Am I watching you
Watching me – you wondering
What the fuck!
.
Am I watching you
watching me, wondering both —
what everything means?
Haiku’d, messing with Matsuo Basho.
Dreams of Zhuangzi. A Grass Skipper to kids, if you wish to be formal, Mr. Atalopedes, simply, a butterfly resting this morning on a Brown-eyed Susan.
Let us set the stage with the death poem of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598), who brought order to a warring Japan:
like dew dropping down,
like dew, then disappearing
could that be me — maybe
all that I’ve done in Osaka,
a dream within a dream
— Tototomi Hideyoshi 豊臣 秀頼, 1598
露と落ち 露と消えにし
我が身かな
難波のことは
夢のまた夢
tsuyu to ochi / tsuyu to kienishi /
waga mi kana / naniwa no koto wa /
yume no mata yume
— 豊臣 秀頼, 1598
Then, Tokugawa Ieyasu 徳川 家康 (1543-1616), who brought peace for a very long time.
Happy I am
To wake up again
And want to sleep some moreTo dream of a floating world
And the sky at dawn
— Tokugawa Ieyasu (1616)
嬉しやと
二度覚めて
一眠り
うき世の夢は
暁の空Ureshi ya to/
Futatabi same te/
Hito-nemuri/
Ukiyo no yume ha/
Akatsuki no sora
— 徳川 家康, 1616
Then, too, we have our beloved Matsuo Basho 松尾 芭蕉, who died on the road.
sick on my journey,
dreams on a withered field
go wandering旅に病んで
夢は枯野を
かけ廻る
tabi ni yande/
yume wa kareno wo/
kakemeguru
— Matsuo Basho, Death Haiku, 1694
Or, if you like,
sick on my journey
dreams lost in a barren field
running, round and round
What got me thinking of death today?
Was it Shakespeare who gave the doomed King Richard II this speech?
Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,Let’s choose executors and talk of wills:
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
…
— William Shakespeare, King Richard II
Was it the fact it has been too hot for late September. That last night it stormed and rained, and this morning the clouds remain?
Whatever it was,
let’s leave it at that, …
And live!
— Bashō no yōna, Fall, 2024
I get together with three old friends and play bridge once a month. No one is especially good, some are worse than others, and the bidding systems never seem to get straightened out. If bids are like smoke signals, they tend to get obscured by the constant table talk. Often after a bid, a puzzled look comes over my partner’s face followed by a single word,
“Well.”
To which there are various haiku like responses like this one:
Well, a deep subject, full of water or empty.
To which, in renga like fashion, another player may add:
Whale, big and white — Moby Dick
And my dear deceased father-in-law would say:
Well, it’s as cold as a well digger’s ass, in Winter.
Three lines, two things combine, to make One. Haiku is the divine Act of Creation.
Later, in one of those random acts of spontaneous discovery, I was looking into the ever expanding internet well, and its random contributions, when I came across the name Gao Xingjian. He is the first Chinese writer to win the Nobel Prize for literature.
Curious, I went back to the well and began reading from his writings. Here is a partial quote from a short poem of six lines. I have included the first three as it seems appropriate her.
Well,
Endlessly deep
God …
Gao Xingjian, Wandering Spirit and Metaphysical Thoughts
Well, reading on, Nobel being on my mind, I discovered that this year’s Nobel Prize for literature went to Annie Ernaux. The explanation, (for one must always explain one’s self), “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”
Haiku lives.
Well, my daughter and I were talking the other day about Virginia Woolf. She, who suffered from depression most of her life, and took her life by suicide one spring day in March. Filling her coat pockets with stones and wading into the River Ouse in Sussex. Well, the river is not fast, it is not wide, the process of taking one’s life could not have been easy.
Well, that leads to this thought:
Well, a deep depression, sometimes dug by hand.
One can read Virginia Woolf and one should. Along with James Joyce, she developed the “stream of consciousness” point of view. Gertrude Stein called it “continuing present.” Her writing style influenced other writers such as William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway. She is perhaps, the very first modern “feminist” writer, though my daughter and I disagree on what that term means. (Sappho was the first recorded feminist, that is if one neglects Eve who convinced Adam it was time to leave Paradise and work for a living.)
I have modified a few of her quotes as follows:
Well, I find it more difficult to murder a phantom, than reality.
