Japanese and Western Literature. Armando Martins Janeira

world of reality, while Basho is a realist for whom the world of things is sufficiently rich in wonders and suggestions. Poets who came after the symbolists, like Paul Valéry, believed that things are what they are and were content with the world of reality.

      The likeness pointed out was soon noticed by the Japanese and that is why the French symbolists were so much appreciated in Japan. A Japanese critic, Sueo Goto, has written: "We have of yore uta, haikai and Chinese poetry, which are truly, in my opinion, a kind of symbolism." Yasunari Kawabata finds in the Shin Kokinshu "elements of the mysterious, the suggestive, the evocative and inferential, elements of sensuous fantasy that have something in common with modern symbolist poetry."

      It must be said, of course, that Western poetry is always more wordy, and though conciseness may at times be considered a good quality, it will never have the laconism of haiku to be attained as an ideal. One should not pretend in the least to say that the two things are the same, but merely to point out some distinctive traits which can be found in both.

      Le fruit creux, sourd d'insectes, tombe

       dans l'eau des criques fouillant son bruit.

      The hollow fruit, deaf of insects, falls

       into the water of creeks, searching its own noise.

      Will anybody say that here St, John Perse, a distinct heir of the symbolists, is not on the same path as Basho? Or compare these verses of E. E. Cummings, still nearer Basho's earthly spirit:

      making fools understand

       (like wintry me) that not

       all matterings of mind

       equal one violet.

      Basho was so conscious of the value of the symbolic element in his poetry that he developed a whole theory about it. Nobuyuki Yuasa writes that this symbolic quality inherent in the poem is what Basho called sabi (loneliness), shiori (tenderness), and hosomi (slenderness), depending on the mode of its mani-festarion and the degree of its saturation,

      Basho explained that sabi is in the "colour of a poem," an expression that French symbolists also used; sabi is the subjective element which brings out of the objects the richness of symbolic meaning. It has something of Baudelaire: "L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles" (There man passes through forests of symbols). There is here, of course, a fundamental difference, as symbolist poets show excited enthusiasm and rapture, while Basho expressed sobriety and serenity. There is in both a subtlety, finesse, and a strong power of suggestion.⁹

      Basho gave haiku great prestige. After his death two disciples continued his work: Kikaku, who cultivated a free and vigorous style, and Ransetsu, who was gentle and delicate. Both died at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Buson, who was also a famous painter, created a new haiku style, followed by Issa, who introduced a very personal approach. After Issa haiku fell to "little better than the rank of parlour game," until about the middle of the Meiji era when Shiki Masaoka gave it new life. Haiku continues to be much praised and practised; the greatest haiku poet of today is perhaps Shuoshi Mizuhara, in whose poetry the influence of Basho survives.

      Basho was always entirely satisfied with haiku form and never had the urge to expand his poetic expression into a wider form. Again, a Western reader cannot understand this self-limitation of genius. Western geniuses are vast and monstrous in their range of artistic manifestations, know no limits, and infringe all rules; their force is a force of nature, impetuous, unpredictable, indomitable. When we think of Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, and their vast creations, it is difficult to understand how a genius like Basho—because he seems to have been one—could give vent to his creative force by containing it in small strophes of less than a dozen words, however polished they were. This concentration on the perfection of form had to be reflected also in content, We can imagine Dante concentrating on perfecting the form of his tercets, but we cannot admit—by what we know of the tumultuous force of his genius—that he could ever be content without launching into the immense conception of his vast spiritual world in which all the problems and an immense theory of personalities of his time were contained, Before the powerful mental effort to conceive and elaborate such a work, we can only wonder, fascinated and overwhelmed.

      The poems of the great Western poets are more open, fuller of the force of suggestion and can be prolonged to deeper and denser meanings than haiku. That is why the Divina Commedia today still appeals to our anxieties, our yearning for the absolute. There is in all these Western poems, of course, a part which is dated, attached to the temporal or local circumstances surrounding the poet. In haiku everything is alive, because all that is temporal is left out. Here is really the fundamental difference, This explains why Japanese poetry is a contented poetry even when it is sad; the poet is always resigned to his lot be-cause he is serene and knows that misfortune cannot last long in a life so brief, in such, an inconstant world.

      All great Western poets, on the contrary, are rebels; unsatisfied with the world, they try to change it, to transform man himself; the greatest ones are those who led a most unhappy life, were persecuted, exiled from their countries, and had their works burnt. Doubt and desperation gnawing at all their certitudes, they were even doubtful about the justification of their own work: Virgil on his deathbed at Brindisium wanted to destroy the manuscript of the Aeneid; Dante hid. the last thirteen cantos of the Divina Commedia inside a wall, where they were discovered after his death only by chance. Gogol burned all the second part of his greatest novel and died in despair, and Kafka wanted to have all the work for which he is famous destroyed. The Japanese poets, however, usually die in peace and follow the tradition of composing a serene poem on their deathbed. These are fundamental differences between East and West: poetry tells in words of the very heart of man.

      It is impossible for me to understand why a genius like Basho limited himself to the brevity of haiku. There are reasons which are understandable even for a Westerner—respect for tradition and for the venerated authority of predecessors. It is a fact that absence of subjective feeling eliminated eloquent discourse, and that it is easier to give strong reality to objective things and to atmosphere in an extremely concentrated form. There is a great tendency in the Japanese spirit for elaborating on the small: for example, the netsuke (miniature carved figure), bonsai (dwarf tree), the minute doll, and the sculpture on a grain of rice. But all these should be valid reasons for a poet of a common quality, not for a towering genius. After long meditation on this puzzling problem, I think that the real explanation lies in the fact that the original source of poetry in the Japanese soul flows inwards, and not outwards. Basho kept for himself the beautiful poetic discourse and gave out only the essentials of his deep meditation; thus his haiku are like the koan of Zen meditation. Nobody after Basho can hope to understand the deep thought and vast implications in the marvellous light surrounding his creation.

      Whatever the emotive and mental development that a Japanese reader finds in Basho's poetic suggestions, he can be sure that they will never be as rich as those Basho himself imagined, and might have developed and explained, if he had proposed to do it. Nobody would be able to attain the depth and breadth Dante reached by developing his central poetic ideas; fortunately, he did not leave it for the reader to do. On the other hand, we could do very well without Dante's explanations and commentaries on his sonnets and canzone in Vita Nuoua; most of the time they are obvious and redundant. Too much and too little are both far from perfection.¹⁰

      As this effort of internalization obliged Basho to withhold too great a spiritual energy, he felt the need of some liberation, and so he went wandering on long trips through Japan, finding in the calm beauty of the scenery the image of blissful peace of mind He wrote notes of his travels. These travel notebooks, so rooted in Japanese tradition, are unique in world literature, and are composed both in verse and prose by many poets. This proves that the poetic forms were not wide enough for the poets to liberate all their inspiratory forces; therefore they had to continue their message in prose, which in this case is a mere extension of the poem.

      Art is substance as well as form, of course, and both must be fused into a whole. In the West also, form has been carefully worked out, The sonnet has had great lovers, such as Petrarch and Camoëns; and a single, perfect sonnet made Arvers famous. But also in the West, excessive preoccupation with form gave rise to poetic movements which failed on account of their over-elaboration.