The only substantial
collection in English
of Basho's renku, tanka,
letters and spoken word
along with his haiku, travel
journals, and essays.
The only poet in old-time
literature who paid attention with praise
to ordinary women, children, and teenagers
in hundreds of poems
Hundreds upon hundreds of Basho works
(mostly renku)about women, children,
teenagers, friendship, compassion, love.
These are resources we can use to better
understand ourselves and humanity.
Interesting and heartfelt
(not scholarly and boring)
for anyone concerned with
humanity.
“An astonishing range of
social subject matter and
compassionate intuition”
"The primordial power
of the feminine emanating
from Basho's poetry"
Hopeful, life-affirming
messages from one of
the greatest minds ever.
Through his letters,
we travel through his mind
and discover Basho's
gentleness and humanity.
I plead for your help in
finding a person or group
to take over my 3000 pages of Basho material,
to edit and improve the material, to receive 100%
of royalties, to spread Basho’s wisdom worldwide
and preserve for future generations.
Quotations from Basho Prose
The days and months are
guests passing through eternity.
The years that go by
also are travelers.
The mountains in silence
nurture the spirit;
the water with movement
calms the emotions.
All the more joyful,
all the more caring
Seek not the traces
of the ancients;
seek rather the
places they sought.
By moonlight / my poor mother at work / beside the window / She would hide fingers /stained with indigo // もる月を / 賤しき母の / 窓に見て/ 藍にしみ付く/指かくすらん
By moonlight
my poor mother at work beside the window
She would hide fingers stained with indigo
Complete Basho Renku Interpretive Anthology volume 5, p. 14
芭蕉連句全注解、５巻 ｐ。１４
Moru tsuki o /iyashiki haha no / mado ni mite Iugen
１７ もる月を / 賤しき母の / 窓に見て 又玄
窓に漏る月を見るらん故郷の母。
野良仕事にはげむ賤しき母ねれど。
Ai ni shimi tsuku / yubi kakusuran Basho
１８ 藍に しみ 付く / 指 かくすらん 芭蕉
前句の賤しき母の労苦を、染物 の仕事と転じて、
愛のしみついた指をかくして, 月を眺めるとした。
Iugen presents an image of mother, long ago and far away, doing the night work of women throughout the ages, after her family has gone to sleep, sewing or mending their clothing in that light from above through the open window. From this iconic maternal image, Basho zooms in on her fingers stained fromyears of dying cloth with indigo; she feels the need to cover them with fabric to hide that strange inhuman color in the moonlight. The blue tint draws the eyes in our minds to her fingers, where we see the ‘traces’ of all the work those fingers have done – which, because in Japanese “indigo” has the same pronunciation as “love,”
are “fingers stained with love.”
Renku scholar Miyawaki Masahiko says,
In the behavior of mother hiding her fingers, the child separated far from her realizes her personality. The moonlight conveys the feelings in the child’s heart along with memories of mother working in desperation to raise us in spite of poverty.
The link – the thoughts that take us – from Iugen’s stanza to Basho’s astonishingly trivial but intimate human detail reveals the vast range of his genius. Only Basho could create a link such as this, so personal and bodily yet so full of female heart.
Both the Mona Lisa and Whistler’s Mother rest their hands motionless on the lap; Mary in Michelangelo’s Pieta holds the dead Jesus motionless on her lap. Basho surpasses these icons by giving the hands of the Eternal Mother activity and self-consciousness.
I plead for your help in finding a person or group to take over my 3000 pages of Basho material, to edit and improve the presentation, to receive all royalties from sales, to spread Basho’s wisdom worldwide and preserve for future generations.
The only substantial
collection in English
of Basho's renku, tanka,
letters and spoken word
along with his haiku, travel
journals, and essays.
The only poet in old-time
literature who paid attention with praise
to ordinary women, children, and teenagers
in hundreds of poems
Hundreds upon hundreds of Basho works
(mostly renku)about women, children,
teenagers, friendship, compassion, love.
These are resources we can use to better
understand ourselves and humanity.
Interesting and heartfelt
(not scholarly and boring)
for anyone concerned with
humanity.
“An astonishing range of
social subject matter and
compassionate intuition”
"The primordial power
of the feminine emanating
from Basho's poetry"
Hopeful, life-affirming
messages from one of
the greatest minds ever.
Through his letters,
we travel through his mind
and discover Basho's
gentleness and humanity.
I plead for your help in
finding a person or group
to take over my 3000 pages of Basho material,
to edit and improve the material, to receive 100%
of royalties, to spread Basho’s wisdom worldwide
and preserve for future generations.
Quotations from Basho Prose
The days and months are
guests passing through eternity.
The years that go by
also are travelers.
The mountains in silence
nurture the spirit;
the water with movement
calms the emotions.
All the more joyful,
all the more caring
Seek not the traces
of the ancients;
seek rather the
places they sought.