Well, a woman has no country, the world is my country.
On the outskirts of agony, some fellow sits, watching, pointing.
History does not record, but anonymous, was most often a woman.
Well, nothing really happens, unless it is written and recorded.
As for her final thought, who knows? Possibly this:
Someone has to die, that the rest of others should value it more.
Last thought:
Wasn’t it Virginia Slims cigarettes that came up with the slogan, “You’ve come a long way baby.”
Virginia Woolf, RIP.
closing
sliding white doors,
dreaming in color
白襖閉めて極彩色の夢
shirobusuma shimete gokusaishiki no yume
William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) was quite the dreamer, explaining in The Tempest that towers, palaces, temples, even the globe itself shall dissolve for:
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Isaac Newton (1642-1726) was more serious, explaining in a series of scientific papers that white light refracts in a prism, devolving it into a richly colored rainbow of light. Meanwhile, in Japan, Matsuo Bashō (1644 – 1694) simply said that by closing the sliding white doors in his home he was colorfully dreaming. Gokusaishiki, which Basho uses can be translated as “richly colored,” “extremely colorful” or “colorfully” dreaming. This was a back door way (pun intended) of introducing the seasonal word, as Shiki (四季) means Four Seasons.
Dreams (yume, 夢) were a major theme of Basho’s haikus. There were butterfly dreams, soldiers’ dreams that lay within the grass, good luck dreams of snow on Mt. Fuji, and of course, dreams of life and death, and somewhere in between.
In her well-written blog, Gabi Greve explains that the sliding doors of a Japanese house are newly papered in winter to keep the room warm. Sigmund Freud would have looked at the closing of the door as a transition from reality to wish fulfillment. A Buddhist, a change in state, one of purity to a colorful existence in the after life.
Finally, Miguel de Cervantes in Don Quixote (1605) said, “When one door closes, another opens.” A fitting way to end this post. Now, to sleep, perchance to dream in color.
Sometimes it comes in the middle of the night
My head on the pillow, half asleep
A thought
来る 真夜中
枕に頭、 眠そう
思い
Kuru mayonaka makura ni atama, nemu-sō omoi
Matsuo Bashō (松尾 芭蕉, 1644 – 1694) arrived, the son of a samurai, several siblings; a student, a teacher, who wandered and wondered, who listened and spoke, then scribbled and wrote, never married, never hurried, now he is gone.
芭蕉のような, Bashō no yōna
Master to the student, “What are your thoughts?”
“I wish to be Basho-like,” said the student.
“Nothing else?” the master asked.
1694, Genroku 7, on the 21st day of the ninth lunar month
An Autumn evening (sigh)
Breaking down
How will it end – (an angry) talk?
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Translators, like Nick Carraway’s character in The Great Gatsby, never totally agreeing, trying to make sense of Matsuo Basho’s haiku. This however provides hours of fun and never-ending chatter, for when it comes to the sense of a poem, in Zen, there is no right or wrong.
How will it end – In pleasant chat or angry talk?
In the autumn night,
Breaking into
A pleasant chat
Matsuo Basho’s Autumn haiku poems
this autumn night
brought to naught
by our storytelling
Autumn’s night
Struck and shattered
By a genial conversation
Basho’s Haiku by Jeroen van Zanten
Context provides clarity.
1694 – Basho is traveling again for the last time, going from the house of one friend to another. In the year 1694 (Genroku 7, on the 21st day of the ninth lunar month), shortly before his death, he arrives at the home of Shioe Shayo in Osaka. Old friends gathering, reciting haiku, and talking of the olden days.
One month later, on the 12th day of the tenth lunar month, he peacefully passed away.
秋の夜を 打ち崩したる 咄かな
Aki no yo wo/ Uchikuzushitaru/ Hanashi kana
Line one. 秋の夜 を Akinoyo wo, An Autumn night. The final character を imparts the idea of a sigh or emphasis.
Line two. 打ち崩したる Uchikuzushitaru, most translation agree that this conveys the meaning “breaking down into”. I imagine an evening that began as a Renga party where a group of poets each contributed a verse under the direction of a renga master, Matuso Basho. Each verse a haiku that contained three lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Eventually all games come to an end, breaking down into congenial chatter and sometimes anger.
