Мацуо Басё: Жизнь и творчество великого японского поэта

Japanese poet

; born Matsuo Kinsaku (松尾 金作), later known as Matsuo Chūemon Munefusa (松尾 忠右衛門 宗房) was the most famous Japanese poet of the Edo period. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as the greatest master of haiku (then called hokku). He is also well known for his travel essays beginning with Records of a Weather Exposed Skeleton (1684), written after his journey west to Kyoto and Nara. Matsuo Bashō's poetry is internationally renowned, and, in Japan, many of his poems are reproduced on monuments and traditional sites. Although Bashō is famous in the West for his hokku, he himself believed his best work lay in leading and participating in renku. As he himself said, "Many of my followers can write hokku as well as I can. Where I show who I really am is in linking haikai verses." Bashō was introduced to poetry at a young age, and after integrating himself into the intellectual scene of Edo (modern Tokyo) he quickly became well known throughout Japan. He made a living as a teacher; but then renounced the social, urban life of the literary circles and was inclined to wander throughout the country, heading west, east, and far into the northern wilderness to gain inspiration for his writing. His poems were influenced by his firsthand experience of the world around him, often encapsulating the feeling of a scene in a few simple elements.

Matsuo Bashō was born in 1644, near Ueno, in Iga Province. The Matsuo family was of samurai descent, and his father was probably a musokunin (無足人), a class of landowning peasants granted certain privileges of samurai. Little is known of his childhood. The Matsuo were a major ninja family, and Bashō was trained in ninjutsu. In his late teens, Bashō became a servant to Tōdō Yoshitada ([[:ja:藤堂 良忠) most likely in some humble capacity, and probably not promoted to full samurai class. It is claimed he served as cook or a kitchen worker in some near contemporaneous accounts, but there is no conclusive proof. A later hypothesis is that he was chosen to serve as page to Yoshitada, with alternative documentary evidence suggesting he started serving at a younger age. He shared Yoshitada's love for haikai no renga, a form of collaborative poetry composition. A sequence was opened with a verse in 5 7 5 mora format; this verse was named a hokku, and would centuries later be renamed haiku when presented as a stand alone work. The hokku would be followed by a related 7 7 mora verse by another poet. Both Bashō and Yoshitada gave themselves haigō (俳号), or haikai pen names; Bashō's was Sōbō (宗房), which was simply the on'yomi (Sino Japanese reading) of his adult name, "Munefusa (宗房)." In 1662, the first extant poem by Bashō was published. In 1726, two of Bashō's hokku were printed in a compilation. In 1665, Bashō and Yoshitada together with some acquaintances composed a hyakuin, or one hundred verse renku. In 1666, Yoshitada's sudden death brought Bashō's peaceful life as a servant to an end. No records of this time remain, but it is believed that Bashō gave up any possibility of samurai status and left home. Biographers have proposed various reasons and destinations, including the possibility of an affair between Bashō and a Shinto miko named Jutei (寿貞), which is unlikely to be true. Bashō's own references to this time are vague; he recalled that "at one time I coveted an official post with a tenure of land", and that "there was a time when I was fascinated with the ways of homosexual love": there is no indication whether he was referring to real obsessions or fictional ones. (Biographers of the author, however, note that Bashō was involved in homosexual affairs throughout all his life and that among his lovers were several of his disciples; in Professor Gary Leupp's view, Bashō's homoerotic compositions were clearly based on his personal experiences). He was uncertain whether to become a full time poet; by his own account, "the alternatives battled in my mind and made my life restless". His indecision may have been influenced by the then still relatively low status of renga and haikai no renga as more social activities than serious artistic endeavors. In any case, his poems continued to be published in anthologies in 1667, 1669, and 1671, and he published a compilation of work by himself and other authors of the Teitoku school, The Seashell Game (貝おほひ), in 1672. In about the spring of that year he moved to Edo, to further his study of poetry.

