Matsuo Bashō

Matsuo Bashō (松尾芭蕉) is a poet of Haïku Japan board born in 1644 with Iga-Ueno and died in 1694 with Ōsaka.

Biography

Of its true name Matsuo Munefusa, it is resulting from a family of Bushi. It binds friendship with the son of its lord, the Yoshitada young person, but the death of his/her friend leads it to give up a traditional career of warrior and to study the letters.

At this time, Bashô takes the dress of the monks and share to follow the teaching of several Masters (of which Kitamura Kigin with Kyôto). Seven years later, it leaves for Edo where it will publish its first collection of poems of which celebrates it:

On a dead branch

the corbels perched
Soir of autumn

Later, it creates its own poetic school. It practices the Haïku with a group of disciples in his hermitage of Fukagawa starting from 1680. The nickname of this place is “the Hermitage with the banana tree” ( Bashō-year ) because a banana tree had been offered to him by one of its disciples. It planted it in front of its hermitage - where it is always but one does not know why it borrowed its pen name to him.

The new style which characterizes its school is the style shōfu .

This one can be defined by four words:

  • sabi : it is the research of simplicity and the conscience of the deterioration which time inflicts with the things and the beings;

  • shiori : they are the suggestions which emanate from the poem without they not being formally expressed;
  • hosomi : love of the humble things and the discovery of their beauty;
  • karumi : the humor which reduces of serious and of gravity.

For Bashō, the haïku is not in the letter but in the heart. He endeavors to express the beauty contained in the simplest things of the life:

“Peace of the old pond.

a frog plunges.
Noise of water. ”

It is a poetry of allusion and unvoiced comment which calls upon the sensitivity of the reader. For example it avoids describing the obvious beauty of the Mont Fuji:

“Fog and rain.

hidden Fuji. But now I go
Content.”

Bashō also practices the newspaper of voyage which it intermingles with delicate poems. Most famous of them is the Oku No hosomichi (the narrow path of the end of the world) but they raise all of an impressionist kind which sees the poet stopping in front of landscapes or scenes of the daily life and letting come the poem which this vision causes in him.

While passing in front of the ruins of the castle or celebrates it Minamoto No Yoshitsune perishes whereas it was besieged by the army of his brother Yoritomo, the poet is struck to see that there remain nothing of this gigantic battle, of all these glorious combat and that nature took again its rights:

“Grass of the summer.

Of the valorous warriors
the trace of a dream. ”

Bashō is the first large Master of the Haïku and without any most famous doubt with the Japan where there remains literally venerated.

It was buried with Ōtsu, Préfecture of Shiga, near Minamoto No Yoshinaka, in accordance with its last wishes.

Collections of poems

Newspapers of voyage

  • Nozarashi-kiko (1685)

  • Kashima-kiko (1687)
  • Sarashina-kiko (1688)
  • Oku No hosomichi (1702 posth.)

Inspirations

Claude-max Lochu, at the time of its second voyage to the Japan carried out a first travel painting with the manner of the Bashō poet who went on journey even his source of inspiration. This travel painting was exposed to the museum of Dole.

Be-X-old: МацуаБасё Simple: Matsuo Basho

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