You might be an artist who would like to introduce yourself and your work here or maybe you’re a business with a mission to describe.
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Welcome to the Bod Library’s Basho Wing, dedicated to the great poet, artist & trail guide Matsuo Basho & home for our Trail Companion Guide to Basho’s oku-no hosomichi, Backcountry Ways, or Narrow Road through the Backcountry.
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Two of our translations (rendered as “Narrow Road through the Backcountry”) are included in successive editions of The Bedford Anthology of World Literature (2003, 2007). A 3rd (& final) version is in progress in conjunction with the translator’s Basho’s Backcountry Ways–& Beyond. (Please contact us at bodlibrary2020@gmail.com for details.)
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PAGES/ROOMS/CHAPTERS:
The “Why Basho?” & “Introduction to the Journey” pages have basic information useful for orientation on starting out.
More introductory material may be found in the opening section of the Trail Companion Guide. In addition to transliterations of the poems (with literal & alternative translations), the Guide includes “layered” notes & commentary on each passage in sequence.
Subsequent chapters offer discussions on “Key Terms & Concepts,” “The Joys of Translation,” “Going Deeper,” etc., more or less as per the outline below. Providing material here first–where visitors may ask questions, offer comments, & join in the discussion–should help more finely tune the “final draft” in response to interests. ====================================================
On the oku-no-hosomichi & our trail companion guide
Brushed with a light touch in a down-to-earth, conversational style, Basho’s great work continues to surprise, delight & inspire more than three centuries later. Thanks to its compression–stroke by stroke–we see, hear & feel more each time we come back & tune in, savoring echoes, suggestions, overtones & undertones. In the leaps between strokes & the shifting energies of the brush, readers go on discovering, one impressionist moment to the next.
As with Monet’s water lillies, Van Gogh’s starry sky, or a fruit bowl by Matisse, no description or explanation of the scene does the art itself much justice or accounts for the impact. What we feel is evoked not from analytic interpretation, but more directly from attentive perception, seeing, hearing, responding.
One aspect of our exploration is on the how, the way & the treatment, almost always accounting for more in artistic impact than the what, the represented subject. You don’t need a Jackson Pollack to grasp the principle that applies to most artworks most of the time, which is that the artist’s methods, spirit, attitude & energy all play a part in the resulting work & its impact, as do materials, tools & forms.
Whether consciously intentional or as organic by-product of the maker’s feelings, the work joins subject & treatment into something with a life of its own. It isn’t any woman before her glass, or even woman at all, but a painting by Picasso; nor is it any moon, but Ansel’s “Moon over Hernandez.”
As powerful as the original subject may be to draw the artist’s eye & heart, e.g., the photographer to the side of the road, it is the treatment that brings the impact home to us. In Ansel’s case, what he called “the dance” of the darkroom” played a major role, without which his famous print is practically unrecognizable.
We may discuss his techniques, settings, approach, steps, mood, & attitude, as well as the light, circumstances, time, calendar & equipment (or even what the artist had for breakfast, if it plays a part), any of which may add background, deepen our understanding, and inform our appreciation of the creative result; nevertheless, analysis & background are no substitute for the direct experience of the embodied work for feeling its creative spirit.
Besides being gifted reporter & word-snap photographer long before the modern camera, Basho was master of the poetic, humorous, historical, scenic, linguistic (etymological) & philosophical sketch. He was also a model student, the whole adventure being his search for more complete understanding of the country passed through, its land, botany, wildlife, history, folklore, arts, shrines & monuments, as well as of the nature of poetry & poetry of nature, the meaning of pilgrimage & pilgrimage of meaning, where life itself becomes the journey, a dream in transit–humorous one moment, sublime the next.
Readers can follow Basho’s example, seeking to expand understanding by gathering information & further perspective along the way, as time, circumstances & individual interests encourage. Topics worth further exploration are available for practically any interest, bringing the work at hand into clearer focus.
