Matsuo basse in Japanese. Matsuo Basho
Haiku
Where are you, cuckoo?
Remember, the plum trees began to bloom,
Only spring has breathed
In a hut rebuilt after a fire
I listen to the hailstones knocking.
I'm the only one who hasn't changed here,
Like this old oak tree.
Willow is bent over and sleeping,
And it seems to me that there is a nightingale on a branch -
This is her soul
As soon as the breeze blows -
From branch to branch of willow
The butterfly will flutter.
How enviable is their fate!
North of the busy world
Cherry blossoms bloomed in the mountains.
Are you also one of those
Whoever does not sleep is intoxicated by flowers,
About mice in the attic?
The rain in the mulberry grove is noisy...
On the ground he barely moves
Sick silkworm.
Still on the cutting edge
The sun is burning out above the roof.
The evening chill blows.
She closed her mouth tightly
sea shell
Unbearable heat!
Chrysanthemums in the fields
They already say: forget it
Hot days of carnations!
Fog and autumn rain.
But let Fuji be invisible.
How she makes my heart happy.
Over the expanses of fields -
Not tied to the ground by anything -
The lark is ringing.
In free meadows
The lark bursts into song
Without work and worries...
First winter rain.
The monkey doesn't mind either
put on a straw raincoat...
How heavy the first snow is!
They sank and sadly drooped
Daffodil leaves...
Even the gray crow
this morning suits you -
look how prettier you have become!
At the hearth
sings so selflessly
familiar cricket!...
May rains
The waterfall was buried -
They filled it with water.
From branch to branch
The drops are quietly running down...
Spring rain.
How tender are the young leaves?
Even here, on the weeds
At a forgotten house.
I didn’t have time to take my hands away,
Like a spring breeze
Settled in a green sprout.
The May rain is endless.
The mallows are reaching somewhere,
Looking for the path of the sun.
O spring rain!
Streams run from the roof
Along wasp nests.
Spring morning.
Over every nameless hill
Transparent haze.
Top-top is my horse.
I see myself in the picture -
In the expanse of summer meadows.
How the grass thickens in summer!
And only one-sheet
One single leaf.
Islands... Islands...
And it splits into hundreds of fragments
Sea of a summer day.
How the autumn wind whistles!
Then only you will understand my poems,
When you spend the night in the field.
The flowers have faded.
The seeds are scattering and falling,
It's like tears...
First snow in the morning.
He barely covered
Narcissus leaves.
Red-red sun
In the deserted distance... But it’s chilling
The merciless autumn wind.
Whiter than white rocks
On the slopes of Stone Mountain
This autumn whirlwind!
The leaves have fallen.
The whole world is one color.
Only the wind hums.
Even a wild boar
Will spin you around and take you with you
This winter field whirlwind!
Rocks among cryptomerias!
How I sharpened their teeth
Winter cold wind!
Ugly Raven -
And it's beautiful in the first snow
On a winter morning!
The sun of a winter day,
My shadow freezes
On the horse's back.
Clouds of cherry blossoms!
The ringing of the bell floated... From Ueno
Or Asakusa?
Stork nest in the wind.
And underneath - beyond the storm -
Cherry is a calm color.
Let's hit the road! I'll show you
How cherry blossoms bloom in distant Esino,
My old hat.
Cherries at the waterfall...
To those who love good wine,
I'll take the branch as a gift.
What sadness!
Suspended in a small cage
Captive cricket.
White hair fell.
Under my headboard
The cricket does not stop talking.
Fisherman's hut.
Mixed up in a pile of shrimp
Lonely cricket.
Night silence.
Only behind the picture on the wall
The cricket is ringing and ringing.
There's such a moon in the sky,
Like a tree cut down to the roots:
The fresh cut turns white.
So easy, so easy
Floated out - and in the cloud
The moon thought.
I walk around the pond
Autumn Moon Festival.
Around the pond and around again,
All night long all around!
How fast the moon flies!
On motionless branches
Drops of rain hung...
Oh no, ready
I won't find any comparisons for you,
Three day month!
Winter night in the garden.
With a thin thread - and a month in the sky,
And the cicadas make a barely audible sound.
Butterflies flying
Wakes up a quiet clearing
In the sun's rays.
Today is a clear day.
But where do the drops come from?
There is a patch of clouds in the sky.
Oh, how many of them there are in the fields!
But everyone blooms in their own way -
This is the highest feat of a flower!
What bliss!
Cool field of green rice...
The water is murmuring...
A secluded house.
Moon... Chrysanthemums... In addition to them
A patch of small field.
Nightingales are singing everywhere.
There - behind the bamboo grove,
Here - in front of the river willow.
“First, the monkeys’ robe!”
Asks the laundress to beat it out with a roller
Chilled guide.
Evening bindweed
I'm captured...Motionless
I stand in oblivion.
To a father who lost his son
Hanging his head -
As if the whole world is overturned, -
Bamboo under the snow.
Leaving homeland
cloud bank
Lay down between friends...
We said goodbye
Migrating geese forever.
“Autumn has already arrived!” -
The wind whispered in my ear,
Sneaking up to my bed.
It's time for the May rains.
It's like the sea is glowing with lights -
Night Watch Lanterns
Frost covered him,
The wind makes his bed...
An abandoned child.
The yellow leaf is floating.
Which shore, cicada,
What if you wake up?
How the river overflowed!
The heron wanders on short legs,
Knee-deep in water.
Quiet moonlit night...
You can hear it like in the depths of a chestnut tree
The nucleolus is eaten by a worm.
On a bare branch
Raven sits alone.
Autumn evening.
In the darkness of a moonless night
The fox crawls along the ground,
Sneaking towards a ripe melon.
Swarming in the sea grass
Transparent fry... You'll catch them -
Will melt without a trace
Tea leaves are harvested in spring
All the leaves were picked by the pickers...
How do they know what is for the tea bushes?
They are like the wind of autumn!
Old pond.
A frog jumped into the water.
A splash in silence.
Where does the cuckoo cry come from?
Through a thicket of thick bamboo
The moonlit night oozes.
Oh dragonfly!
With what difficulty on a blade of grass
you've settled down!
On a cold night
it will lend me rags,
scarecrow in the field.
I planted a banana -
and now they have become disgusting to me
weed sprouts...
Clear moon.
By the pond all night long
I wander around, admiring...
The sun is setting.
And cobwebs too
Melting in the darkness...
The bell fell silent in the distance,
But the scent of evening flowers
Its echo floats.
sad me
Give me more sadness,
Cuckoos distant call!
Visit me
In my solitude!
The first leaf fell...
Breaking up with a friend
Farewell poems
I wanted to write on the fan, -
It broke in my hand.
To a friend's portrait
Turn to me!
I'm sad too
Deaf in autumn.
Soaring larks above
I sat down in the sky to rest -
On the very ridge of the pass.
There is a special charm
In these, crumpled by a storm,
Broken chrysanthemums.
I'll say the word -
Lips freeze.
Autumn whirlwind!
I've barely gotten better
Exhausted, until the night...
And suddenly - wisteria flowers!
And I want to live in autumn
To this butterfly: drinks hastily
There is dew from the chrysanthemum.
Leaving a hospitable home
From the heart of a peony
A bee slowly crawls out...
Oh, with what reluctance!
Oh don't think you're one of those people
Who left no trace in the world!
Remembrance day...
In my cramped shack
Illuminated all four corners
Moon looking out the window.
All the excitement, all the sadness
Of your troubled heart
Give it to the flexible willow.
Saying goodbye to friends
The ground disappears from under your feet.
I grab a light ear...
The moment of separation has arrived.
In the garden of the late poet Sengin
So many memories
You awakened in my soul,
O cherries of the old garden!
They flew around with a rustle
Mountain rose petals...
The distant sound of a waterfall.
Trees were planted in the garden.
Quietly, quietly, to encourage them,
Autumn rain whispers.
Maybe my bones
The wind will whiten... It's in the heart
It breathed cold on me.
I'm walking along a mountain path.
Suddenly I felt at ease for some reason.
Violets in the thick grass.
translator: V. Markova
Enlighten your spirit with sadness!
Sing a quiet song over a cup of stew,
O you, “sorrower of the moon”!
Suddenly you will hear “shorkh-shorkh”.
Longing stirs in my soul...
Bamboo on a frosty night.
In a foreign land
A thin tongue of fire -
The oil in the lamp has frozen.
Wake up...
What sadness!
To an orphaned friend
Even a white flower on the fence
Near the house where the owner is gone,
The cold poured over me.
Winter days alone
I'll lean my back again
To the pillar in the middle of the hut.
Never a butterfly
He won’t... He’s trembling in vain
Worm in the autumn wind.
In a mountain village
The nuns story
About previous service at court...
There is deep snow all around.
The jug burst with a crash:
The water in it froze.
I woke up suddenly.
Pure spring!
Ran up my leg
Little crab.
Come quickly, friends!
Let's go wander through the first snow,
Until we fall off our feet.
Spending the night on a ship in Akashi Bay
An octopus is trapped.
He sees a dream - so short! -
Under the summer moon.
Wandering Raven, look!
Where is your old nest?
Plum trees are in bloom everywhere.
