Course:The Narrow Road to the Deep North
| CRWR 501P 003 |
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| Advanced Writing of Poetry |
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Matsuo Bashō lived during the Edo period in Japan and is well-known as a master of the haiku form. But when I learned about his book The Narrow Road to the Deep North (trans. Nobuyuki Yuasa–this link has the full text!), which records Bashō’s round-trip journey from Edo (Tokyo) to Hiraizumi (in Iwate Prefecture), it was in the context of haibun, a form consisting of a prose poem followed by a haiku.
Bashō was middle-aged by the time he made the journey in The Narrow Road; the trip itself was 2400 km long and took two years to complete. He writes about moments of transcendent beauty, but also about his back hurting, his feet aching, a horse pissing near his head while he tries to sleep at night. He cries a lot, often about the losses of the past: “I sat down on my hat and wept bitterly till I almost forgot time.” Even four centuries ago, much of what he saw on the road was already in ruins. Reading his writing brings me close to both the past he lived in and the past his poems record:
In this ever-changing world where mountains crumble, rivers change their course, roads are deserted, rocks are buried, and old trees yield to young shoots, it was nothing short of a miracle that this monument alone had survived the battering of a thousand years to be the living memory of the ancients. I felt as if I were in the presence of the ancients themselves, and, forgetting all the troubles I had suffered on the road, rejoiced in the utter happiness of this joyful moment, not without tears in my eyes.
This book had a profound effect on me because it gave me a vision of “old” poetry that was counter both to what I knew of old Western poems and to what I had previously believed about haiku. Bashō doesn’t choose the images he does for their beauty, but for their salience. His keen observation of the past means he also documents his present in razor-sharp detail. I’ve never read poetry so old that feels so real and immediate.
The Narrow Road inspired me to keep travel journals, a practice I maintain separately from my regular journalling. Now I get a lot of writing done when I travel: my poetic attention and memory feel focused and alive, and I feel a deep sense of appreciation for the experiences I’m having.
This book also made me fall in love with haibun as a form. I like how the haibun allows poetic attention to wander, diffuse, then refocus, even glance off itself, in the haiku. It’s also fun to play with: reverse, double, and burning (or “dissolving”) haibun are all variations I’ve tried out and enjoyed.
The last thing I’ll say about The Narrow Road is that it was a collaborative work. Bashō was traveling with his apprentice, Kawai Sora, and frequently includes Sora’s haiku in his work. Even though haiku are associated with moments of stillness and the absence of people, there is a strong social element to Bashō’s journey: The Narrow Road is full of innkeepers, guides, old friends, people he meets on the road, and poets he admires. I love when poets incorporate sociality into their poems. The narrow road is not a solitary one.
Here’s one haibun from the book:
I went to the Tada Shrine situated in the vicinity, where I saw Lord Sanemori’s helmet and a piece of brocaded cloth that he had worn under his armor. According to the legend, these were given him by Lord Yoshitomo while he was still in the service of the Minamotos. The helmet was certainly an extraordinary one, with an arabesque of gold chrysanthemums covering the visor and the ear-plate, a fiery dragon resting proudly on the crest, and two curved horns pointing to the sky. The chronicle of the shrine gave a vivid account of how, upon the heroic death of Lord Sanemori, Kiso Yoshinaka had sent his important retainer Higuchi-no-Jirō to the shrine to dedicate the helmet with a letter of prayer.
I am awe-struckTo hear a cricket singing
Underneath the dark cavity
Of an old helmet.