Bashō's Journey: The Literary Prose of Matsuo Bashō

by Matsuo Bashō

Offers the most comprehensive collection of Basho's prose available, beautifully translated into English.

In Basho's Journey, David Landis Barnhill provides the definitive translation of Matsuo Basho's literary prose, as well as a companion piece to his previous translation, Basho's Haiku . One of the world's greatest nature writers, Basho (1644–1694) is well known for his subtle sensitivity to the natural world, and his writings have influenced contemporary American environmental writers such as Gretel Ehrlich, John Elder, and Gary Snyder. This volume concentrates on Basho's travel journal, literary diary (Saga Diary), and haibun. The premiere form of literary prose in medieval Japan, the travel journal described the uncertainty and occasional humor of traveling, appreciations of nature, and encounters with areas rich in cultural history. Haiku poetry often accompanied the prose. The literary diary also had a long history, with a format similar to the travel journal but with a focus on the place where the poet was living. Basho was the first master of haibun, short poetic prose sketches that usually included haiku.

As he did in Basho's Haiku, Barnhill arranges the work chronologically in order to show Basho's development as a writer. These accessible translations capture the spirit of the original Japanese prose, permitting the nature images to hint at the deeper meaning in the work. Barnhill's introduction presents an overview of Basho's prose and discusses the significance of nature in this literary form, while also noting Basho's significance to contemporary American literature and environmental thought. Excellent notes clearly annotate the translations.

“Barnhill’s approach to translation is straightforward and unfussy, aiming to be as accurate as possible, making his two volumes a highly serviceable compilation. They will be of great value to readers.” — The Japan Times

"Read cover to cover, the volume presents the breadth of Basho’s prose. If you open it randomly, on almost every page you encounter haunting images of the landscape, village life, and literary culture of Japan. This book inspires us to stop and pay attention to the poetry of the world around us." — Buddhadharma

“…Barnhill reveals the importance of narrative and social contexts in reading Basho. Barnhill’s careful translations and notes reveal a poet both independent and pious … Above all, Basho’s experience of ‘cultured nature’ emerges unforgettably.” — The Providence Sunday Journal on Basho ’s Journey and Basho ’s Haiku

"Barnhill's translations maintain the Japanese originals' direct sparseness, and retain their dramatic sequence, which all too many translations unfortunately and unnecessarily sacrifice." — Taigen Dan Leighton, cotranslator of Dogen's Pure Standards for the Zen A Translation of Eihei Shingi

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Japan, Travel, Japanese Literature, World Literature, Classics

210 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Known Japanese poet Matsuo Basho composed haiku, infused with the spirit of Zen.

The renowned Matsuo Bashō (松尾 芭蕉) during his lifetime of the period of Edo worked in the collaborative haikai no renga form; people today recognize this most famous brief and clear master.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matsuo_...