Moon or morning snow...
Admiring the beauty, I lived as I wanted.
This is how I end the year.
Spring is leaving.
The birds are crying. Fish eyes
Full of tears.
Camellia petals...
Maybe the nightingale dropped
A hat made of flowers?
Why so lazy all of a sudden?
They barely woke me up today...
The spring rain is noisy.
In a thatched hut
How a banana moans in the wind,
How the drops fall into the tub,
I hear it all night long.
The distant call of the cuckoo
It sounded wrong. After all, these days
The poets have disappeared.
Driver! Lead your horse
Over there, across the field!
There's a cuckoo singing.
Serenity!
Pierces the rocks to the core
The voice of a cicada.
The cicada sings -
That death is near,
She doesn't know.
Summer rains.
Above Hikari Shrine
Golden glow.
Flash of lightning.
The night pierced with a peal
The cry of a night heron.
In autumn twilight
Leisure takes a long time
A short life.
Under the roof of the barn
A faint mosquito tune,
The autumn wind is howling.
The sea foams -
It stretches all the way to Sado Island
Milky Way.
Onion stalks,
Captured by the first frost,
Shining with purity.
What is stupider than darkness!
I wanted to catch a firefly -
and ran into a thorn.
Oh, wake up, wake up!
Become my comrade
Sleeping moth!
Take a close look!
Shepherd's purse flowers
You will see under the fence.
In memory of a friend
They fly to the ground
Returning to old roots...
Separation of flowers!
Grain storage jug
That's all I'm rich with!
Easy, like my life,
Gourd pumpkin.
The water is so cold!
The seagull can't sleep
Rocking on the wave.
In the cup of a flower
The bumblebee is dozing. Don't touch him
Sparrow friend!
Long day long
Sings but doesn’t get drunk
Lark in spring.
Steps important
Heron on fresh stubble.
Autumn in the village.
In a glass of wine,
Swallows, don't drop them,
Clay lump.
There once was a castle here...
Let me be the first to tell you about it
A spring flowing in an old well.
I wrapped my life around
Around the suspension bridge
This wild ivy.
Hanging motionless
The dark cloud is quite...
Apparently he's waiting for lightning.
Poet Rika mourns his wife
Blanket for one.
And icy, black
Winter night…
O sadness!
On the old battlefield
Summer herbs
Where the heroes disappeared
Like a dream.
The sea is raging!
Far away, to Sado Island,
The Milky Way is spreading.
Silence all around.
Penetrates into the heart of the rocks
Light ringing of cicadas.
Small perches are dried
On the branches of a willow... How cool!
Fishing huts on the shore.
Wooden pestle.
Was he once a plum?
Was it a camellia?
At the hotel
With me under the same roof
Two girls...
Hagi branches in bloom
And a lonely month.
In front of the burial mound of the early deceased poet Issho
Tremble, O hill!
Autumn wind in the field -
My lonely moan.
An area called "Sosenki"
“Pines”... Cute name!
Leaning towards the pine trees in the wind
Bushes and autumn herbs.
Sanemori Helmet
Oh, merciless rock!
Under this glorious helmet
Now the cricket is ringing.
“Transparent waterfall”…
Fell into a light wave
Pine needle.
In the village
Completely emaciated cat
He eats one barley porridge...
And also love!
The lark sings
With a resounding blow in the thicket
The pheasant echoes him.
They scare them and drive them out of the fields!
The sparrows will fly up and hide
Under the protection of tea bushes.
Turn around!
After all, my sad autumn
comes to the end...
I want it at least once
Go to the market on holiday
Buy tobacco
“Autumn has already arrived!” -
The wind whispered in my ear,
Sneaking up to my pillow.
I'll say the word -
Lips freeze.
Autumn whirlwind!
It didn't rain in May
Here, probably never...
This is how the temple shines!
He is a hundred times nobler
Who does not say at the flash of lightning:
“This is our life!”
All the excitement, all the sadness
Of your troubled heart
Give it to the flexible willow.
What freshness it blows
From this melon in drops of dew,
With sticky wet soil!
In the garden where the irises have opened,
Talking with your old friend, -
What a reward for the traveler!
Cold mountain spring.
I didn’t have time to scoop up a handful of water,
How my teeth are already creaking
What a connoisseur's quirk!
For a flower without fragrance
The moth descended.
Come quickly, friends!
Let's go wander through the first snow,
Until we fall off our feet.
Evening bindweed
I'm captured...Motionless
I stand in oblivion.
Frost covered him,
The wind makes his bed...
An abandoned child.
There's such a moon in the sky,
Like a tree cut down to the roots:
The fresh cut turns white.
A yellow leaf floats.
Which shore, cicada,
What if you wake up?
How the river overflowed!
A heron wanders on short legs
Knee-deep in water.
How a banana moans in the wind,
How the drops fall into the tub,
I hear it all night long. In a thatched hut
Willow is bent over and sleeping.
And it seems to me that there is a nightingale on a branch...
This is her soul.
Top-top is my horse.
I see myself in the picture -
In the expanse of summer meadows.
Suddenly you will hear “shorkh-shorkh”.
Longing stirs in my soul...
Bamboo on a frosty night.
Butterflies flying
Wakes up a quiet clearing
In the sun's rays.
How the autumn wind whistles!
Then only you will understand my poems,
When you spend the night in the field.
And I want to live in autumn
To this butterfly: drinks hastily
There is dew from the chrysanthemum.
The flowers have faded.
The seeds are scattering and falling,
It's like tears...
Gusty leaf
Hid in a bamboo grove
And little by little it calmed down.
Take a close look!
Shepherd's purse flowers
You will see under the fence.
Oh, wake up, wake up!
Become my comrade
Sleeping moth!
They fly to the ground
Returning to old roots...
Separation of flowers! In memory of a friend
Old pond.
A frog jumped into the water.
A splash in silence.
Autumn Moon Festival.
Around the pond and around again,
All night long all around!
That's all I'm rich with!
Easy, like my life,
Gourd pumpkin. Grain storage jug
First snow in the morning.
He barely covered
Narcissus leaves.
The water is so cold!
The seagull can't sleep
Rocking on the wave.
The jug burst with a crash:
At night the water in it froze.
I woke up suddenly.
Moon or morning snow...
Admiring the beauty, I lived as I wanted.
This is how I end the year.
Clouds of cherry blossoms!
The ringing of the bell reached... From Ueno
Or Asakusa?
In the cup of a flower
The bumblebee is dozing. Don't touch him
Sparrow friend!
Stork nest in the wind.
And underneath - beyond the storm -
Cherry is a calm color.
Long day to go
Sings - and doesn’t get drunk
Lark in spring.
Over the expanse of fields -
Not tied to the ground by anything -
The lark is ringing.
It's raining in May.
What is this? Has the rim on the barrel burst?
The sound is unclear at night...
Pure spring!
Up ran up my leg
Little crab.
Today is a clear day.
But where do the drops come from?
There is a patch of clouds in the sky.
It's like I took it in my hands
Lightning when in the dark
You lit a candle. In praise of the poet Rika
How fast the moon flies!
On motionless branches
Drops of rain hung.
Steps important
Heron on fresh stubble.
Autumn in the village.
Left for a moment
Farmer threshing rice
Looks at the moon.
In a glass of wine,
Swallows, don't drop me
Clay lump.
There once was a castle here...
Let me be the first to tell you about it
A spring flowing in an old well.
How the grass thickens in summer!
And only one-sheet
One single leaf.
Oh no, ready
I won't find any comparisons for you,
Three day month!
Hanging motionless
Dark cloud in half the sky...
Apparently he's waiting for lightning.
Oh, how many of them there are in the fields!
But everyone blooms in their own way -
This is the highest feat of a flower!
I wrapped my life around
Around the suspension bridge
This wild ivy.
Blanket for one.
And icy, black
Winter night... Oh, sadness! Poet Rika mourns his wife
Spring is leaving.
The birds are crying. Fish eyes
Full of tears.
The distant call of the cuckoo
It sounded wrong. After all, these days
The poets have disappeared.
A thin tongue of fire -
The oil in the lamp has frozen.
You wake up... What sadness! In a foreign land
West East -
Everywhere the same trouble
The wind is still cold. To a friend who left for the West
Even a white flower on the fence
Near the house where the owner is gone,
The cold poured over me. To an orphaned friend
Did I break off the branch?
The wind running through the pines?
How cool is the splash of water!
Here intoxicated
I wish I could fall asleep on these river stones,
Overgrown with cloves...
They rise from the ground again,
Fading in the darkness, chrysanthemums,
Nailed by heavy rain.
Pray for happy days!
On a winter plum tree
Be like your heart.
Visiting the cherry blossoms
I stayed neither more nor less -
Twenty happy days.
Under the canopy of cherry blossoms
I'm like the hero of an old drama,
At night I lay down to sleep.
Garden and mountain in the distance
Trembling, moving, entering
In a summer open house.
Driver! Lead your horse
Over there, across the field!
There's a cuckoo singing.
May rains
The waterfall was buried -
They filled it with water.
Summer herbs
Where the heroes disappeared
Like a dream. On the old battlefield
Islands...Islands...
