おくのほそ道
- ISBN-10
- 4770020287
- ISBN-13
- 9784770020284
- Category
- Poetry / General
- Pages
- 187
- Language
- English
- Published
- 1996
- Publisher
- Kodansha International
- Author
- 松尾芭蕉
Description
In the account which he named The Narrow Road to Oku, Basho makes a journey lasting 150 days, in which he travels, on foot, a distance of 600 ri.
This was three hundred years ago, when the average distance covered by travelers was apparently 9 ri per day, so it is clear that Basho, who was forty years old at the time, possessed a remarkably sturdy pair of walking legs. Nowadays with the development of all sorts of means of transportation, travel is guaranteed to be pleasant and convenient in every respect, so it's almost impossible for us to imagine the kind of journey Basho undertook, "drifting with the clouds and streams," and "lodging under trees and on bare rocks."
During my countless re-readings of The Narrow Road to Oku, I would bear that in mind, and the short text, which takes up less than 50 pages even in the pocket-book edition, would strike me as much longer than that, and I would feel truly awed by Basho's 2,450-kilometer journey.
I chose The Narrow Road to Oku as the theme of the exhibition marking the thirtieth anniversary of my career as an artist. As somebody who has been illustrating works from Japanese literature for many years, the subject naturally attracted and interested me. But once I'd embarked on the project, it wasn't long before I realized I'd chosen a more difficult and delicate task than I ever imagined, and I wanted to reprove myself for my naivete.
Last year, to mark the centenary of Tanizaki Jun'ichiro's birth, I produced a set of 54 pictures for his translation of The Tale of Genji. This was a formidable undertaking, as I had to grapple with the achievement of a literary genius whom I had personally known. But if producing a single picture to represent each chapter in The Tale of Genji was a matter of selecting a particular "face," or "plane" to represent the whole, producing a picture to represent each haiku in The Narrow Road to Oku was without a doubt a matter of having to select one tiny "point"-a mere "dot." One misjudgment in my reading, and the picture would lose touch with the spirit of Basho's work, and end up simply as an illustration that happened to be accompanied by a haiku. I had to meticulously consider every word in those brief 17-syllable poems. Then, if I was fortunate, from the vast gaps and the densely packed phrases a numinous power would gather and inspire me: at times I felt as if I was experiencing what ancient people called the "kotadama," the miraculous power residing in words.
A self-styled "beggar of winds and madness," Basho originated and refined a unique genre of fictional travel literature, which used poetry that enabled one to render, empty-handedly, all of creation. But Basho also left us the following poem:
Journeying is the flower of elegance
Elegance, the spirit of travelers long gone:
The places seen and recorded
by Saigyo and Sogi -
All those are the heart of haikai.
I believe that I could ask for no greater favor from my painter's brush than that I too be able to glean the merest fragment of what the saint of haiku Basho saw, and be able to reproduce it in my work.
Miyata Masayuki
Get the book
Similar books
-
狄金森全集：卷二·诗歌
By 艾米莉·狄金森... 把另一个吸收—像海绵—吸桶中水—一般—头脑正好是上帝的重量—因为—把它们掂一掂—八两半斤如果—有所不同—就像音节有别于声音—约1862(1863) 1896 633 (601)钟声停止时—礼拜—开始钟的—决断—轮齿—停止时—那是周圈—轮子的—极限—约1862(1863) 1945 634 (604)
-
The Works of Aphra Behn: The fair jilt and other short stories
By Aphra BehnThe Works of Aphra Behn: The fair jilt and other short stories
-
American Spirituals
By Jeffrey GreeneWinner of the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize
-
(W)holes: Poems
By Cynthia MacdonaldI asked to be transferred to Sterling and Gems . But the tines , the blades , the facets Menaced me . I learned you break or are broken . And then a Texaco receptionist , Jack - In - The - Box waitress ... No need to spell the perils ...
-
Riley Love-Lyrics [By] James Whitcomb Riley; With Life Pictures by William B. Dyer.
By James Whitcomb RileyRiley Love-Lyrics [By] James Whitcomb Riley; With Life Pictures by William B. Dyer.
-
The Quicken Tree: Poems
By Bill KnottIn The Man Who Married His Checkout Lane, he writes: "Oh my checkout lane / has the longest wait of any--though unlike / all the others in line, I won't leaf through the life / those tabloids provide rumors of: none of them / are beautiful ...
-
Single Spies: Two Plays about Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt ; & Talking Heads : Six Monologues
By Alan BennettSingle Spies: Two Plays about Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt ; & Talking Heads : Six Monologues
-
Selected Poems [of] Baudelaire
By Charles BaudelaireSelected Poems [of] Baudelaire
-
Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats
By John KeatsThere he became particular friends with the headmaster's son, Charles Cowden Clarke, who was eight years his senior. Many years after Keats's death, Clarke recalled how as a schoolboy Keats had been “highly pugnacious” with an ...
-
南村草堂诗钞
By , 弘征好读书,尤精宋五子家言,于天文、舆地、兵法、河渠、水利,旁及艺术、方技靡不穷究。诗文皆有法度,不苟作。状言君天资高迈,践履笃实,平居以古名贤自期许,临事建树,卓卓如是,非偶然也。君生于乾隆四十一年丙申,春秋五十有八。嘉庆戊午举人,辛酉进士, ...