was written on a serene spring day when the cherry blossoms were falling gently in the garden; now and then the sound of a frog jumping into the water was heard. I quote from the translation of Nobuyuki Yuasa:
Our master was deeply immersed in meditation, but finally he came out with the second half of the poem:
A frog jumped into water
A deep resonance.
One of the disciples sitting with him immediately suggested for the first part of the poem:
Amidst the flowers
Of the yellow rose.
Our master thought for a while, but finally he decided on
Breaking the silence
Of an ancient pond.
The disciple's suggestion is admittedly picturesque and beautiful but our master's choice, being simpler, contains more truth in it. It is only he who has dug deep into the mystery of the universe that can choose a phrase like this.7
R. H. Blyth wrote that "haiku is an ascetic art, an artistic ascetism." All the power of inspiration of the poet is contained not in expansion, but in condensation, Basho, besides the prose pages of his brief travel diaries, never wanted to write anything but haiku, like a specialist who wishes to preserve the high skill he attained by refraining from doing something else. This trend towards contracting the expression of emotion with such brevity is the opposite of that which has been the evolution of Western poetry till recent time. The great breadth of romantic poetry is in expansion and eloquence, as that of the classic period had been in definition of narrative amplitude. It was with symbolism that eloquence began to be despised, and only in our times that increasing brevity has become a distinct quality of good poets.
Like Basho, symbolist poets professed the religion of beauty. They felt that the "principle of the beautiful unified life and gave meaning to it." In this sense symbolism was fundamentally mystical. "The essence of symbolism is its insistence on a world of ideal beauty and its conviction that this is realized through art:," writes C. M. Bowra in his book The Heritage of Symbolism.
One should avoid stressing this similarity too much but it is undeniable that the poetic world of haiku, after Basho deepened this form into seriousness of meaning, has many points in common with the world of the symbolist poets. Both explore the poetic value of symbols, both are rich in suggestion; both experience ecstasy, a timeless contentment. According to Bowra, the symbolist poet also finds ecstasy in "the pure aesthetic state which seems to obliterate distinctions of time and place, of self and not-self, of sorrow and joy."8
Some poems of Mallarmé, for example, evoke the same world of beauty as Basho's through very realist symbols:
| Ta lèvre contre le cristal | Your lip against the crystal |
| Gorgée à gorgée y compose | Sip after sip composes |
| Le souvenir pourpre et vital | The souvenir purple and vital |
| De la moins éphémère rose. | Of the most ephemeral rose. |
Mallarmé despised eloquence, and suppressed explanations and long comparisons: "Only the essential points are given and the gain in concentration and power is enormous, Bowra writes of him. The symbolists, though, believe in an ideal world beyond the world of reality, while Basho is a realist for whom the world of things is sufficiently rich in wonders and suggestions. Poets who came after the symbolists, like Paul Valéry, believed that things are what they are and were content with the world of reality.
The likeness pointed out was soon noticed by the Japanese and that is why the French symbolists were so much appreciated in Japan. A Japanese critic, Sueo Goto, has written: "We have of yore uta, haikai and Chinese poetry, which are truly, in my opinion, a kind of symbolism." Yasunari Kawabata finds in the Shin Kokinshu "elements of the mysterious, the suggestive, the evocative and inferential, elements of sensuous fantasy that have something in common with modern symbolist poetry."
It must be said, of course, that Western poetry is always more wordy, and though conciseness may at times be considered a good quality, it will never have the laconism of haiku to be attained as an ideal. One should not pretend in the least to say that the two things are the same, but merely to point out some distinctive traits which can be found in both.
Le fruit creux, sourd d'insectes, tombe
dans l'eau des criques fouillant son bruit.
The hollow fruit, deaf of insects, falls
into the water of creeks, searching its own noise.
Will anybody say that here St, John Perse, a distinct heir of the symbolists, is not on the same path as Basho? Or compare these verses of E. E. Cummings, still nearer Basho's earthly spirit:
making fools understand
(like wintry me) that not
all matterings of mind
equal one violet.
Basho was so conscious of the value of the symbolic element in his poetry that he developed a whole theory about it. Nobuyuki Yuasa writes that this symbolic quality inherent in the poem is what Basho called sabi (loneliness), shiori (tenderness), and hosomi (slenderness), depending on the mode of its mani-festarion and the degree of its saturation,
Basho explained that sabi is in the "colour of a poem," an expression that French symbolists also used; sabi is the subjective element which brings out of the objects the richness of symbolic meaning. It has something of Baudelaire: "L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles" (There man passes through forests of symbols). There is here, of course, a fundamental difference, as symbolist poets show excited enthusiasm and rapture, while Basho expressed sobriety and serenity. There is in both a subtlety, finesse, and a strong power of suggestion.9
Basho gave haiku great prestige. After his death two disciples continued his work: Kikaku, who cultivated a free and vigorous style, and Ransetsu, who was gentle and delicate. Both died at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Buson, who was also a famous painter, created a new haiku style, followed by Issa, who introduced a very personal approach. After Issa haiku fell to "little better than the rank of parlour game," until about the middle of the Meiji era when Shiki Masaoka gave it new life. Haiku continues to be much praised and practised; the greatest haiku poet of today is perhaps Shuoshi Mizuhara, in whose poetry the influence of Basho survives.
Basho was always entirely satisfied with haiku form and never had the urge to expand his poetic expression into a wider form. Again, a Western reader cannot understand this self-limitation of genius. Western geniuses are vast and monstrous in their range of artistic manifestations, know no limits, and infringe all rules; their force is a force of nature, impetuous, unpredictable, indomitable. When we think of Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, and their vast creations, it is difficult to understand how a genius like Basho—because he seems to have been one—could give vent to his creative force by containing it in small strophes of less than a dozen words, however polished they were. This concentration on the perfection of form had to be reflected also in content, We can imagine Dante concentrating on perfecting the form of his tercets, but we cannot admit—by what we know of the tumultuous force of his genius—that he could ever be content without launching into the immense conception of his vast spiritual world in which all the problems and an immense theory of personalities