And it splits into hundreds of fragments
Sea of a summer day.
What bliss!
Cool field of green rice...
The water is murmuring...
Silence all around.
Penetrate into the heart of the rocks
Voices of cicadas.
Tide Gate.
Washes the heron up to its chest
Cool sea.
Small perches are dried
On the branches of a willow...What coolness!
Fishing huts on the shore.
Wooden pestle.
Was he once a willow tree?
Was it a camellia?
Celebration of the meeting of two stars.
Even the night before is so different
For an ordinary night! On the eve of the Tashibama holiday
The sea is raging!
Far away, to Sado Island,
The Milky Way is spreading.
With me under the same roof
Two girls... Hagi branches in bloom
And a lonely month. At the hotel
What does ripening rice smell like?
I was walking across the field, and suddenly -
To the right is Ariso Bay.
Tremble, O hill!
Autumn wind in the field -
My lonely moan. In front of the burial mound of the early deceased poet Isse
Red-red sun
In the deserted distance... But it’s chilling
The merciless autumn wind.
Pines... Cute name!
Leaning towards the pine trees in the wind
Bushes and autumn herbs. An area called Sosenki
Musashi Plain around.
Not a single cloud will touch
Your traveling hat.
Wet, walking in the rain,
But this traveler is worthy of song too,
Not only hagi are in bloom.
O merciless rock!
Under this glorious helmet
Now the cricket is ringing.
Whiter than white rocks
On the slopes of a stone mountain
This autumn whirlwind!
Farewell poems
I wanted to write on the fan -
It broke in his hands. Breaking up with a friend
Where are you, moon, now?
Like a sunken bell
She disappeared to the bottom of the sea. In Tsuruga Bay, where the bell once sank
Never a butterfly
He won’t be anymore... He’s trembling in vain
Worm in the autumn wind.
A secluded house.
Moon... Chrysanthemums... In addition to them
A piece of a small field.
Cold rain without end.
This is how the chilled monkey looks,
As if asking for a straw cloak.
Winter night in the garden.
With a thin thread - and a month in the sky,
And the cicadas make a barely audible sound.
The nuns story
About previous service at court...
There is deep snow all around. In a mountain village
Children, who's the fastest?
We'll catch up with the balls
Ice grains. Playing with children in the mountains
Tell me why
Oh raven, to the noisy city
Is this where you fly from?
How tender are the young leaves?
Even here, on the weeds
At a forgotten house.
Camellia petals...
Maybe the nightingale dropped
A hat made of flowers?
Ivy leaves...
For some reason their smoky purple
He talks about the past.
Mossy gravestone.
Under it - is it in reality or in a dream? —
A voice whispers prayers.
The dragonfly is spinning...
Can't get a hold
For stalks of flexible grass.
Don't think with contempt:
“What small seeds!”
It's red pepper.
First I left the grass...
Then he left the trees...
Lark flight.
The bell fell silent in the distance,
But the scent of evening flowers
Its echo floats.
The cobwebs tremble a little.
Thin threads of saiko grass
They flutter in the twilight.
Dropping petals
Suddenly spilled a handful of water
Camellia flower.
The stream is barely noticeable.
Swimming through a thicket of bamboo
Camellia petals.
The May rain is endless.
The mallows are reaching somewhere,
Looking for the path of the sun.
Faint orange aroma.
Where?.. When?.. In what fields, cuckoo,
Did I hear your migratory cry?
Falls with a leaf...
No, look! Halfway there
The firefly flew up.
And who could say
Why don't they live so long!
The incessant sound of cicadas.
Fisherman's hut.
Mixed up in a pile of shrimp
Lonely cricket.
White hair fell.
Under my headboard
The cricket does not stop talking.
Sick goose dropped
On a field on a cold night.
A lonely dream on the way.
Even a wild boar
Will spin you around and take you with you
This winter field whirlwind!
It's already the end of autumn,
But he believes in future days
Green tangerine.
Portable hearth.
So, heart of wanderings, and for you
There is no peace anywhere. At the travel hotel
The cold set in on the way.
At the scarecrow's place, perhaps?
Should I borrow some sleeves?
Sea kale stems.
The sand creaked on my teeth...
And I remembered that I was getting old.
Mandzai came late
To a mountain village.
The plum trees have already bloomed.
Why so lazy all of a sudden?
They barely woke me up today...
The spring rain is noisy.
sad me
Give me more sadness,
Cuckoos distant call!
I clapped my hands.
And where the echo sounded,
The summer moon is growing pale.
A friend sent me a gift
Risu, I invited him
To visit the moon itself. On the night of the full moon
ancient times
There's a whiff... The garden near the temple
Covered with fallen leaves.
So easy, so easy
Floated out - and in the cloud
The moon thought.
Quails are calling.
It must be evening.
The hawk's eye went dark.
Together with the owner of the house
I listen in silence to the evening bells.
Willow leaves are falling.
White fungus in the forest.
Some unknown leaf
It stuck to his hat.
What sadness!
Suspended in a small cage
Captive cricket.
Night silence.
Only behind the picture on the wall
The cricket is ringing and ringing.
Dewdrops sparkle.
But they have a taste of sadness,
Don't forget!
That's right, this cicada
Are you all drunk? —
One shell remains.
The leaves have fallen.
The whole world is one color.
Only the wind hums.
Rocks among cryptomerias!
How I sharpened their teeth
Winter cold wind!
Trees were planted in the garden.
Quietly, quietly, to encourage them,
Autumn rain whispers.
So that the cold whirlwind
Give them the aroma, they open up again
Late autumn flowers.
Everything was covered with snow.
Lonely old woman
In a forest hut.
Ugly Raven -
And it's beautiful in the first snow
On a winter morning!
Like soot sweeps away,
Cryptomeria apex trembles
A storm has arrived.
To fish and birds
I don’t envy you anymore... I’ll forget
All the sorrows of the year. New Year's Eve
Nightingales are singing everywhere.
There - behind the bamboo grove,
Here - in front of the river willow.
From branch to branch
Quietly the drops are running...
Spring rain.
Through the hedge
How many times have you fluttered
Butterfly wings!
She closed her mouth tightly
Sea shell.
Unbearable heat!
As soon as the breeze blows -
From branch to branch of willow
The butterfly will flutter.
They are getting along with the winter hearth.
How old my familiar stove maker has aged!
Strands of hair turned white.
Year after year everything is the same:
Monkey amuses the crowd
In a monkey mask.
I didn’t have time to take my hands away,
Like a spring breeze
Settled in a green sprout. Planting rice
Rain comes after rain,
And the heart is no longer disturbed
Sprouts in rice fields.
Stayed and left
Bright moon... Stayed
Table with four corners. In memory of the poet Tojun
First fungus!
Still, autumn dew,
He didn't consider you.
Boy perched
On the saddle, and the horse is waiting.
Collect radishes.
The duck pressed to the ground.
Covered with a dress of wings
Your bare legs...
Sweep away the soot.
For myself this time
The carpenter gets along well. Before New Year
O spring rain!
Streams run from the roof
Along wasp nests.
Under the open umbrella
I make my way through the branches.
Willows in the first down.
From the sky of its peaks
Only river willows
It's still raining.
A hillock right next to the road.
To replace the faded rainbow -
Azaleas in the sunset light.
Lightning in the dark at night.
Lake water surface
Suddenly it burst into sparks.
The waves are running across the lake.
Some people regret the heat
Sunset clouds.
The ground is disappearing from under our feet.
I grab onto a light ear...
The moment of separation has arrived. Saying goodbye to friends
My whole life is on the road!
It's like I'm digging up a small field,
I wander back and forth.
Transparent waterfall...
Fell into a light wave
Pine needle.
Hanging in the sun
Cloud... Across it -
Migratory birds.
The buckwheat has not ripened
But they treat you to a field of flowers
Guest in a mountain village.
The end of autumn days.
Already throwing up his hands
Chestnut shell.
What do people feed on there?
The house pressed to the ground
Under the autumn willows.
The scent of chrysanthemums...
In the temples of ancient Nara
Dark buddha statues.
Autumn darkness
Broken and driven away
Conversation of friends.
Oh this long journey!
The autumn twilight is thickening,
And - not a soul around.
Why am I so strong
Did you sense old age this fall?
Clouds and birds.
It's late autumn.
Alone I think:
“How does my neighbor live?”
I got sick on the way.
And everything runs and circles my dream
Through scorched fields. Death Song
Matsuo Basho. Engraving by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi from the series “101 Views of the Moon.” 1891 The Library of Congress
Genre haiku originated from another classical genre - pentaverse tank in 31 syllables, known since the 8th century. There was a caesura in the tanka, at this point it “broke” into two parts, resulting in a tercet of 17 syllables and a couplet of 14 syllables - a kind of dialogue, which was often composed by two authors. This original tercet was called haiku, which literally means "initial stanzas". Then, when the tercet received its own meaning and became a genre with its own complex laws, it began to be called haiku.
