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.
On his deathbed, Basho awoke in the middle of the night, November 24, 1694 and dictates this poem:
In sickness:
On a journey taken ill dreams on withered fields wander about
“Fields” in Japan are land not used for growing rice or vegetables, covered with grasses and flowers, the home of birds and insects. For half a century Basho has wondered about the fields watching them change with the seasons. Fields are where Basho developed his seasonal awareness. “Fields” may represent the body while dreams are the spirit which animates the flesh for a while and then passes on. In the spring and summer and autumn of life, dreams wander about fields bright in the sunshine and alive with birdsong. But then comes winter, time for dreams to wander off into eternity.
This famous haiku is the essence of sabi, that “medieval aesthetic of old age, loneliness, resignation, and tranquility” which scholars relish in Basho – although he himself preferred Lightness. Although Basho did in fact write one more verse, scholars have taken ON A JOURNEY TAKEN ILL to be Basho’s final wisdom.
Ueda translates scholar Higuchi Isao saying the verse is “a most fitting consclusion to the life of Basho, who pursued sabi all his life.” NO! Basho did not pursue sabi all his life, and this was not his final poem.
He went back to sleep. When he awoke the next morning: Shiko's diary, in which he refers to himself in the third person, continues
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
The verse he wrote beside the river in Saga was a vision of Basho’s ideal of purity (“no dust in the ripples”) seen in the moonlight on the swift flowing water. But then, 11 days ago, Basho saw an even more perfect image of purity in the white chrysanthemum of Madame Sonome: thus he says the verse he wrote in
Saga is no longer worthwhile and must be revised to CLEAR CASCADE.
Everyone “knows” that ON A JOURNEY TAKEN ILL was Basho’s last verse, and the desolate loneliness in that poem fits nicely into the notion that Basho was an impersonal ascetic - however the diary accounts of both Kyorai and Shiko say he wrote CLEAR CASCADE the next day. The scholars cannot imagine CLEAR
CASCADE belonging to this time, early winter, because the season in the verse is summer. According to them, CLEAR CASCADE does not count as Basho’s final haiku because it is a “revision” of RIVER KATSURA and goes in the chronology in summer of this year. But how can a “revision” of a verse be an entirely
different poem: the original about moonlight; the “revision” about pine needles?
Pines keep their needles all year long, however in May the branches extend and new needles emerge on these new sections, by the end of summer, indistinguishable from the old ones further back on the branch. In reality the pine needles that fall are old brown ones – so this verse cannot be reality. It must be a
dream. And what does this mumbo jumbo about the “deep-rooted illusion of what is gone” have do with the original verse or its ‘revision’?
Basho wrote CLEAR CASCADE upon waking from sleep. Suppose he did see green pine needles falling, in a dream during this sleep that winter night– so this dream-verse does belong to the end of November, and is Basho’s finale. ON A JOURNEY TAKEN ILL also came from a dream, a dream of winter desolation, the season and mood at present – but then Basho went back to sleep and his dreams took him out of reality, away from the misery of his final disease, back to summer beside the river. The green in CLEAR CASCADE is a rejuvenation in Basho’s spirit, another (though not the final) casting off of the heaviness and negativity of Japanese thought, a reaffirmation of Lightness as the Way of Basho. Instead of an old man sadly dying we feel youth lightly passing onward.
But this rejuvenation is only an illusion, a deep-rooted illusion of what is gone. In so many Basho works he searches to see ‘traces of the past’ lingering in the present. Here Basho realizes that ‘traces’ have been an illusion so deeply-rooted in his mind it could not be removed or avoided. And isn’t this the illusion we all share? Don’t we all, sometimes, wish or hope we could get backwhat we have lost? Basho in his final haiku says NO. The pine needles fall into the rushing water, swirl about, and rush away leaving no traces of their existence, no possibility of ever being seen gain.
The flow never returns and what is gone is gone forever.
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.
