Matsuo BashōRecensioni

What a lovely character is Basho as he wanders through time and place alert to whatever happens on his journey. Usually with someone, a companion servant, he often gives the impression he is alone. There is delight in his both his prose and haiku regardless of how poorly they translate.

There is much to be explored in these sketches not least an understnding of metaphor.

This 'little book of travel' through Japan by one its greatest poets is simple, subtle and charming, if a little stiff in places (the translation?). A small sip from its pages each night was a gentle invitation to let the mind wander. I particularly enjoyed the sample verses from Basho's poetic companions given occasionally alongside his own, all written at the same time, which helped build up a sense of the varied possibilities of haiku.

Viaje a pie por Japon

I read a page or two at night before falling asleep, which was very soothing. I'll probably start the book over and keep up this bedtime routine.

A very neat little book with great art work. Translated by Sam Hamill. This is said to be one of the great works of Japanese literature; unfortunately all of the allusions to Japanese and Chinese literature, locations, events and religion, although pointed out in footnotes, didn't mean much to me and I can't really experience its "greatness".

There are few Japanese Haiku I don't enjoy, whether I grasp them or feel them or not.

It's one of those things that I can acknowledge the art of without necessarily enjoying it.

Travel sketches of an author in search of spiritual fulfillment. The resulting text is one of the classics of Japanese and world literature. There are better translations available, but the central message comes through nonetheless.½

The genius of Basho (1644-94), Japan's greatest haiku poet, elevated the haiku to an art form of utter simplicity and intense spiritual beauty. The masterpiece of Basho's career-and one of the most revered classics of Asian literature-is a diary written in prose and haiku of Basho's journey through the villages and mountain temples of the northern interior of Japan. Much more than a simple travel journal, Narror Road to the Interior is also, in the words of the translator, Sam Hamill, ' a long journey to the soul's interior.' Hamill's rendering of Basho's classic brings to life the charm and beauty of the original and is certain to become the authoritative translation for generations to come.

Sam Hamill has published over twenty books of poetry, translations, and essays. He has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Japan-U.S. Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and other honors. One of America's foremost poets and translators, Hamill has been compared by thomas McGrath to 'Kenneth Rexroth at his peak,' and W.S. Merwin has praised him as a translator and poet who is 'able to bring his world up close and transparent, and to set it in words that are a pleasure to come upon and to remember.' His translations of Japanese poems, Only Companion, is forthcoming in Shambhala Centaur Editions.

Stephen Addiss's painting and calligraphy have been exhibited in San Francisco, New Orleans, London, Tokyo, and Beijing. He has also written a number of books on Oriental art, including The Art of Zen.

'Sam Hamill's translation captures the swift and unlabored tone of Basho's Narrow Road to the Interior, while at the same time bringing across the depth of feeling that makes it one of the undisputed masterpieces of Japanese literature. Hamill acieves a kind of luminosity of language that I find unparalled in other translatins of the work.'-Professor Burton Watson, Columbia University, and translator of Chuang Tzu and Han Shan's Cold Mountain.

Contents

Acknowledgments
Translator's introduction
Narrow road to the interior
Notes

Review from

https://berniegourley.com/2016/11/04/book-review-on-love-and-barley-by-matsuo-ba...

This is a short collection of English translations of the haiku poetry of Matsuo Bashō. Bashō is one of the seminal figures in Japanese literature, and was a fascinating person. Living in 17th century Japan, his hometown was Iga-Ueno (a city whose other claim to fame was being one of two centers of medieval black-ops warriors known as ninja,) but he was also an ardent traveler and Zen Buddhist. One will note that many of his poems are about traveling.

The name of the collection is drawn from one of the poems (labeled “152” in this collection) that reads: “girl cat, so thin on love and barley”

Translating poetry is one of the hardest language tasks imaginable—and translating haiku to English is the hardest of the hard. This is because Japanese is grammatically sparse and the number of beats per syllable is limited, while English… not so much. Therefore, if one literally translates, not only would one likely get circa-2000 Babel Fish gibberish, the Zen simplicity vanishes. One has to appreciate any haiku to English translation that gets some of the feel of haiku right while still conveying meaning. This collection does a nice job in many cases, and maybe does it as well as can be expected.

The original poems [i.e. the Japanese] aren’t included. This may not seem like an issue to a reader who doesn’t know Japanese, but it can be nice to read the original poem phonetically (Japanese is a very phonetic language—unlike English.) The sound of a poem can be as evocative as its meaning. Some haiku translations offer three versions of the poem (i.e. the Japanese characters [useful only for Japanese readers], a Romanized spelling of the Japanese poem, and the translated poem), but—except for some of the poems referenced in the introduction—this one only gives the translation.

There is a substantial introduction that both gives one insight into Bashō as a person and poet, and puts his haiku into a broader context. There are also some end-notes for many of the poems to make sense of words and phrases that may not make sense to a contemporary English reader. There are some drawings that aren’t necessary, but they don’t hurt either, making a nice way to break up the collection. The book consists of about 50 pages of poems (with 5 haiku / page, or 250+ poems), and is less than 100 pages in total.

I would recommend this collection for poetry lovers. While poetry translations can be perilous, they can also offer new insight–even if one has read multiple translations of the same poem in the past.
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Review from Amazon:
Basho, one of the greatest of Japanese poets and the master of haiku, was also a Buddhist monk and a life-long traveller. His poems combine 'karumi', or lightness of touch, with the Zen ideal of oneness with creation. Each poem evokes the natural world - the cherry blossom, the leaping frog, the summer moon or the winter snow - suggesting the smallness of human life in comparison to the vastness and drama of nature. Basho himself enjoyed solitude and a life free from possessions, and his haiku are the work of an observant eye and a meditative mind, uncluttered by materialism and alive to the beauty of the world around him.

