Japanese and Western Literature. Armando Martins Janeira

Westerner to try to criticize Basho's poetry is somewhat of a heresy, and to pretend to understand it seems a despicable pretence. Therefore, two main attitudes have been followed by Western critics towards haiku: either to praise its delicate lyricism, its subtle sensibility to the beauty of nature—this is the honest approach; or to pretend that haiku can never be understood before one has mastered the whole culture of India, China, and Japan, in all their poetic, philosophical, and religious impenetrable thought—this is the approach of the savants. Both are of course facile and lack seriousness, because what is really needed here is to find a common ground where human understanding becomes possible, however strange the poet may be to the reader. It could also be said that to understand Dante it is indispensable to know all Greek and Roman literature and philosophy, theology, poetry, and all the thought of the European Middle Ages. Of not so great a poet C. M. Bowra has written that "Mallarme's poetry is more difficult than almost any other great poetry in the world. It requires for its appreciation a knowledge which it is almost impossible to obtain fully." When so much is demanded, ordinary man feels left outside the privileged circle of the rare initiated ones; then poetry becomes aimless and loses its human appeal.

      A few examples of Basho's haiku may be better than any wrought explanation. Translated literally, some of them, in their power of concentration and richness of suggestion, are not far from some of the best modern poetry that we have today.

Uguisu ya	A warbler
Take no ko-yabu ni	In the grove of bamboo shoots
Oi o naku	Growing old, sings.

      A world of dense suggestion is contained here in the idea of the new life springing from bamboo shoots, while an old bird is singing in its last days of joy. Another example:

Shiraga nuku	White hairs are pulled out
Makura no shita ya	Ah, under the pillow
Kirigirisu	A cricket.

      The same feeling of melancholy is briefly sketched in this scene: while some tender hand is pulling out Basho's white hairs, a cricket is chirping under the pillow on which he rests his head. Still another example:

Kami-gaki ya	Around the shrine a fence
Omoi mo kakezu	Unexpectedly
Nehan-zo	A statue of Buddha entering Nirvana,

      This haiku, composed at the Ise Shrine, expresses the union of Shintoism and Buddhism, so characteristic of Japanese religious eclecticism. It may be related to the doctrine of Ryobu Shinto, which arose at the beginning of the ninth century, preaching that Shinto gods were manifestations of Buddhist divinities. In the feeling of embracing the two religions, Basho rejoices. Consider:

Te ni toraba	If I took it in my hand
Kien namida zo	It would melt with my hot tears
Atsuki aki no shimo	Autumn frost.

      The power of concentration in this haiku is so great that the most important element of it is not even put into words: Basho is talking of the white hair of his dead, mother which he saw on his return to his native place after a long absence.

      These very imperfect translations, which follow the original as literally as possible, transmit, I hope, the true spirit of the haiku. We can see that they contain a very condensed poetic emotion, an extraordinary force of suggestion and purity of symbolism, as well as a beauty and freshness grasped directly from reality. Haiku is the most unique poetic form in the world; in no other country can anything similar be found.

      A description of the way Basho composed his most famous poem, left by his disciple Shiko, may help us to penetrate a bit more into the mysteries of haiku. Every Japanese knows the poem by heart:

Furuike ya	Ah, the old pond
Kawazu tobikomu	A frog jumps in
Mizu no oto	Sound, of water.

      It was written on a serene spring day when the cherry blossoms were falling gently in the garden; now and then the sound of a frog jumping into the water was heard. I quote from the translation of Nobuyuki Yuasa:

      Our master was deeply immersed in meditation, but finally he came out with the second half of the poem:

      A frog jumped into water

       A deep resonance.

      One of the disciples sitting with him immediately suggested for the first part of the poem:

      Amidst the flowers

       Of the yellow rose.

      Our master thought for a while, but finally he decided on

      Breaking the silence

       Of an ancient pond.

      The disciple's suggestion is admittedly picturesque and beautiful but our master's choice, being simpler, contains more truth in it. It is only he who has dug deep into the mystery of the universe that can choose a phrase like this.⁷

      R. H. Blyth wrote that "haiku is an ascetic art, an artistic ascetism." All the power of inspiration of the poet is contained not in expansion, but in condensation, Basho, besides the prose pages of his brief travel diaries, never wanted to write anything but haiku, like a specialist who wishes to preserve the high skill he attained by refraining from doing something else. This trend towards contracting the expression of emotion with such brevity is the opposite of that which has been the evolution of Western poetry till recent time. The great breadth of romantic poetry is in expansion and eloquence, as that of the classic period had been in definition of narrative amplitude. It was with symbolism that eloquence began to be despised, and only in our times that increasing brevity has become a distinct quality of good poets.

      Like Basho, symbolist poets professed the religion of beauty. They felt that the "principle of the beautiful unified life and gave meaning to it." In this sense symbolism was fundamentally mystical. "The essence of symbolism is its insistence on a world of ideal beauty and its conviction that this is realized through art:," writes C. M. Bowra in his book The Heritage of Symbolism.

      One should avoid stressing this similarity too much but it is undeniable that the poetic world of haiku, after Basho deepened this form into seriousness of meaning, has many points in common with the world of the symbolist poets. Both explore the poetic value of symbols, both are rich in suggestion; both experience ecstasy, a timeless contentment. According to Bowra, the symbolist poet also finds ecstasy in "the pure aesthetic state which seems to obliterate distinctions of time and place, of self and not-self, of sorrow and joy."⁸

      Some poems of Mallarmé, for example, evoke the same world of beauty as Basho's through very realist symbols:

Ta lèvre contre le cristal	Your lip against the crystal
Gorgée à gorgée y compose	Sip after sip composes
Le souvenir pourpre et vital	The souvenir purple and vital
De la moins éphémère rose.	Of the most ephemeral rose.

      Mallarmé despised eloquence, and suppressed explanations and long comparisons: "Only the essential points are given and the gain in concentration and power is enormous, Bowra writes of him. The symbolists, though, believe in an ideal world