The Japanese genius finds himself in brevity. Haiku tercet is the most laconic genre of Japanese poetry: only 17 syllables of 5-7-5 mor. Mora- a unit of measurement for the number (longitude) of a foot. Mora is the time required to pronounce a short syllable. in line. There are only three or four significant words in a 17-syllable poem. In Japanese, a haiku is written in one line from top to bottom. In European languages, haiku is written in three lines. Japanese poetry does not know rhymes; by the 9th century, the phonetics of the Japanese language had developed, including only 5 vowels (a, i, u, e, o) and 10 consonants (except for voiced ones). With such phonetic poverty, no interesting rhyme is possible. Formally, the poem is based on the count of syllables.
Until the 17th century, haiku writing was viewed as a game. Hai-ku became a serious genre with the appearance of the poet Matsuo Basho on the literary scene. In 1681, he wrote the famous poem about the crow and completely changed the world of haiku:
On a dead branch
The raven turns black.
Autumn evening. Translation by Konstantin Balmont.
Let us note that the Russian symbolist of the older generation, Konstantin Balmont, in this translation replaced the “dry” branch with a “dead” one, excessively, according to the laws of Japanese versification, dramatizing this poem. The translation turns out to violate the rule of avoiding evaluative words and definitions in general, except for the most ordinary ones. "Words of Haiku" ( haigo) should be distinguished by deliberate, precisely calibrated simplicity, difficult to achieve, but clearly felt insipidity. Nevertheless, this translation correctly conveys the atmosphere created by Basho in this haiku, which has become a classic, the melancholy of loneliness, the universal sadness.
There is another translation of this poem:
Here the translator added the word “lonely,” which is not in the Japanese text, but its inclusion is nevertheless justified, since “sad loneliness on an autumn evening” is the main theme of this haiku. Both translations are rated very highly by critics.
However, it is obvious that the poem is even simpler than the translators presented. If you give its literal translation and place it in one line, as the Japanese write haiku, you will get the following extremely short statement:
枯れ枝にからすのとまりけるや秋の暮れ
On a dry branch / a raven sits / autumn twilight
As we can see, the word “black” is missing in the original, it is only implied. The image of a “chilled raven on a bare tree” is Chinese in origin. "Autumn Twilight" ( aki no kure) can be interpreted both as “late autumn” and as “autumn evening”. Monochrome is a quality highly valued in the art of haiku; depicts the time of day and year, erasing all colors.
Haiku is least of all a description. It is necessary not to describe, the classics said, but to name things (literally “to give names to things” - to the hole) in extremely simple words and as if you were calling them for the first time.
Raven on a winter branch. Engraving by Watanabe Seitei. Around 1900 ukiyo-e.org Haiku are not miniatures, as they were long called in Europe. The greatest haiku poet of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who died early from tuberculosis, Masaoka Shiki, wrote that haiku contains the whole world: the raging ocean, earthquakes, typhoons, the sky and stars - the whole earth with the highest peaks and the deepest sea depressions. The space of haiku is immense, infinite. In addition, haiku tends to be combined into cycles, into poetic diaries - and often life-long, so that the brevity of haiku can turn into its opposite: into long works - collections of poems (though of a discrete, intermittent nature ).
But the passage of time, past and future X does not depict aiku, haiku is a brief moment of the present - and nothing more. Here is an example of a haiku by Issa, perhaps the most beloved poet in Japan:
How the cherry blossomed!
She drove off her horse
And a proud prince.
Transience is an immanent property of life in the Japanese understanding; without it, life has no value or meaning. Fleetingness is both beautiful and sad because its nature is fickle and changeable.
An important place in haiku poetry is the connection with the four seasons - autumn, winter, spring and summer. The sages said: “He who has seen the seasons has seen everything.” That is, I saw birth, growing up, love, rebirth and death. Therefore, in classical haiku, a necessary element is the “seasonal word” ( kigo), which connects the poem with the season. Sometimes these words are difficult for foreigners to recognize, but the Japanese know them all. Detailed kigo databases, some of thousands of words, are now being searched on Japanese networks.
In the above haiku about the crow, the seasonal word is very simple - "autumn." The coloring of this poem is very dark, emphasized by the atmosphere of an autumn evening, literally “autumn twilight,” that is, black against the background of deepening twilight.
Look how gracefully Basho introduces the essential sign of the season into a poem about separation:
For a spike of barley
I grabbed, looking for support...
How difficult is the moment of separation!
“A spike of barley” directly indicates the end of summer.
Or in the tragic poem of the poetess Chiyo-ni on the death of her little son:
O my dragonfly catcher!
Where in an unknown country
Did you run in today?
"Dragonfly" is a seasonal word for summer.
Another “summer” poem by Basho:
Summer herbs!
Here they are, the fallen warriors
Dreams of glory...
Basho is called the poet of wanderings: he wandered a lot around Japan in search of true haiku, and, when setting off, he did not care about food, lodging, tramps, or the vicissitudes of the path in the remote mountains. On the way, he was accompanied by the fear of death. A sign of this fear was the image of “Bones Whitening in the Field” - this was the name of the first book of his poetic diary, written in the genre haibun(“prose in haiku style”):
Maybe my bones
The wind will whiten... It's in the heart
It breathed cold on me.
After Basho, the theme of “death on the way” became canonical. Here is his last poem, “The Dying Song”:
I got sick on the way,
And everything runs and circles my dream
Through scorched fields.
Imitating Basho, haiku poets always composed “last stanzas” before they died.
"True" ( Makoto-no) the poems of Basho, Buson, Issa are close to our contemporaries. The historical distance is, as it were, removed in them due to the immutability of the haiku language, its formulaic nature, which has been preserved throughout the history of the genre from the 15th century to the present day.
The main thing in the worldview of a haikaist is an acute personal interest in the form of things, their essence, and connections. Let us remember the words of Basho: “Learn from the pine tree what pine is, learn from bamboo what bamboo is.” Japanese poets cultivated meditative contemplation of nature, peering into the objects surrounding a person in the world, into the endless cycle of things in nature, into its bodily, sensual features. The poet's goal is to observe nature and intuitively discern its connections with the human world; haikaists rejected ugliness, pointlessness, utilitarianism, and abstraction.
Basho created not only haiku poetry and haibun prose, but also the image of a poet-wanderer - a noble man, outwardly ascetic, in a poor dress, far from everything worldly, but also aware of the sad involvement in everything happening in the world, preaching conscious “simplification”. The haiku poet is characterized by an obsession with wandering, the Zen Buddhist ability to embody the great in the small, awareness of the frailty of the world, the fragility and changeability of life, the loneliness of man in the universe, the tart bitterness of existence, a sense of the inseparability of nature and man, hypersensitivity to all natural phenomena and the change of seasons .
The ideal of such a person is poverty, simplicity, sincerity, a state of spiritual concentration necessary to comprehend things, but also lightness, transparency of verse, the ability to depict the eternal in the current.
At the end of these notes, we present two poems by Issa, a poet who treated with tenderness everything small, fragile, and defenseless:
Quietly, quietly crawl,
Snail, on the slope of Fuji,
Up to the very heights!Hiding under the bridge,
Sleeping on a snowy winter night
Homeless child.
Don't imitate me too much!
Look, what's the point of such similarities?
Two halves of melon. For students
I want it at least once
Go to the market on holiday
Buy tobacco
"Autumn has already arrived!" -
The wind whispered in my ear,
Sneaking up to my pillow.
He is a hundred times nobler
Who does not say at the flash of lightning:
"This is our life!"
All the excitement, all the sadness
Of your troubled heart
Give it to the flexible willow.
What freshness it blows
From this melon in drops of dew,
With sticky wet soil!
In the garden where the irises have opened,
Talking with your old friend, -
What a reward for the traveler!
Cold mountain spring.
I didn’t have time to scoop up a handful of water,
How my teeth are already creaking
What a connoisseur's quirk!
For a flower without fragrance
The moth descended.
Come quickly, friends!
Let's go wander through the first snow,
Until we fall off our feet.
Evening bindweed
I'm captured...Motionless
I stand in oblivion.
Frost covered him,
The wind makes his bed...
An abandoned child.
There's such a moon in the sky,
Like a tree cut down to the roots:
The fresh cut turns white.
A yellow leaf floats.
Which shore, cicada,
What if you wake up?
How the river overflowed!
A heron wanders on short legs
Knee-deep in water.
How a banana moans in the wind,
How the drops fall into the tub,
I hear it all night long. In a thatched hut
Willow is bent over and sleeping.
And it seems to me that there is a nightingale on a branch...
This is her soul.
Top-top is my horse.
I see myself in the picture -
In the expanse of summer meadows.
Suddenly you will hear “shorkh-shorkh”.
Longing stirs in my soul...
Bamboo on a frosty night.
Butterflies flying
Wakes up a quiet clearing
In the sun's rays.
How the autumn wind whistles!
Then only you will understand my poems,
When you spend the night in the field.
And I want to live in autumn
To this butterfly: drinks hastily
There is dew from the chrysanthemum.
The flowers have faded.
The seeds are scattering and falling,
It's like tears...
Gusty leaf
Hid in a bamboo grove
And little by little it calmed down.
Take a close look!
Shepherd's purse flowers
You will see under the fence.
Oh, wake up, wake up!
Become my comrade
Sleeping moth!
They fly to the ground
Returning to old roots...
Separation of flowers! In memory of a friend
Old pond.
A frog jumped into the water.