I enjoyed this collection of haiku, though I had to keep reminding myself that the poems were translated and so the meter in English wasn't always what I expected for a haiku. Still, the images the poems evoked were lovely, and the introduction at the beginning was helpful to understand the backdrop for the collection.

This is a sweet travel diary by Basho, the poet of 17th century Japan. He travels to sacred spots, places other poets had been and comments on the scenery, the weather, the other people he meets on the trip. He writes haikus to commemorate his visit to these places. It is beautiful and tranquil. The book includes a map of his route, and the poems in Japanese at the end of the book.½

Los 99 haikus reunidos en este libro han sido seleccionados por Jenaro Talens y traducidos por él mismo en colaboración con Kayoko Takagi y cuentan con un documentado Preliminar de la académica Clara Janés, además de las caligrafías de Eiko Kishi y la serie fotográfica titulada «Bambúes insomnes», de Adriana Veyrat. Una escenografía idónea para visualizar la atmósfera natural de los haikus.

I really enjoyed this collection of Haikus. They were short and sweet, and created strong visuals.

I really enjoyed this collection of Haikus. They were short and sweet, and created strong visuals.

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Matsuo-Jours-de-printemps/763105

> Un grand livre de Bashō Matsuo né en 1644 et mort en 1694, ce poète japonais. C'est l'un des quatre maîtres classiques du haïku japonais (avec Buson, Issa et Shiki).
—Danieljean (Babelio)

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Matsuo-Cent-cinq-Haikai/307109

> Un pur délice pour la contemplation.
—Danieljean (Babelio)

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Matsuo-Journaux-de-voyage/109022

> Basho est un des auteurs les plus fameux de la poesie japonaise ; ce cahier de voyage est une référence pour les amateurs de haiku, comme pour les curieux ayant envie de flaner dans le Japon ancien.
—Danieljean (Babelio)

This is a combination of 17th century travelogue and poetry collection from one of Japan’s top poets. I picked it as “a book/genre I wouldn’t normally read” and enjoyed it very much — it is much more accessible than most collections of Japanese poetry, too.

Aside from the beauty of the poetry, I liked learning about the “haiku party culture” and the groups of poets, students, etc and their interaction with the outside world. Even better, he undertook a trip to the area north of Tokyo, an area I’ve visited (by train). There were a lot of incidental insights into what these places were like in the time, and 1000 years of history before his trip.

Reading some of the poems in Romanji (despite not understanding Japanese other than sushi terms, it is an easy and regular language in pronunciation, at least when written in that form) added some, although I still actually preferred the travelogue aspect with the poems embedded in context.

I want to be very clear about one thing: who the heck am I to be giving Basho two stars? I am nobody, and I am not giving Basho two stars, I am giving this book two stars. The Japanese literary tradition is so deep and aesthetically interesting, and I have no doubt whatsoever that, *in Japanese*, these travel narratives are well worth reading.

But I, filthy occidental, do not know Japanese, and I am reduced to reading sentences such as this, chosen entirely at random: "Dragging my sore heels, I plodded along like Saigyo, all the time with the memory of his suffering at the River Tenryu in my mind, and when I hired a horse, I thought of the famous priest who had experienced the disgrace of being thrown from his horse into a moat."

I can accept that my own ignorance makes it hard to get the references, and that something just does go missing if, like me, you don't know much about 17th century Japan's cultural references. That's on me. What isn't on me is the plodding, dragging translation, which does cause my heel to get sore and cause my mind great suffering, and in my less patient moments made me wish the translator could be thrown into a moat. Even if one didn't want to bother making the prose into something approaching literature, one might try with the haiku. No such luck.

At sunrise I saw
Tanned faces of fishermen
Among the flowers
Of white poppy.

I'll be in the other room, reading Rexroth's translations.

To be fair, I'm very glad someone took the time to get this into English of any quality.

Probably more like a 2.5, but I'm rounding up. Could have done with less annotating, but otherwise an enjoyable read.

Weak translation.

introduction to Japanese poetry interspersed with the prose of a travel narrative thru the mountains. it is not hard to have lots of thoughts about lots of things. but to have complex thoughts in only 17 syllables is what makes it art.

> REMARQUABLE. — Ce livre remarquable par son contenu et son écriture est davantage qu'une introduction indispensable à l'art du Haïku. Il éclaire et conduit son lecteur jusqu'à la vacuité essentielle de l'être, en toute simplicité.
—Par Gilbert Anken, le 18 avr. 2012 (Sur Amazon.fr) 5/5

> L'ART DU HAÏKU, Pour une philosophie de l'instant, de Présentation de P. Senk et V. Brochard, éditions Belfond ou éditions Livre de Poche. — À la fois essai, guide pratique et anthologique, ce livre montre la voie d'un authentique art de vivre. L'enquête de Pascale Senk nous fait découvrir comment la pratique du haïku inspire aujourd'hui, à des adeptes venus de tous horizons, une nouvelle approche de la vie. La présentation de Vincent Brochard apporte un éclairage historique et littéraire, et une véritable initiation à la visée spirituelle qui est au coeur de cet usage de l'écriture. (Jean-Pierre LAFFEZ)
—Carnets du Yoga, (289), Septembre 2010, (p. 32)

Oku no Hosomichi is a major work of haibun by the Japanese poet Matsuo Basho considered "one of the major texts of classical Japanese literature." The text is written in the form of a prose and verse travel diary and was penned as Basho made an epic and dangerous journey on foot through the Edo Japan of the late 17th century. While the poetic work became seminal of its own account, the poet's travels in the text have since inspired many people to follow in his footsteps and trace his journey for themselves. It has been said of the work that it is as if the very soul of Japan had itself written it.