Reviews

[Livewithbooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

باشو به نخل موز می گویند. برگ هایی  بزرگ دارد که در ژاپن  میوه نمی دهد و در مقابل ناملایمات طبیعت ناتوان است، اما سایه ی خوبی  نصیب می کند. دوستداران ماتسئو کینساکو این گیاه را در حیاط کلبه اش کاشتند و او معروف شد به باشو! و انگار این اسم برای او ساخته شده بود. می توان در کنارش به آرامش رسید و در سایه اش استراحت کرد اما آنقدر توان ندارد که تو را از گزند ناملایمات زیستن در امان بدارد.
باشو در سال 1684 کلبه اش را نه به قصد سیاحت و گردش بلکه برای آغاز یک زندگی سالکانه ترک می کند. و ده سال آخر زندگی اش را در کوه ها و جاده ها و طبیعت به سر می برد. این کتاب روزنگاره های جاده ای اوست و از بهترین آثار منثور ادبیات ژاپن به شمار می رود.
او را شاعر طبیعت می نامند. و چه کسی زیباتر از او می‌توانست این سروده های معنوی را بسراید و این نگاه زیبا را به آنچه می بیند داشته باشد؟
*برای دیدار دوستی به عزلتگاه اش رفتم، اما پیرمرد نگهبان کلبه مرا گفت: ارباب به زیارت معبدی رفته است.
آلوبُنان کنار پرچین در اوج شکوفایی بودند، پس چنین پاسخ دادم: اینها به جای او-به دوستم می مانند. و او گفت: خب، راست اش، اینها برای خانه ی همسایه اند.
آمدم و نبودی
آلوبُنان نیز با من نبودند
آن سوی پرچین
*چون کسی به نزدم می آید، گفتگویی عبث داریم. من که به دیدار دیگران می روم، نگران ام که مبادا آرامش شان را بر آشفته باشم. "سون جینگ" در خانه اش را بست، " دو وولانگ" بر دروازه خانه اش قفل زد. یگانه دوست راستین من، بی دوستی خواهد بود. و فقر، دارایی ام. من پیرمردی پنجاه ساله و لجوج، می نویسم تا به خود تذکر داده باشم.
*در این ده کوره ی کوهستانی
چه کسی را صدا می زنی
فاخته کوچک؟
اینجا بدین گمان آمدم
که یکسره تنها خواهم زیست.
پ.ن: به علت مأنوس نبودن با اسامی ژاپنی اصلا نباید خودتون درگیر اسامی مکان ها و اشخاص بکنید وگرنه لذت خوندن از دست میدین. اسامی رو رها کنید! به اصل مطلب دقت کنید.
پ. ن: روحم لطیف شد.

[Alborz Baghipour · Rating 5 out of 5]

اُمید داشتم نخستین برف را در کلبه ی علفینِ خود باشم، پس هرگاه جای دیگری بودم، به محض آنکه آسمان می گرفت به خانه می شتافتم - و چه بسیار که چنین شد. آنگاه در روز هشتم از برج دوارده، با نخستین بارش برف، شادی ام حد و مرز نمی شناخت

نخستین برف -
اقبالی بلند است اینجا بودن
در کلبه ی خویش

[Jeff Robbins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Barnhill’s translations are competent. He has selected 80 haibun from the total 118 Basho wrote. Among the haibun he does not include are 1) Basho’s first haibun in which he dedicates his future poetry to the God of Literature with a statement of his spiritual intention for poetry, 2) a hilarious parody of a produce market, written to amuse his patron and friend, the merchant Sampu, 3) his greatest prose work, Blessings unto Kasane, which includes his tanka blessing a newborn baby girl,
see https://www.basho4humanity.com/topic-...
4) his funniest parody, Ode to a Crow, https://www.basho4humanity.com/topic-... 5) another parody of Tanabata in the Rain, and 6) his memorial to his old friend Ranran who died, including a lovely passage about Ranran and his little boy who Basho named. All these haibun are life-giving or humorous, so they do not fit into the standard and well-established Basho image of a austere, detached, impersonal poet-saint. They provide a new Basho-image, a warm, friendly and affectionate Basho. https://www.basho4humanity.com/topic-...

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone who loves haiku, this wonderful book provides a deeper context and understanding of Basho, arguably the most essential writer of haiku and the related hokku and haibun. It's also a moving set of commentaries on travel, impermanence, and nature. A book to savor, slowly.

winter sun --
frozen on horseback,
my shadow.

[Ad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Representative selection of Basho's prose works, including his famous haibun travelogues (including "The Narrow Road to the Deep North"), but also the Saga Diary and many shorter haibun as "An Account of the Unreal Dwelling." The reliable translations are concise and sparse, like Basho's prose. With an introduction and notes.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

The moon and sun are travelers through eternity. Even the years wander on. Whether drifting through life on a boat or climbing toward old age leading a horse, each day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

[Shawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spectacular book with many of Basho's more-difficult-to-find haibun (poetic prose).

[David]

I read this because it was a new translation of The Narrow Road to the Deep North. The translation was very good, but the other journals, which I had not previously read, impressed me. There is so much more here, but particularly spend some time with:

Journey of Bleached Bones in a Field.

"bleached bones
on my mind, the wind pierces
my body to the heart."