A splash in silence.
Autumn Moon Festival.
Around the pond and around again,
All night long all around!
That's all I'm rich with!
Easy, like my life,
Gourd pumpkin. Grain storage jug
First snow in the morning.
He barely covered
Narcissus leaves.
The water is so cold!
The seagull can't sleep
Rocking on the wave.
The jug burst with a crash:
At night the water in it froze.
I woke up suddenly.
Moon or morning snow...
Admiring the beauty, I lived as I wanted.
This is how I end the year.
Clouds of cherry blossoms!
The ringing of the bell floated... From Ueno
Or Asakusa?
In the cup of a flower
The bumblebee is dozing. Don't touch him
Sparrow friend!
Stork nest in the wind.
And underneath - beyond the storm -
Cherry is a calm color.
Long day to go
Sings - and doesn’t get drunk
Lark in spring.
Over the expanse of fields -
Not tied to the ground by anything -
The lark is ringing.
It's raining in May.
What is this? Has the rim on the barrel burst?
The sound is unclear at night...
Pure spring!
Up ran up my leg
Little crab.
Today is a clear day.
But where do the drops come from?
There is a patch of clouds in the sky.
It's like I took it in my hands
Lightning when in the dark
You lit a candle. In praise of the poet Rika
How fast the moon flies!
On motionless branches
Drops of rain hung.
Steps important
Heron on fresh stubble.
Autumn in the village.
Left for a moment
Farmer threshing rice
Looks at the moon.
In a glass of wine,
Swallows, don't drop me
Clay lump.
There once was a castle here...
Let me be the first to tell you about it
A spring flowing in an old well.
How the grass thickens in summer!
And only one-sheet
One single leaf.
Oh no, ready
I won't find any comparisons for you,
Three day month!
Hanging motionless
Dark cloud in half the sky...
Apparently he's waiting for lightning.
Oh, how many of them there are in the fields!
But everyone blooms in their own way -
This is the highest feat of a flower!
I wrapped my life around
Around the suspension bridge
This wild ivy.
Blanket for one.
And icy, black
Winter night... Oh, sadness! Poet Rika mourns his wife
Spring is leaving.
The birds are crying. Fish eyes
Full of tears.
The distant call of the cuckoo
It sounded wrong. After all, these days
The poets have disappeared.
A thin tongue of fire, -
The oil in the lamp has frozen.
You wake up... What sadness! In a foreign land
West East -
Everywhere the same trouble
The wind is still cold. To a friend who left for the West
Even a white flower on the fence
Near the house where the owner is gone,
The cold poured over me. To an orphaned friend
Did I break off the branch?
The wind running through the pines?
How cool is the splash of water!
Here intoxicated
I wish I could fall asleep on these river stones,
Overgrown with cloves...
They rise from the ground again,
Fading in the darkness, chrysanthemums,
Nailed by heavy rain.
Pray for happy days!
On a winter plum tree
Be like your heart.
Visiting the cherry blossoms
I stayed neither more nor less -
Twenty happy days.
Under the canopy of cherry blossoms
I'm like the hero of an old drama,
At night I lay down to sleep.
Garden and mountain in the distance
Trembling, moving, entering
In a summer open house.
Driver! Lead your horse
Over there, across the field!
There's a cuckoo singing.
May rains
The waterfall was buried -
They filled it with water.
Summer herbs
Where the heroes disappeared
Like a dream. On the old battlefield
Islands...Islands...
And it splits into hundreds of fragments
Sea of a summer day.
What bliss!
Cool field of green rice...
The water is murmuring...
Silence all around.
Penetrate into the heart of the rocks
Voices of cicadas.
Tide Gate.
Washes the heron up to its chest
Cool sea.
Small perches are dried
On the branches of a willow...What coolness!
Fishing huts on the shore.
Wooden pestle.
Was he once a willow tree?
Was it a camellia?
Celebration of the meeting of two stars.
Even the night before is so different
For an ordinary night! On the eve of the Tashibama holiday
The sea is raging!
Far away, to Sado Island,
The Milky Way is spreading.
With me under the same roof
Two girls... Hagi branches in bloom
And a lonely month. At the hotel
What does ripening rice smell like?
I was walking across the field, and suddenly -
To the right is Ariso Bay.
Tremble, O hill!
Autumn wind in the field -
My lonely moan. In front of the burial mound of the early deceased poet Isse
Red-red sun
In the deserted distance... But it’s chilling
The merciless autumn wind.
Pines... Cute name!
Leaning towards the pine trees in the wind
Bushes and autumn herbs. An area called Sosenki
Musashi Plain around.
Not a single cloud will touch
Your traveling hat.
Wet, walking in the rain,
But this traveler is worthy of song too,
Not only hagi are in bloom.
O merciless rock!
Under this glorious helmet
Now the cricket is ringing.
Whiter than white rocks
On the slopes of a stone mountain
This autumn whirlwind!
Farewell poems
I wanted to write on the fan -
It broke in his hands. Breaking up with a friend
Where are you, moon, now?
Like a sunken bell
She disappeared to the bottom of the sea. In Tsuruga Bay, where the bell once sank
Never a butterfly
He won't be anymore... He trembles in vain
Worm in the autumn wind.
A secluded house.
Moon... Chrysanthemums... In addition to them
A piece of a small field.
Cold rain without end.
This is how the chilled monkey looks,
As if asking for a straw cloak.
Winter night in the garden.
With a thin thread - and a month in the sky,
And the cicadas make a barely audible sound.
The nuns story
About his previous service at court...
There is deep snow all around. In a mountain village
Children, who's the fastest?
We'll catch up with the balls
Ice grains. Playing with children in the mountains
Tell me why
Oh raven, to the noisy city
Is this where you fly from?
How tender are the young leaves?
Even here, on the weeds
At a forgotten house.
Camellia petals...
Maybe the nightingale dropped
A hat made of flowers?
Ivy leaves...
For some reason their smoky purple
He talks about the past.
Mossy gravestone.
Under it - is it in reality or in a dream? -
A voice whispers prayers.
The dragonfly is spinning...
Can't get a hold
For stalks of flexible grass.
Don't think with contempt:
“What small seeds!”
It's red pepper.
First I left the grass...
Then he left the trees...
Lark flight.
The bell fell silent in the distance,
But the scent of evening flowers
Its echo floats.
The cobwebs tremble a little.
Thin threads of saiko grass
They flutter in the twilight.
Dropping petals
Suddenly spilled a handful of water
Camellia flower.
The stream is barely noticeable.
Swimming through a thicket of bamboo
Camellia petals.
The May rain is endless.
The mallows are reaching somewhere,
Looking for the path of the sun.
Faint orange aroma.
Where?.. When?.. In what fields, cuckoo,
Did I hear your migratory cry?
Falls with a leaf...
No, look! Halfway there
The firefly flew up.
And who could say
Why don't they live so long!
The incessant sound of cicadas.
Fisherman's hut.
Mixed up in a pile of shrimp
Lonely cricket.
White hair fell.
Under my headboard
The cricket does not stop talking.
Sick goose dropped
On a field on a cold night.
A lonely dream on the way.
Even a wild boar
Will spin you around and take you with you
This winter field whirlwind!
It's already the end of autumn,
But he believes in future days
Green tangerine.
Portable hearth.
So, heart of wanderings, and for you
There is no peace anywhere. At the travel hotel
The cold set in on the way.
At the scarecrow's place, perhaps?
Should I borrow some sleeves?
Sea kale stems.
The sand creaked on my teeth...
And I remembered that I was getting old.
Mandzai came late
To a mountain village.
The plum trees have already bloomed.
Why so lazy all of a sudden?
They barely woke me up today...
The spring rain is noisy.
sad me
Give me more sadness,
Cuckoos distant call!
I clapped my hands.
And where the echo sounded,
The summer moon is growing pale.
A friend sent me a gift
Risu, I invited him
To visit the moon itself. On the night of the full moon
ancient times
There's a whiff... The garden near the temple
Covered with fallen leaves.
So easy, so easy
Floated out - and in the cloud
The moon thought.
Quails are calling.
It must be evening.
The hawk's eye went dark.
Together with the owner of the house
I listen in silence to the evening bells.
Willow leaves are falling.
White fungus in the forest.
Some unknown leaf
It stuck to his hat.
What sadness!
Suspended in a small cage
Captive cricket.
Night silence.
Only behind the picture on the wall
The cricket is ringing and ringing.
Dewdrops sparkle.
But they have a taste of sadness,
Don't forget!
That's right, this cicada
Are you all drunk? -
One shell remains.
The leaves have fallen.
The whole world is one color.
Only the wind hums.
Rocks among cryptomerias!
How I sharpened their teeth
Winter cold wind!
Trees were planted in the garden.
Quietly, quietly, to encourage them,
Autumn rain whispers.
So that the cold whirlwind
Give them the aroma, they open up again
Late autumn flowers.
Everything was covered with snow.
Lonely old woman
In a forest hut.
Ugly Raven -
And it's beautiful in the first snow
On a winter morning!
Like soot sweeps away,
Cryptomeria apex trembles
A storm has arrived.
