Matsuo Bashō

File:MatsuoBashoChusonji.jpg

松尾芭蕉 - Matsuo Bashō

Matsuo Bashō 松尾芭蕉 (1644 - 28 November 1694) Japanese poet; his name has also sometimes been rendered as Matuo Basyou or Matuwo Baseu, but he is usually called simply Bashō.

Poems

• 朝顔に
  我は飯食ふ
  男かな
  • asagao ni
    ware wa meshi kû
    otoko kana
  • I am one
    Who eats his breakfast,
    Gazing at morning glories.
  • "I am one who eats his breakfast..." (Translation: Reginald Horace Blyth)

• Even in Kyoto
  hearing the cuckoo's cry
  I long for Kyoto.
  • Translation: Robert Hass

• An old pond;
  A frog jumps in —
  The sound of water.

• at the ancient pond
  the frog plunges into
  the sound of water

(Translation: Sam Hamill)

• The first cold shower;
  Even the monkey seems to want
  A little coat of straw.

• 旅に病で
  夢は枯野を
  かけ廻る
  • tabi ni yande
    yume wa kareno wo
    kake-meguru
  • Sick on a journey,
    my dreams wander
    the withered fields.
  • Basho's last poem, written while he was dying of a stomach illness; (Translation: Robert Hass)
  • Variant translation:
    Travelling, sick
    My dreams roam
    On a withered moor.

Statements

• Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

• 見るところ花にあらずと云ふことなし、
  思ふところ月にあらずと云ふことなし。
  • Miru tokoro hana ni arazu to iu koto nashi,
    omou tokoro tsuki ni arazu to iu koto nashi
  • There is nothing you can see that is not a flower;
    There is nothing you can think that is not the moon.
    • Translation: R. H. Blyth

• 古人の跡を求めず、
  古人の求めたるの所を求めよ。
  • kojin no ato wo motomezu,
    kojin no motometaru no tokoro wo motome yo
  • Seek not the paths of the ancients;
    Seek that which the ancients sought.
    • from 「柴門の辞」"Words by a Brushwood Gate" (also translated as "The Rustic Gate")

• It rains during the morning. No visitors today. I feel lonely and amuse myself by writing at random. These are the words:
  Who mourns makes grief his master.
  Who drinks makes pleasure his master.
  • Diary entry ū(Translation: Robert Hass)

• The fact that Saigyo composed a poem that begins, "I shall be unhappy without loneliness," shows that he made loneliness his master.
  • Diary entry (Translation: Robert Hass)

• Sabi is the color of the poem. It does not necessarily refer to the poem that describes a lonely scene. If a man goes to war wearing stout armor or to a party dressed up in gay clothes, and if this man happens to be an old man, there is something lonely about him. Sabi is something like that.
  • "Sabi is the color of a poem" (Translation: Robert Hass)

• "My body, now close to fifty years of age, has become an old tree that bears bitter peaches, a snail which has lost its shell, a bagworm separated from its bag; it drifts with the winds and clouds that know no destination. Morning and night I have eaten traveler's fare, and have held out for alms a pilgrim's wallet."
  • Genjūan no Fu ("Prose Poem on the Unreal Dwelling"; quoted from Donald Keene's Anthology of Japanese Literature, pg 374)

External links

• Oku no Hosomichi in Japanese and English with notes.
• Classical Japanese Database - various poems by Basho in original and translation