As an artist, Basho teaches by example; as a guide, he makes the teaching an art, an instrument of discovery, never didactic, pedantic or preachy, but a seeking for essence. As with any such account, the narrator becomes the main character, the main subject inevitably being his experience, the world through that lens. Basho as sketch-master, like the photographer, disappears from the frame. Transparent to the impressions passed through, his artistic, evocative impressions emerge on another plane.
As the journey unfolds sketch by sketch, passage by passage, section by section, a greater whole takes shape both on & beyond the page. Any great work stands on its own & speaks for itself, and so, too, must the work in translation. Yet Basho himself has provided keys & touchstones to the kind of translation required.
In his lightly flowing prose & little jewels of verse, he illuminates from within the methods used to join his experience & language with the reader’s experience. The result is a union of self & place, where time & the timeless, culture & nature intersect. With such a full palette of kindred arts to draw from, he varies each treatment accordingly, making each passage distinctly itself even as it serves the greater whole.
As much as it stands on its own, one may appreciate Basho’s work all the more exploring its background & inner life. This is just what Basho himself shows along the way– whether gathering bits of trail folklore, tracing the etymology of place names, or sharing echoes from poems across time. As exemplified in his verses, a sharply composed image makes a direct pop(!), yet resonates all the more in relation to setting & context provided by the prose.
The “Trail Companion Guide” seeks to do for Basho’s ink trail what his brush did for the trail he followed, the ways he blazed. It may be considered a layered commentary, with background & other interpretive information at various levels, from the most basic kind of note (like what moxa is) to more complex reflections on the aesthetic dimensions at the heart of Basho’s process, most notably his ways of “gathering” inner aspects of various arts into a single stream working together.
In Basho’s case, the term “games” may often be used as a synonym for “arts,” as both terms refer to what may be called “forms of play,” or “ways of playing together.” Some of these may be quite new to readers who lack a cultural history of the forms, those for example derived from renga,joined-poetry, of which Basho himself is the acknowledged master, teaching & guiding others largely by playing together, the embodied practice more important than the precept.
Some insight on the social, playful & philosophical aspects of renga can enhance one’s appreciation of Basho’s journey on many levels. There are other games also “hidden in plain sight,” which readers may find worth exploring at some point, if only for the fun of it. One of these, the “seashell game,” involves identifying (i.e., re-connecting) matched pairs–whether sketches or verses.
One may also note “inner” connections with other arts, for example the creative carpenter’s traditional art of joinery, with diverse ways of splicing & jointing elements to give the structure framework & space its shape. Each art, game, and key element explored opens new windows on Basho’s inner ways, including his “attentive practices,” ways of tuning in to the shared pilgrimage.
His jewel-like verses, the conversational style of his sketches, the game-like play of his linked poetry, his concept of pilgrimage & practice of the artist’s way all flow together into his celebration of arts across time–poets, blade-masters, music of the fields & backcountry songs. While the work as a whole gathers momentum from its still moments, the maker’s amazingly woven net gathers artist, arts, poetry, land, folklore, cultures, & readers into a single whole beyond the text.
The same elements that have so much tangible beauty & form in themselves, like the posts & beams of a structure, make a space where the main (& changing) action actually takes place–the inner realm.
In our study in progress, Basho provides the trail, the focusing agent, & the primary route to expand understanding. but then goes beyond the text for those inclined to dig deeper into Basho’s legacy & the nature of language, including the particular joys & challenges involved in bringing his masterpiece all the way across into a worthy 21st Century equivalency.
We’ll expand coverage as we can, trying to do for Basho’s brushed trail what that did for the paths he followed, “not stepping in old footprints, but seeking the same sincerity ancient masters sought.” The more familiar one becomes with his work, the more interested one becomes in learning more, exploring more, if only for the joy of it, the pleasure of such exercise.
Thus our discussions (in progress) on Basho’s sources, where he’s coming from, including his use of meditation & pilgrimage, his attitudes towards companionship, his relationship with nature & other features of core practice. Thanks to Basho’s powerful compression & the intimate sense of connection established with readers along the inner path–beyond maps & calendars–, such a journey has neither beginning nor end, but continues a conversation central to the human condition