Books by Matsuo Basho

Presents travel writings which chronicle the author's perilous journeys through Japan and also capture his vision of eternity in the transient world around him.

'Nothing more lonely -' A selection of Basho's most magical haikuIntroducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millionsBasho (1644-1694). Basho's On Love and Barley and The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches are available in Penguin Classics.

Basho, one of the greatest of Japanese poets and the master of haiku, was also a Buddhist monk and a life-long traveller. His poems combine 'karumi', or lightness of touch, with the Zen ideal of oneness with creation. Each poem evokes the natural world - the cherry blossom, the leaping frog, the summer moon or the winter snow - suggesting the smallness of human life in comparison to the vastness and drama of nature. Basho himself enjoyed solitude and a life free from possessions, and his haiku are the work of an observant eye and a meditative mind, uncluttered by materialism and alive to the beauty of the world around him.

HAÏKAÏ, un recueil des plus beaux haïkus japonais. Un haïkaï est, on le sait, un poème minuscule en trois vers de cinq, sept et cinq syllabes, au total dix-sept. Au pluriel, des haïkus. Que peut-on exprimer dans un cadre aussi étroit ? Peu de chose en surface, beaucoup en profondeur quand le haïkaï est conçu avec art et émotion. Il répond alors à sa meilleure définition qui est celle-ci, croyons-nous : La notation poétique et sincère d'un instant d'élite. La musique des mots y ajoutera sa grâce. Comme la forme du haïkaï est obligatoirement brève, l'émotion n'y peut être que concentrée. Par nature et par éducation, le Japonais excelle à la concentration émotive. À vous de comprendre l'impression profonde du poète... Matsuo Bashô (1644-1694), le plus grand poète du Japon, fut une âme d'amour et de pureté : ses passions furent les fleurs et la lune. Son œuvre, un hymne à la nature, fragmenté et ciselé dans l'expression menue de ses petits poèmes. Voici ses plus beaux haïkus suivis de ceux de ses plus grands disciples.

Vivid new translations of Basho''s popular haiku, in a selected format ideal for newcomers as well as fans long familiar with the Japanese master.Basho, the famously bohemian traveler through seventeenth-century Japan, is a poet attuned to the natural world as well as humble human doings; "Piles of quilts/ snow on distant mountains/ I watch both," he writes. His work captures both the profound loneliness of one observing mind and the broad-ranging joy he finds in our connections to the larger community. David Young, acclaimed translator and Knopf poet, writes in his introduction to this selection, "This poet''s consciousness affiliates itself with crickets, islands, monkeys, snowfalls, moonscapes, flowers, trees, and ceremonies...Waking and sleeping, alone and in company, he moves through the world, delighting in its details." Young''s translations are bright, alert, musically perfect, and rich in tenderness toward their maker.

Matsuo Basho (1644-94) is considered Japan's greatest haiku poet. Narrow Road to the Interior (Oku no Hosomichi) is his masterpiece. Ostensibly a chronological account of the poet's five-month journey in 1689 into the deep country north and west of the old capital, Edo, the work is in fact artful and carefully sculpted, rich in literary and Zen allusion and filled with great insights and vital rhythms. In Basho's Narrow Road: Spring and Autumn Passages, poet and translator Hiroaki Sato presents the complete work in English and examines the threads of history, geography, philosophy, and literature that are woven into Basho's exposition. He details in particular the extent to which Basho relied on the community of writers with whom he traveled and joined in linked verse (renga) poetry sessions, an example of which, A Farewell Gift to Sora, is included in this volume. In explaining how and why Basho made the literary choices he did, Sato shows how the poet was able to transform his passing observations into words that resonate across time and culture.

Basho, egl. Matsuo Basho, 1644-1694, japansk haikudigter, der fornyede den traditionelle komiske haikudigtning ved at give den kunstnerisk dybde. Bashos møde med daoismen og zenbuddhismen gjorde hans kunst ophøjet og kontemplativ, men bragte ham samtidig ind i en blindgyde. For at finde en udvej og en ny verden for sin kunst begav han sig ud i landet, ud i naturen og fandt som en evigt rejsende digter stof til sine symbolske, men dog lette haiku. (Store Danske Encyklopædi)