Line three. 咄かな Hanashi kana. Basho leaves us with a bit of a mystery. After three centuries, Hanashi comes down to us as a talk, a story and a chat. But the character 咄 when repeated becomes a loud voice (onomatopoeia), especially in an angry way; like tut-tut or tsk-tsk. The final two characters かな kana express wonder.
If the evening ended in anger and disagreement, I imagine Basho sitting there, a bit groggy from the wine, shaking his head, sadly thinking, this is how it ends. Thankfully, I am in the minority on this point of view. A month later, on his death bed, Basho is pictured, at peace, surrounded by friends.
As the dew appears
As the dew disappears
Such is my life, that Naniwa
Is a dream within a dream.
露と落ち 露と消えにし 我が身かな 難波のことは 夢のまた夢
tsuyu to ochi / tsuyu to kienishi / waga mi kana / naniwa no koto wa / yume no mata yume
[Death haiku of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598)]
The author of this dream poem is Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598), a military general in the late Warring States who succeeded in unifying much of Japan, and the precursor to the Tokugawa Shogunate. Hideyoshi died in 1598, but the final end to the Warring States came 15 years later at the siege of Osaka (大坂の役 Ōsaka no Eki), Hideyoshi’s dream castle called Naniwa.
Gentle reader, you are no doubt scratching the back of your neck, wondering why I have chosen to repeat Hideyoshi’s death haiku in a blog about Matsuo Bashō.
First, there is the obvious connection to Bashō’s own death haiku.
Second, I have wondered, as other scholars have, about Bashō’s claim to samurai status. Little is known. Little can be gleaned from Bashō’s own writings. We do know that Matsuo Bashō was born in 1644, near Ueno, in Iga Province. His brothers became farmers. Bashō became a servant to the samurai Tōdō Yoshitada, who had acquired the haikai name of Sengin. After Tōdō Yoshitada’s death, Basho traveled to Kyoto and studied haiku in earnest.
I have not come across a statement by Bashō himself that his father was of samurai status. He wrote about military battles often, and had a fondness for generals who died in battle. But the proof certain of his samurai status is not there.
There are at least two scenarios. First, that Bashō’s father Matsuo Yozaemon,or his grandfather fought for on the winning side with Tokugawa Ieyasu. Peace being established, the many armies were disbanded and low level samurai were given land to farm instead of swords to wield. It is also possible that the Matsuo clan fought with the opposing forces, with General Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who was based in Osaka, then called Naniwa. Osaka and Naniwa is near Ueno in Iga province, and Iga castle where he served the samurai Tōdō Yoshitada.
We will never know and I do not know that it matters. The poetry is beautiful; and, after all, life is what we make it.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598)
Life as a dream is a common metaphor. What are we to make of this?
William Shakespeare wrote plays about it. Lewis Carroll wrote about it in the delightful Alice in Wonderland. The 17th century Spanish poet and playwright, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, wrote a poem saying, “Man dreams the life that’s his,” and ending with “dreams themselves are dreams.” A dream within a dream.
Even a children’s nursery rhyme speaks of life as a merry illusion:
Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
旅に病んで 夢は枯野を かけ廻る
Matsuo Basho, Death Haiku, 1694
tabi ni yande/ yume wa kareno wo/ kakemeguru
sick on my journey,
my dreams go wandering
on this withered field
The end came abruptly in November of 1694.
Bashō had left Edo (Tokyo) for the last time in the summer of 1694, spending time in Ueno, his birthplace, and Kyoto, where he studied as a youth, then arriving in Osaka, where he had many friends and disciples when an old familiar stomach illness came back.
It is said that Basho delivered this haiku on his deathbed to 60 of his disciples who had gathered to say a final goodbye. Four days later, he died, age 50.
Fittingly, this was to be his final haiku.
Pursuant to his last wishes, his disciples took his body to Otsu, next to beautiful Lake Biwa. And he was buried at the Buddhist temple of Gichū-ji. This temple was dedicated to Minamoto no Yoshinaka, a general of the Minamoto clan. Yoshinka was killed by his cousins at the Battle of Awazu in 1184. According to a play in the Theater of Nō (Noh), his spirit wanders about.
If Basho’s spirit wanders about Lake Biwa, it is fitting for he often visited this area.
