The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches by Matsuo Bashō

Never published during his lifetime, this travel journal has become on the true classics of Japanese literature, and, through a number of translations, is widely known and appreciated around the world. The feelings, that sense of unarticulated potential, are what give haiku its special vibrancy and life.įor many lovers of haiku, Bashō's The Narrow Road to the Deep North is his most moving and accomplished achievement. This kind of skill is quite different from the kind of intellectual knowledge need to read, say, the poetry of Wordsworth or T. In that sense, reading haiku requires a highly developed level of intuition on the part of the reader. To make such a poem succeed, however, it is the reader who must connect the two. A sharp noise thus creates a sense of its opposite, absolute quietness.

The first is the word for 'silence,' or 'stillness.' The second is a sound: the cry of the cicadas. The reader is presented with two parts to the poem. Here, for example, is a famous poem of Bashō included in what is probably his most famous work, The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Oku no hosomichi). Remarkably, each image is often defined in terms of the other. The creative reader can learn to put them together. A good haiku often juxtaposes two statements or images. Thirdly, haiku depends on the creative power of the reader, who must learn to bridge the gap between the images and the deeper meaning that lies behind them. The poet who can take advantage of these characteristics can pack in a great deal of meaning in a short space. Many words used in Japanese poetry have multiple meanings and poetic resonances developed in a thousand-odd years of use. A second strategy for giving depth to such brief poems is to take advantage of the nature of the Japanese language itself. In brief, what you choose to feel and express shows in your poetry who you are.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches by Matsuo Bashō