To fish and birds
I don't envy you anymore... I'll forget
All the sorrows of the year. New Year's Eve
Nightingales are singing everywhere.
There - behind the bamboo grove,
Here - in front of the river willow.
From branch to branch
Quietly the drops are running...
Spring rain.
Through the hedge
How many times have you fluttered
Butterfly wings!
She closed her mouth tightly
Sea shell.
Unbearable heat!
Just the breeze blows -
From branch to branch of willow
The butterfly will flutter.
They are getting along with the winter hearth.
How old my familiar stove maker has aged!
Strands of hair turned white.
Year after year everything is the same:
Monkey amuses the crowd
In a monkey mask.
I didn’t have time to take my hands away,
Like a spring breeze
Settled in a green sprout. Planting rice
Rain comes after rain,
And the heart is no longer disturbed
Sprouts in rice fields.
Stayed and left
Bright moon... Stayed
Table with four corners. In memory of the poet Tojun
First fungus!
Still, autumn dew,
He didn't consider you.
Boy perched
On the saddle, and the horse is waiting.
Collect radishes.
The duck pressed to the ground.
Covered with a dress of wings
Your bare legs...
Sweep away the soot.
For myself this time
The carpenter gets along well. Before New Year
O spring rain!
Streams run from the roof
Along wasp nests.
Under the open umbrella
I make my way through the branches.
Willows in the first down.
From the sky of its peaks
Only river willows
It's still raining.
A hillock right next to the road.
To replace the faded rainbow -
Azaleas in the sunset light.
Lightning in the dark at night.
Lake water surface
Suddenly it burst into sparks.
The waves are running across the lake.
Some people regret the heat
Sunset clouds.
The ground is disappearing from under our feet.
I grab a light ear...
The moment of separation has arrived. Saying goodbye to friends
My whole life is on the road!
It's like I'm digging up a small field,
I wander back and forth.
Transparent waterfall...
Fell into a light wave
Pine needle.
Hanging in the sun
Cloud... Across it -
Migratory birds.
The buckwheat has not ripened
But they treat you to a field of flowers
Guest in a mountain village.
The end of autumn days.
Already throwing up his hands
Chestnut shell.
What do people feed on there?
The house pressed to the ground
Under the autumn willows.
The scent of chrysanthemums...
In the temples of ancient Nara
Dark buddha statues.
Autumn darkness
Broken and driven away
Conversation of friends.
Oh this long journey!
The autumn twilight is thickening,
And - not a soul around.
Why am I so strong
Did you sense old age this fall?
Clouds and birds.
It's late autumn.
Alone I think:
“How does my neighbor live?”
I got sick on the way.
And everything runs and circles my dream
Through scorched fields. Death Song
* * *
Poems from travel diaries
Maybe my bones
The wind will whiten - It is in the heart
It breathed cold on me. Hitting the road
You are sad listening to the cry of monkeys!
Do you know how a child cries?
Abandoned in the autumn wind?
Moonless night. Darkness.
With cryptomeria millennial
The whirlwind grabbed him in an embrace.
The ivy leaf is trembling.
In a small bamboo grove
The first storm murmurs.
You stand indestructible, pine tree!
And how many monks have lived here?
How many bindweeds have bloomed... In the garden of the old monastery
Drops dewdrops - tok-tok -
The source, as in previous years...
Wash away the world's dirt! The source sung by Saigyo
Dusk over the sea.
Only the cries of wild ducks in the distance
They turn vaguely white.
Spring morning.
Over every nameless hill
Transparent haze.
I'm walking along a mountain path.
Suddenly I felt at ease for some reason.
Violets in the thick grass.
From the heart of a peony
A bee slowly crawls out...
Oh, with what reluctance! Leaving a hospitable home
young horse
He happily plucks the ears of corn.
Rest on the way.
To the capital - there, in the distance, -
Half the sky remains...
Snow clouds. On a mountain pass
The sun of a winter day,
My shadow freezes
On the horse's back.
She is only nine days old.
But both fields and mountains know:
Spring has come again.
Cobwebs above.
I see the image of Buddha again
At the foot of the empty. Where the Buddha statue once stood
Let's hit the road! I'll show you
How cherry blossoms bloom in distant Yoshino,
My old hat.
I've barely gotten better
Exhausted, until the night...
And suddenly - wisteria flowers!
Soaring larks above
I sat down in the sky to rest -
On the very ridge of the pass.
Cherries at the waterfall...
To those who love good wine,
I'll take the branch as a gift. Dragon Gate Waterfall
Like spring rain
Runs under a canopy of branches...
The spring whispers quietly. Stream near the hut where Saigyo lived
The past spring
In the distant harbor of Vaca
I finally caught up.
On Buddha's birthday
He was born
Little deer.
I saw it first
In the rays of dawn the face of a fisherman,
And then - a blooming poppy.
Where it flies
The pre-dawn cry of the cuckoo,
What's there? - Distant island.
Preface
At the end of the 17th century, a man no longer young and in poor health, who looked like a beggar, wandered along the roads of Japan for many years. More than once, probably, the servants of some noble feudal lord drove him off the road, but not a single eminent prince of that time was awarded the posthumous fame that befell this inconspicuous traveler - the great Japanese poet Basho.
Many artists lovingly painted the image of the wanderer-poet, and Basho himself knew how, like no one else, to look at himself with a sharp eye, from the outside.
Here, leaning on his staff, he walks along a mountain road in the autumn weather. A shabby robe made of thick, varnished paper, a cloak made of reeds, and straw sandals offer little protection from cold and rain. But the poet still finds the strength to smile:
The cold set in on the way. At the scarecrow's place, perhaps? Should I borrow some sleeves?
A small travel bag contains the most essential things: two or three favorite books of poetry, an ink pot, a flute. The head is covered by a large hat, like an umbrella, woven from cypress shavings. Like tendrils of ivy, patterns of writing curl across its fields: travel notes, poems.
No road difficulties could stop Basho: he shook in the saddle in winter, when his very shadow “frozen on the horse’s back”; walked from steep to steep in the height of the summer heat; he spent the night wherever he had to - “on a pillow of grass,” in a mountain temple, in an unpleasant inn... It happened that he rested on the crest of a mountain pass, “beyond the distant distance of the clouds.” The larks hovered under his feet, and there was still “half the sky” left until the end of the journey.
In his time, “aesthetic walks” in the lap of nature were fashionable. But you can’t compare them with Basho’s wanderings. Travel impressions served as building material for his creativity. He spared no effort - and even his very life - to obtain them. After each of his travels, a collection of poems appeared - a new milestone in the history of Japanese poetry. Basho's travel diaries in verse and prose belong to the most remarkable monuments of Japanese literature.
In 1644, in the castle town of Ueno, Iga Province, the poor samurai Matsuo Yozaemon gave birth to his third child, a son, the future great poet Basho.
When the boy grew up, he was given the name Munefusa to replace his previous childhood nicknames. Basho is a literary pseudonym, but it displaced all other names and nicknames of the poet from the memory of descendants.
Iga Province was located in the very cradle of old Japanese culture, in the center of the main island - Honshu. Many places in Basho's homeland are known for their beauty, and folk memory has preserved songs, legends and ancient customs there in abundance. The folk art of the Iga province was also famous, where they knew how to make wonderful porcelain. The poet loved his homeland very much and often visited it in his declining years.
Wandering Raven, look! Where is your old nest? Plum trees are in bloom everywhere.
This is how he depicted the feeling a person experiences when he sees his childhood home after a long break. Everything that previously seemed familiar suddenly miraculously transforms, like an old tree in spring. The joy of recognition, the sudden comprehension of beauty, so familiar that you no longer notice it, is one of the most significant themes in Basho’s poetry.
The poet's relatives were educated people, which presupposed, first of all, knowledge of Chinese classics. Both father and elder brother made a living by teaching calligraphy. Such peaceful professions became the lot of many samurai at that time.
The medieval strife and civil strife ended, when a warrior could glorify himself with a feat of arms and win a high position with the sword. The fields of great battles are overgrown with grass.
At the beginning of the 17th century, one of the feudal lords managed to prevail over the others and establish a strong central government in the country. For two and a half centuries, his descendants - princes from the Tokugawa clan - ruled Japan (1603–1867). The residence of the supreme ruler was the city of Edo (now Tokyo). However, the capital was still called the city of Kyoto, where the emperor, deprived of all power, lived. Ancient music sounded at his court, and poems of the classical form (tanka) were composed at poetry tournaments.
“Pacification of the country” contributed to the growth of cities, the development of trade, crafts and art. The officially adopted way of life in the country was still based on subsistence farming, but at the end of the 17th century, money acquired greater power. And this new force imperiously invaded human destinies.
Tremendous wealth was concentrated in the hands of money changers, wholesale traders, moneylenders, and winemakers, while indescribable poverty reigned in the cramped streets of the suburbs. But, despite the difficulties of city life, despite poverty and overcrowding, the attractive power of the city was still very great.
During the Genroku years (1688–1703), urban culture flourished. Simple everyday objects became wonderful works of art in the hands of craftsmen. Carved keychains, netsuke, screens, fans, boxes, sword guards, color engravings and much more created in that era now serve as decoration for museums. Inexpensive books with excellent illustrations, printed by woodcut from carved wooden boards, were published in large editions for that time. Merchants, apprentices, and shopkeepers fell in love with novels, fashionable poetry, and theater.
