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.
Unsourced
- The haiku that reveals seventy to eighty percent of its subject is good.Those that reveal fifty to sixty percent,we never tire of.
- All who have achieved excellence in art possess one thing in common;that is,a mind to be one with nature,throughout the seasons.
- A doughnut with no hole is a Danish, and a flute with no holes is a stick
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)
- asagao ni
- 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.
- tabi ni yande
- How still it is!
Stinging into the stones,
The locusts' trill.- World Within Walls, pg 89
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
- Miru tokoro hana ni arazu to iu koto nashi,
- 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")
- kojin no ato wo motomezu,
- 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