Bashō's private planning for another long journey, to be described in his masterwork Oku no Hosomichi, or The Narrow Road to the Deep North, culminated on May 16, 1689 (Yayoi 27, Genroku 2), when he left Edo with his student and apprentice Kawai Sora ([[:ja:河合曾良) on a journey to the Northern Provinces of Honshū. Bashō and Sora headed north to Hiraizumi, which they reached on June 29. They then walked to the western side of the island, touring Kisakata on July 30, and began hiking back at a leisurely pace along the coastline. During this 150 day journey Bashō traveled a total of 600 ri (2,400 km) through the northeastern areas of Honshū, returning to Edo in late 1691. By the time Bashō reached Ōgaki, Gifu Prefecture, he had completed the log of his journey. He edited and redacted it for three years, writing the final version in 1694 as The Narrow Road to the Interior (奥の細道). The first edition was published posthumously in 1702. It was an immediate commercial success and many other itinerant poets followed the path of his journey. It is often considered his finest achievement, featuring hokku such as:

On his return to Edo in the winter of 1691, Bashō lived in his third bashō hut, again provided by his disciples. This time, he was not alone; he took in his nephew Toin and a female friend Jutei, who were both recovering from illness. He had many great visitors. Bashō wrote to a friend that "disturbed by others, I have no peace of mind". Until late August 1693, he continued to make a living from teaching and appearances at haikai parties. Then he shut the gate to his bashō hut and refused to see anybody for a month. Finally, he relented after adopting the principle of karumi or "lightness", a semi Buddhist philosophy of greeting the mundane world rather than separating from it. Bashō left Edo for the last time in the summer of 1694, spending time in Ueno and Kyoto before arriving in Osaka. There, he came down with a stomach illness and surrounded by his disciples, died peacefully. Although he did not compose a formal death poem, the following is generally accepted as his poem of farewell:

Rather than sticking to the formulas of kigo (季語), which remain popular in Japan even today, Bashō aspired to reflect his real environment and emotions in his hokku. Even during his lifetime, the effort and style of his poetry was widely appreciated; after his death, it only increased. Several of his students compiled quotations from him about his own poetry, most notably Mukai Kyorai and Hattori Dohō. During the 18th century, appreciation of Bashō's poems grew more fervent, and commentators such as Ishiko Sekisui and Moro Nanimaru went to great length to find references in his hokku to historical events, medieval books, and other poems. These commentators were often lavish in their praise of Bashō's obscure references, some of which were probably literary false cognates. In 1793 Bashō was deified by the Shinto bureaucracy, and for a time criticizing his poetry was literally blasphemous. In the late 19th century, this period of unanimous passion for Bashō's poems came to an end. Masaoka Shiki, arguably Bashō's most famous critic, tore down the long standing orthodoxy with his bold and candid objections to Bashō's style. However, Shiki was also instrumental in making Bashō's poetry accessible in English, and to leading intellectuals and the Japanese public at large. He invented the term haiku (replacing hokku) to refer to the freestanding 5–7–5 form which he considered the most artistic and desirable part of the haikai no renga. Basho was illustrated in one of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi's ukiyo e woodblock prints from the One Hundred Aspects of the Moon collection, c. 1885 1892. His Bunkyō hermitage was illustrated by Hiroshige in the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo collection, published around 1857.

Critical interpretation of Bashō's poems continued into the 20th century, with notable works by Yamamoto Kenkichi, Imoto Nōichi, and Ogata Tsutomu. The 20th century also saw translations of Bashō's poems into other languages around the world. The position of Bashō in Western eyes as the haiku poet par excellence gives great influence to his poetry: Western preference for haiku over more traditional forms such as tanka or renga have rendered archetypal status to Bashō as Japanese poet and haiku as Japanese poetry. Some western scholars even believe that Bashō invented haiku. The impressionistic and concise nature of Bashō's verse greatly influenced Ezra Pound, the Imagists, and poets of the Beat Generation. On this question, Jaime Lorente maintains in his research work "Bashō y el metro 5 7 5" that of the 1012 hokkus analyzed by master Bashō 145 cannot fit into the 5 7 5 meter, since they are a broken meter (specifically, they present a greater number of mora [syllables]). In percentage they represent 15% of the total. Even establishing 50 poems that, presenting this 5 7 5 pattern, could be framed in another structure (due to the placement of the particle "ya"), the figure is similar. Therefore, Lorente concludes that the teacher was close to the traditional pattern. In 1942, the Haiseiden building was constructed in Iga, Mie, to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Basho's birth. Featuring a circular roof named the "traveler's umbrella", the building was made to resemble Basho's face and clothing. Two of Bashō's poems were popularized in the short story "Teddy" written by J. D. Salinger and published in 1952 by The New Yorker magazine. In 1979, the International Astronomical Union named a crater found on Mercury after him. In 2003, an international anthology film titled Winter Days adapted Basho's 1684 renku collection of the same name into a series of animations. Animators include Kihachirō Kawamoto, Yuri Norstein, and Isao Takahata.