Dreaming Poetics 7: Basho as Traveling Poet

from Bashô and the Mastery of Poetic Space in Oku no hosomichi
by Steven D. Carter
in Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 120, No. 2 pp190-198.
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If we want a better understanding of Oku no hosomichi as a product and not just a by-product of Basho's professional practice, then, it may be that we should start by seeing that record in terms of its genre affiliations, which connect it back to a long tradition of travel writing by poets in similar circumstances.
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Nonetheless, it is clear that his foremost concern is not to guide tourists, but poets-and less with telling them how to get to specific sites than with instructing them in how to travel as poets. What above all he wants to create is an instructive image of himself as a poet on the road, responding to challenges, practicing his hermeneutic expertise. One thinks, for instance, of his famous description of Ryushakuji…
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So well known is the hokku produced there that one must remind oneself that the trip to Ryushakuji was actually a detour for the poet and was nowhere on his itinerary. In that sense, the hokku can be said to have come about almost by accident. Nevertheless, it was Basho's dedication to the hermeneutic enterprise-the challenge of striding out, and of converting the experience of landscape into poetry-that made the accident possible. Without the dedication required in climbing up the long trail to the temple, neither the experience at the top nor the famous poem would ever have happened.
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There are many other prescriptions for the traveling poet in Basho’s text. Perhaps the most obvious is that one must go the road alone, or at least as if alone; hence the scarce mention of group activities (one wonders if in some way time spent on the road felt like a consolation to those who were so involved in group activities at every stop) and the tendency to treat experience as solitary even when it was not…
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Another feature of the text that can be attributed to established rhetorical practice is the constant reminder that poetic travel is movement through time as well as space as Basho states explicitly in a passage about a stone monument-again something not on his itinerary in Ichikawa Village, near Matsushima….
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But there are also lessons in thetext specifically for haikai poets, indeed for Basho's own students, who would be primary readers of his record. The most important of these is that the haikai poet should be open to all experience as "literary" in a way that poets of the more courtly forms of the past generally were not. It is for this reason that in Oku no hosomichi we have references not only to historical figures such as Saigyo and Yoshitsune, but also to a host of locals…..
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Basho has become a truly transcendent figure, reified almost to the point of non-existence as a historical being. An account of his actual practice as both traveler and travel writer may help to show him for what he was-very much a human being, involved in struggles political and otherwise, a professional practitioner entangled in discursive negotiations and caught up in the nitty-gritty challenges of life on the road.
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Dreaming Poetics 6: Saigyo in Hiraizumi

"The usual list of ancient capitals would be Nara, Kyoto, and Kamakura, but some might add Hiraizumi to the list, for in the twelfth century it was the seat of power for a family of warlords that dominated the northernmost part of Honshu. Its visitors have included two of Japan's most beloved poets. Basho, a quintessential Buddhist traveler, recounted his observations in a particularly moving section of his Oku no hosomichi, but by the time Basho went the remaining vestiges of Hiraizumi's ancient glory would have been generally the same as those the modern tourist sees. In contrast, Saigyo, the other great poetic visitor, saw Hiraizumi at the peak of its splendor. In fact, he went twice, first as a young poet in 1144 and again more than 40 years later as an old monk seeking funds to rebuild Todaiji, which had been burnt in the wars between the Minamoto and the Taira. Although Saigyo too was a Buddhist, he seems to have taken little interest in Hiraizumi's famed religious edifices, for they merit only passing reference in the poems he wrote there, none of which appears in the familiar anthologies of translations. To rectify this omission, here is one that at least mentions what today is Hiraizumi's most famous temple:

Because of misdeeds they had committed, many monks from Nara had been sent away to the far north. When I met them at a place called Chuson and told them news from the capital, their tears flowed. It was very touching. Because this was such a rare event, I promised to write down the story, if I survived. To express my feelings in a distant land, I recited:

It is tears
that flow
in the Koromo River,
as we recall
the ancient capital.

Robert Borgen in Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1. (Winter, 2001), pp. 227-232.

Dreaming Poetics 5: from Reading Basho at Matsushima by Kitamura Tokoku

Beautiful scenery inspires everyone to some degree. It endows any rustic peasant with a poetic spirit and makes him a wanderer. Many so-called poets, however, think that they must compose a poem about the scene. They try to write the poem without allowing the scene itself to create the poem.
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Consider the fact that in his time, Basho was far more obliged to compose a poem than writers today, who must fabricate something out of whole cloth. How shameful it must have been for him to travel to the most scenic spot in Japan and then leave without writing a single poem! But Basho wrote something no mediocre rhymester could: the volume of Narrow Roads of the North spread out before me.
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I have always said that the greatest scenery kills writing. But there is something else I now know: the greatest scenery not only kills writing, it swallows up the 'I' as well. To be speechless before the greatest scenery is to have the whole of one's 'I' absorbed by it, to proceed in a daze, not knowing whether we are here or there. It steals our self; or rather, our self is drawn into it, to become lost in the dark unknown.
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When we reach this point, there is no poetry, no scenery, no means to distinguish between what is self and what is other. I call this 'union'. The more lasting our union, the more of the Divine we receive, and the more of the Divine will be present in a poem we compose afterwards. As this union lasts, we begin to see that mountains and rivers, trees and plants, all possess the same life-force that we do.
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In such realms, the poet must be satisfied with no poems. Is what I've read true-that Basho did not write a poem when he came to Matsushima? Or could I be wrong? For me this one volume can lead to salvation. Setting aside for a moment the question of whether my explanation has any merit, such were my feelings the night I spent at Matsushima. When I returned home and read over Narrow Roads, I saw that Basho wrote the following at Matsushima:

