RW: You have
written several volumes on the life and poetry of Matsuo Basho.
Why Basho?
MU:
As a young student who had arrived from Japan, I was homesick
and looking for something uniquely Japanese, and medieval Japan
of
all things attracted me the most. I became interested in Basho
along with other writers, since he was a poet who admired medieval
Japanese
values, such as sabi, for his aesthetic and moral ideals. Then
at a certain party I met with the late Dr. Roy Teele, who was the
Japan
editor of the Twayne World Author Series; he asked my opinions
as to who should be on the series. I answered that someone ought
to
write on Basho. Several weeks later I was surprised to find on my
desk a
contract with Twayne to write a Basho book. That was the beginning
of my serious interest in Basho. I have other interests, however;
I have written books on Buson and Issa, for example (The
Path of Flowering Thorn and Dew on Grass).
RW:
How did Matsuo Basho elevate haiku
to
a mature art form?
MU: Haiku before
Basho's time was more or less an urban game or pastime written on
lighthearted occasions. Almost singlehandedly,
Basho turned
it into serious poetry by making it true to actual human experience,
to what the poet actually saw and felt, with all sincerity and
faithfulness. Basho did not completely reject the playfulness
characteristic of
prior haiku, but he showed that haiku was capable of embodying,
in its brief
form, all the various feelings and moods of human life. At one
time, he even suggested that those feelings and moods were more
important
than haiku itself: "Haiku may well be nonexistent," he
is reported to have said, "but those who neither harmonize
with the ways of the world nor know the feelings of people must
be said to be
the least artistic." In other words, to understand human
feelings and give appropriate form to them is basic to haiku.
RW:
You wrote in
1970 that Basho “always encouraged his students to cultivate
their individual talents rather than to follow him with blind
faith,” ending
your statement with Basho’s haiku: Do
not resemble me—
Never be like a musk melon
Cut in two identical halves
Would
you elucidate? MU: When a musk
melon is cut in half, each piece looks the same. Thus, in the Japanese
language, halves of a melon were often
used as a simile
to describe two identical things. Probably melon slices were
served when Basho wrote the haiku in question. He compared himself
to
one half of a melon and told his friend not to be the other half
that
looked
exactly the same. His friend was a merchant, so Basho had all
the more reason to want him not to be like an artist. The haiku,
when
it is seen
by itself, has more general implications: the teacher wants
each of his students to develop his own talent and explore his
own
area.
RW:
Some of Basho’s haiku are simple observations.
Others are complex, steeped in imagery and metaphor. What
do you think Basho
looked for
when writing a haiku? Did Basho adhere to a formula or a
specific set of rules when composing haiku? Or do
you think he allowed
his material
to dictate the course he took, as his poems are so varied
in treatment? For example, there are those that
hinge upon the juxtaposition
of
disparate images for effect; there are others which seem
to just portray a simple
continuous image which has its own reverberations.
MU:
Basho did not adhere to a specific set of rules, even
though he seems to have greatly respected Chinese
poetic ideals,
sabi, or karumi
at various times of his career. He was open to any poetic
or rhetorical technique that would produce the desired effect.
Thus, at one
time, he is reported to have taught: "Haiku should be
made like a piece of gold, beaten and stretched." At
another time, he reportedly observed: "Haiku is made
by bringing disparate objects together." The
former comment seems to refer to a haiku that presents a simple
continuous image; the latter comment indicates a haiku that
hinges upon a juxtaposition
of different images. Basho's own haiku shows plenty of examples
of both as well as many others that lie around or between
them.
RW:
You have written that “People reading Basho's haiku sometimes feel they
have not seen the whole of what they wanted to see because his haiku
refuse to over explain the experience they represent.” Please
expound on this. MU:
I am not sure I can expound on it satisfactorily,
but I think Basho can be compared to a mountain
climber who has
climbed
to
a spot of 20,000
feet on a 25,000 foot mountain. Compare him to a climber
who is satisfied when he reaches the top of
a 10,000 foot mountain
and
enjoys the view
from there. Basho's haiku seems to have something that
does not completely show itself, no matter how hard
the reader
looks at
it. Of course,
haiku is a verse form that thrives on ambiguities, yet
Basho's works too many
times leave part of the ambiguities unexplained. To take
an example,
above the moon
not attached to anything
a skylark sings
can be read as a poem of the happy skylark singing to
its heart's content in the vast sky, or a poem of a lonely
lark
unsupported
by anything in the infinite
space, or a poem of the writer's being envious of the lark's freedom.
Was Basho happy, sad, envious, lonesome, or resigned when
he wrote
the poem? An ordinary
poet might have used some word that would suggest the emotion,
but Basho did not. He appears to have written more poems
like
this than
other poets.
RW:
Early Japanese poets wrote haiku in the traditional
5/7/5 onji format.
