H 381 Taoka Reiun's Early Essays
1. Basho 1644–1694, of course!
The 17th-century Japanese haiku master Basho was born Matsuo Kinsaku near Kyoto, Japan, to a minor samurai and his wife. It is believed that Basho’s siblings became farmers, while Basho, at Ueno Castle in the service of the local lord’s son, grew interested in literature. After the young lord’s early death, Basho left the castle and moved to Kyoto, where he studied with Kigin, a distinguished local poet. During these early years Basho studied Chinese poetry and Daoism, and soon began writing haikai no renga, a form of linked verses composed in collaboration.
The opening verse of a renga, known as hokku, is structured as three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. In Basho’s time, poets were beginning to take the hokku’s form as a template for composing small standalone poems engaging natural imagery, a form that eventually became known as haiku--the 17 syllable, terse, dynamic, intense poetic form. Basho was a master of this form.
In his late 20s Basho moved to Edo (now a sector of Tokyo), where he joined a rapidly growing literary community. After a gift of basho trees from one student in 1680, the poet began to write under the name Basho. His work, rooted in observation of the natural world as well as in historical and literary concerns, engages themes of stillness and movement in a voice that is by turns self-questioning, wry, and oracular.
Soon after Basho began to study Zen Buddhism, a fire that destroyed much of his city also took his house. Around 1682, Basho began the months-long journeys on foot that would become the material for a new poetic form he created, called haibun. Haibun is a hybrid form alternating fragments of prose and haiku to trace a journey. Haibun imagery follows two paths: the external images observed en route, and the internal images that move through the traveler’s mind during the journey. Basho composed several extended haibun sequences starting in 1684, including Nozarashi Kiko, or Travelogue of Weather-Beaten Bones (1685); Oi no Kobumi, or The Knapsack Notebook (1688); and Sarashina Kiko, or Sarashina Travelogue (1688).
His most well-known haibun, Oku no Hosomichi, or Narrow Road to the Interior, recounts the last long walk Basho completed with his disciple Sora—1,200 miles covered over five months beginning in May 1689. While their days were spent walking, in the evenings they often socialized and wrote with students and friends who lived along their route. The route was also planned to include views that had previously been described by other poets; Basho alludes to these earlier poems in his own descriptions, weaving fragments of literary and historical conversation into his solitary journey.
2. Su Dongpo - Great Song dynasty Poet, Calligrapher
Perhaps the best example of a scholar-official with strong interests in the arts is Su Shi (Su Dongpo, 1036-1101). Su Shi had a long career as a government official in the Northern Song. After performing exceptionally well in the examinations, Su Shi became something of a celebrity. Throughout his life he was a superb and prolific writer of both prose and poetry.
Because he took strong stands on many controversial political issues of his day, he got into political trouble several times and was repeatedly banished from the capital. Twice he was exiled for his sharp criticisms of imperial policy. [Source: Asia for Educators, Columbia University, Consultants Patricia Ebrey and Conrad Schirokauer afe.easia.columbia.edu/song <|>]"
Poem:
Written While Drunk in Lake-View Pavilion on the 27th Day of the Sixth Month"
Su Shi
| Black cloud fly ink not cover hills White rain leap drops random into boat Sweep earth wind come suddenly blow disperse View lake downstairs water like sky |
The inky clouds fly in, but do not hide the hills, As random drops of white rain leap into the boats. A sudden wind arrives and sweeps across the earth, Below I see the lake a mirror of the sky. |
Remembrance:
To what can our life on earth be likened?
To a flock of geese,
alighting on the snow.
Sometimes leaving a trace of their passage.
The Immortal By The River
Drinking through the night at East Slope,
still drunk on waking-up,
I return home around midnight.
My house-boy snores like thunder,
no answer to my knock.
Leaning on my stick, listening to the river,
I wish this body belonged to someone else.
When can I escape this turmoil?
In the deep night, with the wind still, the sea calm;
I'll find a boat and drift away,
to spend my final years afloat,
trusting to the river and the sea.
3.Heinrich Heine
Heine's later verse and prose are distinguished by their satirical wit and irony. He is considered part of the Young Germany movement. His radical political views led to many of his works being banned by German authorities. Heine spent the last 25 years of his life as an expatriate in Paris. Heine met Karl Marx in Paris and got on well with him. He published several poems, including Die schlesischen Weber, in Marx's new journal Vorwärts ("Forwards").
Ultimately Heine's ideas of revolution through sensual emancipation and Marx's scientific socialism were incompatible, but both writers shared the same negativity and lack of faith in the bourgeoisie.
In the isolation he felt, Marx's friendship came as a relief to Heine, since he did not really like the other radicals. On the other hand, he did not share Marx's faith in the industrial proletariat and remained on the fringes of socialist circles.
Daoism:
Let us look at the opening lines of Ch. 1:
Paying attention to the original Chinese language, we see that the DDJ is very rhythmic and terse. For example, the opening lines are simply,
道可道、非常道
So, the character for Dao (道) appears 3 out of the first 6 characters. So, literally it is saying:
Dao Can Dao, Non-Constant Dao
And then the pattern repeats in the 2nd line with "Name" as the repeated term:
名可名、非常名
Literally,
Name Can Name, Not Constant Name
So now "name" 名 is repeating 3 times out of the next 6 characters, just as "Dao" (道) did in line #1.
How does this make the text seem to you?
Very open? Perhaps allowing rooms for paradox?
It does seem to suggest a juxtaposition of two processes: "Dao-ing" and "Naming."
--"Naming" (名) wants us to believe that everything can be reduced to simple concepts and "fixed" in reality. But the DDJ tells us to be wary: this "naming" is not "Real," it cannot assign permanence to something that is fluid. But the danger is that thinking that the names "really" do mean something can generate an overly static vision of the world at the expense of apprehending the free flow of reality or experience.
That is why Ames and Hall render the opening lines of the DDJ, which are usually/often rendered as something like:
The Dao can be followed, but it is not the Constant [Eternal] or the Real Dao.
Names can be named but they are not the Constant [Eternal] name.
As,
Way-making (dao) that can be put into words is not really way-making.
And naming (ming) that can assign fixed reference to things is not really naming.
--"Naming," then, seems to be at one end of a continuum, a spectrum: it is about fixing things, making them into norms, but in doing so, it may strip an idea or a phenomenon of its dynamism, of the energy, what gives it its Life and makes it Real.
Therefore, "Naming" is trying to force or Impose some norm or some idea on people when really their minds should remain open to directly capture experience or reality "as it happens," in as natural a manner as possible. This "natural manner" is captured by the phrase "self-so" or ziran (自然).
--"Dao-ing" (道) on the other hand, wants to do something different. It wants to help us "move forward," move through life without falling into so many of its traps. To Dao 道 is to "Make our Way" successfully.
Instructions