Tabi ni yande 旅に病んで, sick on my journey; tabi 旅, meaning trip, travel, or journey
Yume wa kareno wo 夢は枯野を, “like dreams on a withered field”. A second interpretation – the dream withers or dies on this field. Basho juxtaposes differing interpretations of death. In one scenario. life is extinguished and the dream dies. In the second, as in the Theater of Nō, the spirit of the deceased wanders about.
Basho had the second idea in mind as he had discussed with his friends his wish to be buried near Yoshinaka, who was killed in battle, and was himself the subject of a play in the Theater of Nō where his spirit wandered about.
Kakemeguru かけ廻る, to run or rush about.
Days and months are eternity’s travelers. As are the years that pass by. Those who steer a boat across the sea, or drive a horse over the land, finally succumbing to the weight of years, spend each minute of their lives traveling. There are also a great number of the ancients who died on the road (including Chinese Tang poets Li Bai and Du Fu and Japanese poets Saigyo and Sogi). For a long time, tempted by cloud-moving winds, I myself have felt a strong desire to wander.
It was only toward the end of last autumn that I returned from rambling trip along the coast. I barely had time to sweep the cobwebs from my humble house on the River Sumida before the New Year, but no sooner than the spring mist had begun to rise over fields that I wanted to be on the road again, in due time to cross the barrier-gate of Shirakawa . The gods seemingly possessed my soul turning it inside out and from every corner the roadside images seemed to entice me, so that it was impossible for me to stay idle at home.
Even as I was getting ready, mending my torn trousers, tying a new strap to my hat and applying moxa to my legs to strengthen them, I was dreaming of the full moon rising over the islands of Matsushima. Finally, I sold my house and temporarily moved to Sampu’s cottage. Upon the threshold of my old home, I wrote a linked verse of eight lines and hung it on a wooden pillar.
The starting piece:
Behind this door
Now buried in deep grass
A different generation will celebrate
The Festival of Dolls.
Joined by his traveling companion Kawai Sora (河合曾良), Matsuo Bashō left his home in Edo (Tokyo) in the spring of 1689 for a journey to the north and west coast of Japan. The journey took approximately five months, with Bashō and Sora traveling on foot about ten miles a day.
There were some 40 stations and stops on his journey including: the Tokugawa shrine at Nikkō, Kurobane in the province of Nasu, a Zen temple called Unganji, the Shirakawa barrier, on towards Sukagawa crossing the River Abukuma, through the famous hills of Asaka, through the castle towns of Abumizuri and Shiroishi, arriving at the province of Kasajima, crossing the River Natori and entering the city of Sendai, stopping at the River Noda no Tamagawa and the so-called Rock in the Offing, at the pine woods called Sue no Matsuyama, then to the islands of Matsushima, to Hiraizumi where the glory of three generations of the Fujiwara family passed away like a snatch of empty dream, then down the west coast of Japan to Sakata, Kisakata, and Etchū.
He and Sora parted ways at Yamanaka, but at Ōgaki he met a few of his other disciples before departing alone to the Grand Shrine of Ise near Kyoto, where the account ends.
After his journey end, Bashō spent five years editing the work before publishing it.
Back and forth
Through the rows of wheat
A butterfly weaving!繰り返し麦の畝縫ふ 胡蝶哉
Kurikaeshi mugi no une Nu kochō Kana
Matsuo Bashō was not the only one to give us his thoughts on the Journey North (Oku no Hosomichi (奥の細道). Bashō’s disciple and traveling companion, Kawai Sora, also recorded his thoughts in a diary that was not discovered until 1943. Sora Tabi Nikki (曾良旅日記, “Travel Diary of Sora”) gives us insight into Bashō’s observations and Sora’s own insights.
Sora’s haiku above literally translates as “Weaving back and forth through the rows of wheat, a butterfly!” Sora’s final Japanese character is 哉 kana, which translates as surprise. I have therefore transposed to the end of the haiku Sora’s surprise and delight in associating the butterfly’s movement with weaving and stitching.
It reads well either way, don’t you think?
繰り返し kurikaeshi, repeating, back and forth, as in a stitching motion
麦 mugi, wheat or barley
胡蝶 kochō, butterfly
哉 kana, What!
matsuo-basho-haiku 