Yet today, many in the English- speaking world have
strayed away
from this,
declaring it too
long to simulate the brief one-breath Japanese haiku. But what
is interesting is that some Japanese haiku poets have
elected
to follow this “free-style” haiku.
Why do you suppose that is?
MU:
Free-style (Jiyuritsu) haiku was popular largely in
the 1910s and 1920s, with poets like Ogiwara
Seisensui (1884-1976), Ozaki
Hosai
(1885-1926), and Taneda Santoka (1882-1940). Since then it
was steadily in decline;
today
there is no
major (or noteworthy) poet who writes it. Seisensui himself
co-authored a book called An Introduction
to Short Free Verse in 1973, apparently
giving
up free
verse style haiku to which he devoted his entire life. Free-style
haiku was
born on the assumption that it was true to what the poet felt
at the creative moment,
for it did not restrict the expression of emotion by imposing
a predetermined form. According to Seisensui's
claim, it differed
from free verse
in two points: it dealt with nature in subject matter, and
it was centripetal
in structure.
But poets in general were indifferent to that; they would rather
write free verse, which treats nature among other things and
which can have
a
centripetal
structure
among other things. In other words, free-style haiku is short
free verse, as Seisensui came to concede shortly
before his death.
RW:
What do you
think it
is about Basho’s haiku that appeals to poets internationally?
MU: Basho
was a poet who contained multitude, so that each reader
sees what he or she wants to see in him. As I said
in Matsuo
Basho, those
who admired
Basho "would
find in him almost anything they sought---a town dandy, a youthful dreamer, a
Buddhist recluse, a lonely wanderer, a nihilistic misanthrope, a happy humorist,
an enlightened sage." Ezra Pound was attracted to what he called "The
Technique of super-position" in Basho's haiku. R.H. Blyth felt Basho's poetry
had the "flavor of zen." D.J. Salinger seems to have been fascinated
with the impersonal nature of Basho's haiku. As I said before, his poems refuse
to completely explain the experience they embody; each reader is free to supply
his or her desire in places that are left unexplained. I think this lies at the
root of Basho's attention.
RW:
What can we learn today from Basho’s
poetry?
MU: Different
people will learn different things from Basho's writings,
but I learn most from his
way of
life. He believed
in poetry like
religion and
spent
his life continuously trying to realize that belief. "There
is a common element permeating Saigyo's waka, Sogi's
linked verse, Sesshu's painting, and
Rikyu's tea ceremony," he wrote. "It
is the poetic spirit, the spirit that leads on
to follow the ways of the universe and to become
a friend of the
seasons." His life was a vigorous search for
the poetic spirit. "I
kept wandering aimlessly like a cloud while singing
of flowers and birds, until that became even the
source of my livelihood. With no other talent to
resort
to, now I can only cling to this thin string of
haiku." On
his deathbed he still kept wandering:
on a journey, ill---
my dreams roam
over a wild moor
That is the kind of passion I envy and wish to
have myself.
RW: In
conclusion, what led you down the path
you have chosen
in life, to
become an eminent
scholar, translator, lecturer, and author?
MU: I
am just an ordinary scholar, translator, and author. Originally
I came from Japan
as a student majoring
in English,
but after
a while I switched
my
major to comparative literature and received
a PhD in it. That almost automatically placed
me
at the University
of
Toronto,
then at Stanford.
Haiku is one
of my areas of specialization--undoubtedly
my favorite. I think I like haiku because
I can easily look at a haiku poem as a whole.
It takes a certain amount of effort to read
a novel
or a play
or even
a non-haiku
poem, since
it is longer.
To criticize
a work of literature, I have first to read
it and examine its shape as a whole. Haiku is easy
to
do so because
it is only of
seventeen
syllables
and printed
in one line of Japanese. That does not mean
haiku
is simple, but I at least have the entire
visible parts
right before
my eyes. Or
am
I just
defending
laziness?
Makoto
Ueda is Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature
at Stanford University in California and the author of numerous
books about Japanese short form poetry. He earned a PhD
in Comparative Literature in 1962.
Bibliography:
~ Matsuo Basho: The Master Haiku Poet (1970)
~ Modern Japanese Haiku, an Anthology (1976)
~ Explorations: Essays in Comparative Literature (1986),
ISBN 0819155136
~ Basho and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku With Commentary (1992)
~ Modern Japanese Tanka (1996)
~ Far Beyond the Field: Haiku by Japanese Women (2003)
~ The Path of the Flowering Thorn: The Life and Poetry
of Yosa Buson (1998).
~ Light Verse from the Floating World. An Anthology of
Premodern Japanese Senryu (1999)
(electronic book)
~ Dew on the Grass. The Life and Poetry of Kobayashi Issa (2004),
ISBN 9004137238 |