
As night grows late Basho calls to Donshu who has been nursing him
and we hear the sound of rubbing on an inkstone, so we wonder
what is going on in there.
In sickness:
On a journey taken ill dreams on withered fields wander about
Basho then said
For myself I must say, as the crossover from Life to Death
rises before me, I have no reason to be writing poetry, but as usual this path is stuck in my heart.
As the years passed by to half a century. asleep I hovered among morning clouds and evening dusk,
awake I was astonished at voices of mountain streams and wild birds. Sensations, the Buddha warns us, are a deep-rooted illusion. Now I realize this upon myself.
After taking his medicine Basho turns to Shiko and says,
“I’ll tell this to Kyorai too, but do you remember this summer, when I was in Saga that verse about the Katsura River?”
Shiko recites:
River Katsura no dust in the ripples summer moon
Basho then says,
“This being indistinguishable from the dust
on the white chrysanthemum of Madame Sonome, and thinking that this too is the deep-rooted illusion of what is gone, I change the verse to:
Clear cascade into the ripples fall green pine needles
According to Shiko in his diary Oi Nikki, on November 27th, Basho said
“As I recall my life and dying, the mornings and evenings pressing on, from the start a cloud towering on the water, I do not want to end up quibbling over this medicine or that medicine. I shall not look back on this disease to approve or disapprove.
(Points to his doctor Bokusetsu)
This sage’s medicine shall until the end wet my lips.
That night Basho asked each follower to write a poem for his night’s vigil.
.
From today the verses shall be after my death; to this I cannot add one word of advice.
Many were written, but only for Joso’s verse:
Crouching below tea kettle oh the cold!
did Basho say in praise:
Joso has done it !
Shiko tells of Basho’s final moments and spoken words, the afternoon of November 28th, 1694.
The day is warm as if the sky of a small spring were returning
and Basho is annoyed by flies gathering around the white shoji panels, so they go to catch them with bird-mochi stuck to bamboo poles.” Basho is amused to see that some are skillful and others not,
and he says with a smile:
“These flies sure enjoy having an unexpected sick person.”
to melt the hearts of his attendants with happiness. After this he says nothing more and passes away, leaving each of us bewildered, thinking it not yet his final parting”
To die without (one’s works) dying out is to live long
I plead for your help in finding a person or group to take over my 3000 pages of Basho material, to edit and improve the presentation, to receive all royalties from sales, to spread Basho’s wisdom worldwide and preserve for future generations.
The only substantial
collection in English
of Basho's renku, tanka,
letters and spoken word
along with his haiku, travel
journals, and essays.
The only poet in old-time
literature who paid attention with praise
to ordinary women, children, and teenagers
in hundreds of poems
Hundreds upon hundreds of Basho works
(mostly renku)about women, children,
teenagers, friendship, compassion, love.
These are resources we can use to better
understand ourselves and humanity.
Interesting and heartfelt
(not scholarly and boring)
for anyone concerned with
humanity.
“An astonishing range of
social subject matter and
compassionate intuition”
"The primordial power
of the feminine emanating
from Basho's poetry"
Hopeful, life-affirming
messages from one of
the greatest minds ever.
Through his letters,
we travel through his mind
and discover Basho's
gentleness and humanity.
I plead for your help in
finding a person or group
to take over my 3000 pages of Basho material,
to edit and improve the material, to receive 100%
of royalties, to spread Basho’s wisdom worldwide
and preserve for future generations.
Quotations from Basho Prose
The days and months are
guests passing through eternity.
The years that go by
also are travelers.
The mountains in silence
nurture the spirit;
the water with movement
calms the emotions.
All the more joyful,
all the more caring
Seek not the traces
of the ancients;
seek rather the
places they sought.