Is this the handiwork of Oyamatsumi in the ancient past of the mighty gods? Who could ever paint or describe in words the divine artistry of the Lord of Nature?

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from Reading Basho at Matsushima by Kitamura Tokoku translated by Michael C. Brownstein in Monumenta Nipponica Vol. 45, No. 3. (Autumn, 1990), pp. 305-306.

Dreaming Poetics 4: from Ryoshun's Gonjinshu

Man cannot exist without thought and words. Why then should it be difficult for him to express his thoughts with his mouth? If, for example, he thinks, “Brrr—how cold it is!” he will say, “I wish I had a jacket” or “I wish I could warm myself by a fire” and each of these is poetry.

From Ryoshun’s “Gonjinshu” quoted by Sasaki Nobutsuna in Nihon Kagaku Shi, p. 166, and in turn quoted in Donald Keene’s “Seeds in the Heart” p. 732

Dreaming Poetics 3: LaFleur on Saigyo

This is why in Saigyo's verse we have a valorization of nature which, in fact, goes beyond that given to trees and plants by Chijin. Out of the intellectual currents which he received from the times in which he lived, times which-as we have seen-allowed for the harmonization of Tendai and Shingon patterns of thought, Saigyo brought forth a new valorization of the natural world. The degree to which he did this in a self-conscious manner is, of course, problematic. My argument simply is that these things were so much part of the Buddhist milieu in which he at times moved that they can be expected to have shaped and informed his own usage of symbol in verse. He differs from Kukai, however, in two ways. Although he takes phenomenological forms as identifiable with Buddhist absolutes, he is selective in what he takes as such; due to his times and his own sensitivity, he has a decided preference for identifying the Tathagata with forms and phenomena in the natural rather than in the civilizational world. And, second, this means that he does not follow Kukai in placing primary value upon rites, constructed symbols such as mandalas, and cultic patterns of religious expression. For Saigyo in a very literal way nature is All.

This does not mean that religious value is attributed to the concept of nature or to "Nature" as something abstracted from the phenomena that compose it; this would be in violation of the idea of samaya, the intent of which is to valorize particular phenomena as the Tathagata. The arc of value returns to these particular and concrete things in the world of nature. The result of this is that, although theoretically any- and everything in the natural world is identifiable with the ultimate value, a poet must make a practical selection. Saigyo does so and in his verse celebrates certain particular concrete phenomena.

by William R. LaFleur in "Saigyo and the Buddhist Value of Nature. Part I" from History of Religions, Vol. 13, No. 2. (Nov., 1973), p 123. Emphases mine

The Dreaming of Poetics 2: from Korai Futeisho

But someone might charge that, whereas in the case of the Mo-ho-chih-kuan it is a matter of transmitting the deep truth by holy men known as the “golden-mothed ones,” what I have brought up for consideration is nothing more than those verbal games known as “floating phrases and fictive utterances” [kyogen-kigo”]. However, quite on the contrary, it is exactly here that the profoundity of things is demonstrated. This is because there exists a reciprocal flow of meaning between such things [as poetry] and the way of Buddhism, a way that maintains the interdependence of all things. This is found in the teaching that:
“Enlightenment is nowhere other than in the worldly passions.”

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Thus, for all these reasons I can now for the record state that the Japanese lyric called the uta has a dimension of depth, one that has affinity with the three stages of truth in Tendai, namely the void [ku], the provisional [ke], and the middle [chu].

from Korai Futeisho by Fujiwara Shunzei, translated by William R. LaFleur in The Karma of Words, p. 90.

The Dreaming of Poetics 1: from the Shih ching

Poetry is the outcome of intent. In the mind it is intent; expressed in words, it becomes poetry. Emotion stirs within and forms into words. As the words are inadequate, one sighs them. As the sighing is inadequate, one sings aloud. As the singing is inadequate, without knowing it, the hands start to dance, and the feet beat in time.

from "Major Preface" to the Shih ching, translated by Donald Gibbs, as quoted by John Timothy Wixted in "The Kokinshu Prefaces: Another Perspective" from Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 43, No. 1. (Jun., 1983) p.222