Knapsack Notebook

"Written while exhausted and vexed, it was only later that I realized that this hokku does not include a season word.

my native home--
weeping over my umbilical cord
at years end"

Sarashina Journal

"the hanging bridge-
grasping for dear life,
ivy vines"

Also read "An Account of the Unreal Dwelling" and "Prose Poem on the Unreal Dwelling". Those short prose pieces and all of the journals reveal, as Basho says "it is impossible to forget for an instant the fleeting impermanence of life."

[Ehsan Movahed · Rating 4 out of 5]

من اما، نه راهب‌ام و نه مردی دنیوی؛ شاید بتوان خفاش‌ام نامید- چیزی میان پرنده و موش

[Leslie Wexler · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In the West, we have become accustomed to thinking of Basho as a "nature poet," but he was also a great prose stylist, and much of his literary prose is inextricably related to his itinerant life."

So opens some of David Landis Barnhill's thoughts on translating Basho's poetry - he isn't interested in solely directing our overworn attention to Basho's haiku or Haman or haibun forms, but instead asks us to look and attend to the prose interludes - both for their travel narrative style born of the sixteenth century mind and for another important aspect in understanding Basho:

"Marked throughout [the prose is marked] by a deep sensitivity to the imperanence of all things (mujo-kan), the journal begins with a passage where Basho imagines himself dead by the roadside:

I set out on a journey of a thousand leagues, packing no provisions. I leaned on the staff of an anceint who, it is said, entered into nothingness under the midnight moon. It was the first year of Jokyo, autumn, the eighth moon. As I left my ramshackle hut by the river, the sound of the wind was strangely cold.
bleached bones
on my mind, the wind pierces
my body to the heart."

Prose and poetry are meant to be together is the first arugment of the book. The evidence presented: ABSOLUTELY AGREE!

Think of how bereft the poetry might be without this prose lead up:
"Months and days are the wayfares of a hundred generations, the years too, going and coming, are wanderers. For those who drift life away on a boat, for those who meet age leading a horse by the mouth, each day is a journey, the journey itself home. Among ancients, too, many died on a journey. And so I too - for how many years - drawn by a cloud wisp wind, have been unable to stop thougths of rambling."

The goal of all that journeying is spiritual in nature within the prose meditations. One of the primary religious goals within the Basho text is to act according to one's "nature". A nature that considers humans as fully a part of nature: in essence we are natural. However, we have the distinctive ability to act contrary to our nature: existentially we usually live unnaturally. If one of the primary religious goals for Basho is to act according to one's "nature" - it paradoxically requires spiritual cultivation and discipline. A discipline that is coached best through an attentiveness to nature, moments with others, and all of the life that hangs in the balance whether we will see, feel and experience it through our attentiveness to where we are at each place or not.

Of surprising note:
Thinking about "place". In the West, which is to say North America, and by Westerners, which is to say the dominant European mindset, a sense of place is usually associated very narrowly with the property space of one's home, particularly somewhere one has lived for a long time. In the West, which is to say North America, and by Indigenous, which is to say the people of the North American land, a sense of place is a full literature of their experiences and expressions, and the experiences and expressions of those who have come before. The land is storied with "places" of sacred import. The landscape itself serving as the stories to be read through. The Japanese also have the shared second notion of nature in their "utamakura"; a notion of "places away from home.” These places are storied throughout the collection not with one's personal life but with a recollection of collective travel literature, with the experiences and expressions of those who have come before. This is cultural nature, and for the Indigenous and the Japanese, it is "truly nature" - not a shadow or derivative of the real thing (for the Japanese), not a disconnected vision of the real thing (for the Indigenous) - it is the authentic "places" where humans recognize their nature; their place in nature; the nature that they are as part of the whole. Nature, also, cannot be whole without the human place it is. Many of the stranger Basho poems reveal this. The "nature" writing we expect (all leaves on logs kind of stuff) is met by the nature writing that includes the human:

Even the fern of longing
is withered; buying rice cakes
at an inn.

The fern of longing! Oh Basho:
Don't get withered by the mundane, it's all part of it.

Loved the book.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent edition of Basho's travel writing.

[John Redmon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightful.

so many many / memories come to mind: / cherry blossoms - Bashō