Japanese literature produced a constellation of brilliant talents: in addition to Basho, it included the novelist Ihara Saikaku (1642–1693) and the playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653–1724). All of them, so different from each other - the deep and wise Basho, the ironic, earthly Saikaku and Chikamatsu Monzaemon, who reached a high intensity of passions in his plays - have something in common: they are related by the era. The townspeople loved life. They demanded authenticity and accurate life observations from art. Its very historically emerged convention is increasingly permeated with realism.
Basho was twenty-eight years old when in 1672, contrary to the persuasion and warnings of his relatives, he left his service in the house of a local feudal lord and, full of ambitious hopes, went to Edo with a volume of his poems.
By that time, Basho had already gained some fame as a poet. His poems were published in the capital’s collections, he was invited to participate in poetry tournaments...
Leaving his homeland, he attached to the gate of the house where his friend lived a piece of paper with verses:
cloud bank Lay down between friends... We said goodbye Migrating geese forever.
In the spring, one wild goose flies to the north, where a new life awaits him; the other, saddened, remains in the old place. The poem breathes with youthful romanticism; through the sadness of separation one can feel the joy of flying into an unknown distance.
In Edo, the poet joined the followers of the Danrin school. They took material for their creativity from the life of the townspeople and, expanding their poetic vocabulary, did not shy away from the so-called prosaisms. This school was innovative for its time. Poems written in the Danrin style sounded fresh and free, but most often they were only genre pictures. Feeling the ideological limitations and thematic narrowness of contemporary Japanese poetry, Basho in the early eighties turned to classical Chinese poetry of the 8th–12th centuries. In it he found a broad concept of the universe and the place that man occupies in it as a creator and thinker, mature civic thought, genuine strength of feeling, and an understanding of the high mission of the poet. Most of all, Basho loved the poems of the great Du Fu. We can talk about their direct influence on Basho’s work.
He carefully studied the philosophy of Zhuangzi (369–290 BC), rich in poetic images, and the Buddhist philosophy of the Zen sect, whose ideas had a great influence on Japanese medieval art.
Basho's life in Edo was difficult. With the help of some well-wisher, he got a job in the civil service in the department of waterway construction, but soon left this position. He became a poetry teacher, but his young students were rich only in talent. Only one of them, Sampu, the son of a wealthy fisherman, found a way to truly help the poet: he persuaded his father to give Basho a small guard hut near a small pond, which at one time served as a fish tank. Basho wrote about this: “For nine years I led a miserable life in the city and finally moved to the suburb of Fukagawa. One person wisely said in the old days: “The capital Chang'an has been the center of fame and wealth since ancient times, but it is difficult for someone who does not have money to live in it.” I think so too, because I am a beggar."
In poems written in the early eighties, Basho liked to draw his miserable Banana Hut (Basho-an), so named because he planted banana palm saplings near it. He also depicted in detail the entire surrounding landscape: the marshy, reed-covered bank of the Sumida River, tea bushes, a small dead pond. The hut stood on the outskirts of the city, in the spring only the cries of frogs broke the silence. The poet adopted a new pseudonym, "Banana Hut Dweller," and finally began signing his poems simply as Basho (Banana Tree).
Even in winter we had to buy water: “Water from a frozen jug is bitter,” he wrote. Basho felt acutely that he was an urban poor man. But instead of hiding his poverty, like others, he spoke about it with pride. Poverty became a symbol of his spiritual independence.
Among the townspeople there was a strong spirit of acquisitiveness, petty-bourgeois hoarding, and miserliness, but the merchants were not averse to providing patronage to those who knew how to amuse them. People of art very often became the hangers-on of wealthy merchants. There were poets who composed hundreds and thousands of stanzas in one day and thereby created easy fame for themselves. This was not the purpose of the poet Basho. He paints in his poems the ideal image of a free poet-philosopher, sensitive to beauty and indifferent to the blessings of life... If the gourd that served in Basho’s hut as a jug for rice grains is empty to the bottom, well, what: he will insert a flower into its neck!
But, indifferent to what others valued most, Basho treated his work with the greatest demands and care.
Basho's poems, despite the extreme laconicism of their form, cannot in any way be considered as fluent impromptu. These are the fruits of not only inspiration, but also a lot of hard work. “The man who has written only three to five excellent poems in his entire life is a true poet,” Basho told one of his students. “The one who created ten is a wonderful master.”
Many poets, Basho's contemporaries, treated their work as a game. Basho's philosophical poetry was a new phenomenon, unprecedented both in the seriousness of its tone and in the depth of its ideas. He had to create within the confines of traditional poetic forms (their inertia was very great), but he managed to breathe new life into these forms. In his era he was valued as an unrivaled master of renku and tercets, but only the latter have fully stood the test of time.
The form of the lyrical miniature required cruel self-restraint from the poet and at the same time, giving weight to every word, allowed him to say a lot and suggest even more to the reader, awakening his creative imagination. Japanese poetics took into account the counter-work of the reader's thoughts. Thus, the blow of the bow and the response of the string trembling together give birth to music.
Tanka is a very ancient form of Japanese poetry. Basho, who did not write tanka himself, was a great connoisseur of ancient anthologies. He especially loved the poet Saige, who lived as a hermit during the dark years of civil wars in the 12th century. His poems are surprisingly simple and seem to come from the heart. Nature for Saige was the last refuge, where in a mountain hut he could mourn the death of friends and the misfortunes of the country. The tragic image of Saige always appears in Basho’s poetry and seems to accompany him in his wanderings, although the eras in which these poets lived and their social existence were very different.
Over time, the slipper began to be clearly divided into two stanzas. Sometimes they were composed by two different poets. It turned out to be a kind of poetic dialogue. It could be continued for as long as desired, with any number of participants. This is how “linked stanzas” were born - a poetic form very popular in the Middle Ages.
The “linked stanzas” alternated tercets and couplets. By combining them two at a time, it was possible to obtain a complex stanza - a pentaverse (tanka). There was no single plot in this long chain of poems. The ability to make an unexpected turn on the topic was valued; at the same time, each stanza echoed its neighbors in a most complex way. Thus, a stone taken out of a necklace is good on its own, but in combination with others it acquires a new, additional charm.
The first stanza was called haiku. Gradually, haiku became an independent poetic form, separating from the “linked stanzas”, and gained enormous popularity among the townspeople.
Basically, haiku is a lyrical poem about nature, which certainly indicates the time of year.
In Basho's poetry, the cycle of the seasons is a changeable, moving background, against which the complex mental life of a person and the impermanence of human destiny are more clearly outlined.
An “ideal” landscape, freed from all roughness - this is how old classical poetry painted nature. In haiku, poetry regained its sight. A man in haiku is not static, he is in motion: here is a street peddler wandering through a snowy whirlwind, and here is a worker turning a grinding mill. The gulf that already lay between literary poetry and folk song in the 10th century became less wide. A raven pecking a snail in a rice field with its nose is an image found in both haiku and folk songs. Many rural scholars, as Basho testifies, fell in love with haiku.
In 1680, Basho created the original version of a poem famous in the history of Japanese poetry:
On a bare branch Raven sits alone. Autumn evening.
The poet returned to work on this poem for several years until he created the final text. This alone speaks volumes about how hard Basho worked on each word. Here he abandons the artifice, the play with formal techniques, so valued by many contemporary masters of poetry, who created their fame precisely by doing so. The long years of apprenticeship are over. Basho finally found his path in art.
The poem looks like a monochrome ink drawing. Nothing extra, everything is extremely simple. With the help of a few skillfully chosen details, a picture of late autumn is created. You can feel the absence of wind, nature seems frozen in sad stillness. The poetic image, it would seem, is slightly outlined, but it has great capacity and, bewitching, takes you along. It seems that you are looking into the waters of a river, the bottom of which is very deep. And at the same time, he is extremely specific. The poet depicted a real landscape near his hut and, through it, his state of mind. He is not talking about the raven's loneliness, but about his own.
Much scope is left to the reader's imagination. Together with the poet, he can experience a feeling of sadness inspired by autumn nature, or share with him the melancholy born of deeply personal experiences. If he is familiar with the Chinese classics, he may remember Du Fu's "Autumn Songs" and appreciate the unique skill of the Japanese poet. A person versed in the ancient philosophy of China (the teachings of Lao Tzu and Zhuang Tzu) could be imbued with a contemplative mood and feel imbued with the innermost secrets of nature. Seeing the great in the small is one of the main ideas of Basho’s poetry.
Basho based the poetics he created on the aesthetic principle of “sabi”. This word cannot be literally translated. Its original meaning is “sadness of loneliness.” "Sabi", as a special concept of beauty, defined the entire style of Japanese art in the Middle Ages. Beauty, according to this principle, had to express complex content in simple, strict forms that were conducive to contemplation. Peace, muted colors, elegiac sadness, harmony achieved with meager means - this is the art of “sabi”, which called for concentrated contemplation, for detachment from everyday vanity.
“Sabi,” as Basho widely interpreted it, absorbed the quintessence of classical Japanese aesthetics and philosophy and meant to him what “ideal love” meant to Dante and Petrarch! By imparting a sublime order to thoughts and feelings, “sabi” became a source of poetry.
Poetics based on the principle of “sabi” found its most complete embodiment in five collections of poetry created by Basho and his students in 1684-1691: “Winter Days”, “Spring Days”, “A Stalled Field”, “Gourd Pumpkin” and "The Monkey's Straw Cloak" (Book One).
Despite its ideological depth, the principle of “sabi” did not allow one to depict the living beauty of the world in its entirety. Such a great artist as Basho had to inevitably feel this. The search for the hidden essence of each individual phenomenon became monotonously tedious. In addition, the philosophical lyrics of nature, according to the principle of “sabi,” assigned man only the role of a passive contemplator.
In the last years of his life, Basho proclaimed a new guiding principle of poetics - “karumi” (lightness). He told his students: “From now on, I strive for poems that are as shallow as the Sunagawa River (Sand River).”
The poet’s words should not be taken too literally; rather, they sound like a challenge to imitators who, blindly following ready-made models, began to compose poems in abundance with pretensions to profundity. Basho's late poems are by no means petty; they are distinguished by their high simplicity, because they talk about simple human affairs and feelings. Poems become light, transparent, fluid. They show subtle, kind humor, warm sympathy for people who have seen a lot and experienced a lot. The great humanist poet could not isolate himself in the conventional world of sublime poetry of nature. Here is a picture from peasant life:
Boy perched On the saddle, and the horse is waiting. Collect radishes.
But the city is preparing for the New Year holiday:
Sweep away the soot. For myself this time The carpenter gets along well.
The subtext of these poems is a sympathetic smile, and not mockery, as was the case with other poets. Basho does not allow himself any grotesqueries that distort the image.
A monument to Basho’s new style are two collections of poetry: “Sack of Coal” (1694) and “The Monkey’s Straw Cloak” (book two), published after Basho’s death, in 1698.
The poet's creative style was not constant; it changed several times in accordance with his spiritual growth. Basho's poetry is a chronicle of his life. An attentive reader, rereading Basho's poems, discovers something new for himself every time.
This is one of the wonderful properties of truly great poetry.
A significant part of Basho's poems are the fruits of his travel thoughts. Many poems, full of piercing power, are dedicated to deceased friends. There are poems for the occasion (and some of them are excellent): in praise of a hospitable host, in gratitude for a gift sent, invitations to friends, captions for paintings. Little madrigals, tiny elegies, but how much is said in them! How you can hear the thirst for human participation in them, please do not forget, do not hurt with offensive indifference! More than once the poet abandoned his too forgetful friends and locked the door of the hut in order to quickly open it again.
“Haiku cannot be composed from different pieces, as you did,” Basho told his student. “It must be forged like gold.” Each poem by Basho is a harmonious whole, all elements of which are subordinated to a single task: to most fully express poetic thought.
Basho created five travel diaries, written in lyrical prose interspersed with poetry: “Bones Whitening in the Field,” “Journey to Kashima,” “Letters of a Wandering Poet,” “Diary of Sarasin’s Travels,” and the most famous, “On the Paths of the North.” Lyrical prose It is marked by features of the same style as haiku: it combines grace with “prosaism” and even the common people of many expressions, is extremely laconic and rich in hidden emotional overtones. And in it, too, as in poetry, Basho combined loyalty to ancient traditions with the ability to see life in a new way.
In the winter of 1682, a fire destroyed a large part of Edo, and Basho's Banana Hut also burned down. This, as he himself says, gave the final impetus to the decision that had long been ripening in him to go wandering. In the fall of 1684, he left Edo, accompanied by one of his students. Ten years with short breaks. Basho traveled around Japan. Sometimes he returned to Edo, where friends rebuilt his Banana Hut. But soon again, “like an obedient cloud,” he was carried away by the wind of wanderings. He died in the city of Osaka, surrounded by his students.
Basho walked along the roads of Japan as an ambassador of poetry itself, igniting in people a love for it and introducing them to true art. He knew how to find and awaken the creative gift even in a professional beggar. Basho sometimes penetrated into the very depths of the mountains, where “no one will pick up a fallen wild chestnut fruit from the ground,” but, valuing solitude, he was never a hermit. In his travels, he did not run away from people, but became close to them. A long line of peasants working in the fields, horse drivers, fishermen, and tea leaf pickers pass through his poems.
Basho captured their sensitive love of beauty. The peasant straightens his back for a moment to admire the full moon or listen to the call of the passing cuckoo, so beloved in Japan. Sometimes Basho depicts nature as perceived by a peasant, as if identifying himself with him. He rejoices at the thick ears of corn in the field or worries that early rains will spoil the straw. Deep concern for people, a subtle understanding of their spiritual world is one of Basho’s best qualities as a humanist poet. That is why in different parts of the country they waited for his arrival as a holiday.
With amazing fortitude, Basho strove for the great goal he had set for himself. Poetry had fallen into decline in his time, and he felt called upon to raise it to the level of high art. The road of wanderings became Basho’s creative workshop. New poetry could not be created locked within four walls.
The “Great Teacher from the Southern Mountain” once commanded: “Do not follow in the footsteps of the ancients, but seek what they were looking for.” This is also true for poetry,” Basho expressed this thought in his farewell words to one of his students. In other words, in order to become like the poets of antiquity, it was necessary not only to imitate them, but to retrace their path, to see what they saw, to be infected by their creative excitement, but to write in their own way.
Japanese lyrical poetry has traditionally celebrated nature, such as the beauty of the hagi bush. In autumn, its thin flexible branches are covered with white and pink flowers. Admiring hagi flowers - this was the only theme of the poem in the old days. But listen to what Basho says about a lonely traveler in a field:
Wet, walking in the rain... But this traveler is worthy of song too, Not only hagi are in bloom.
Images of nature in Basho's poetry very often have a secondary meaning, allegorically speaking about man and his life. A scarlet pepper pod, a green chestnut shell in autumn, a plum tree in winter are symbols of the invincibility of the human spirit. An octopus in a trap, a sleeping cicada on a leaf, carried away by a stream of water - in these images the poet expressed his feeling of the fragility of existence, his thoughts about the tragedy of human fate.
Many of Basho's poems are inspired by stories, legends and fairy tales. His understanding of beauty had deep folk roots.
Basho was characterized by a feeling of the indissoluble unity of nature and man, and behind the shoulders of the people of his time he always felt the breath of a huge history stretching back centuries. In it he found solid ground for art.
During the Basho era, life was very difficult for ordinary people both in the city and in the countryside. The poet witnessed many disasters. He saw children abandoned to certain death by impoverished parents. At the very beginning of the diary “Bones Whitening in the Field” there is the following entry:
“Near the Fuji River, I heard an abandoned child, about three years old, crying piteously. He was carried away by the fast current, and he did not have the strength to withstand the onslaught of the waves of our sorrowful world. Abandoned, he grieves for his loved ones, while life still glimmers in him, as volatile as a dewdrop. O little hagi bush, will you fly around tonight or will you wither tomorrow? As I passed by, I threw some food from my sleeve to the child.
You feel sad when you listen to the cry of monkeys, Do you know how a child cries? Abandoned in the autumn wind?
The son of his time, Basho, however, goes on to say that no one is to blame for the death of the child, it was the decree of heaven. “Man is at the mercy of a terrible fate” - such a concept of human life inevitably gave rise to a feeling of insecurity, loneliness, and sadness. Modern progressive writer and literary critic Takakura Teru notes:
“In my opinion, the new literature of Japan begins with Basho. It was he who most acutely and with the greatest pain expressed the suffering of the Japanese people that befell them during the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times.”
The sadness that sounds in many of Basho’s poems had not only philosophical and religious roots and was not only an echo of his personal fate. Basho's poetry expressed the tragedy of the transitional era, one of the most significant in the history of Japan, and therefore was close and understandable to his contemporaries.
Basho's work is so multifaceted that it is difficult to reduce it to one denominator. He called himself a “sorrowful person,” but he was also a great lover of life. The joy of a sudden meeting with beauty, cheerful games with children, vivid sketches of everyday life and morals - with what spiritual generosity the poet lavishes more and more new colors to depict the world! At the end of his life, Basho came to that wise and enlightened beauty that is only accessible to a great master.
The poetic legacy left by Matsuo Basho includes haiku and interlocking stanzas. His prose works include diaries, prefaces to books and individual poems, and letters. They contain many of Basho’s thoughts about art. In addition, the disciples recorded his conversations with them. In these conversations, Basho appears as a unique and deep thinker.
He founded a school that revolutionized Japanese poetry. Among his students were such highly gifted poets as Kikaku, Ransetsu, Joso, Kyosai, Sampu, Shiko.
There is no Japanese who does not know at least a few poems by Basho by heart. New editions of his poems and new books about his work are appearing. Over the years, the great poet does not move away from his descendants, but gets closer to them.
The lyrical poetry of haiku (or haiku), the actual creator of which was Basho, is still loved, popular and continues to develop.
When reading Basho's poems, one thing should be remembered: they are all short, but in each of them the poet sought a path from heart to heart.
