Читать книгу Japanese and Western Literature - Armando Martins Janeira - Страница 12

CHAPTER I. CLASSIC POETRY

INTRODUCTION TO CLASSIC LITERATURE

When we consider Japanese literature in its entirety and compare it with the great literatures of the West, we first notice its importance, being one of the richest literatures in the world; second, its early maturity; and third, its inclusion of the main genres developed in the Western literatures, though the degree of their importance is different. With great surprise we find that some genres were developed in Japan and in Europe at the same time, though there was no possible communication between them, for Japan had closed its doors to the West.

The first genre to appear fully developed in Japanese literature is poetry. We notice a similar phenomenon in all literatures—all men begin their artistic attempts by praising in musical words the beauty of the world.

The first, and greatest, compilation of Japanese poetry is the Manyoshu (Collection of Myriad Leaves), made in the latter part of the eighth century. It includes poems from the fourth to the eighth centuries, but the greatest part belongs to poets from the seventh and the first part of the eighth.

The Manyoshu comes after Greek and Roman poetry, but four or five centuries before the European national literatures began to make their first attempts. England was still one or two centuries from the Anglo-Saxon poetry of the heathen lay of Beowulf and the Christian poems of Caedmon and Cynewulf and still about six centuries from the first English lyric, which appeared in the fourteenth century. In France, Germany, Portugal, and Spain, vernacular literature would come much later, in the eleventh century; in Italy, later still, in the thirteenth.

The Japanese followed the example of the Chinese. In China, poetic anthologies appeared much earlier. The first, the Shi Ching (Book of Songs), is supposed to have been compiled by Confucius in the fifth century b.c.; another, the Ch'u-Tz'u (Poems of the Kingdom of Ch'i), was compiled at the end of the first century b.c., the same century in which Meleager compiled his Garland, the first Greek poetic anthology. An anthology of prose and poetry, the Wên Hsüan (Literary Selections), was compiled in the sixth century by Hsiao Tung. These and other Chinese anthologies were widely read by Japanese poets. The glorious period of Chinese poetry was in the T'ang dynasty with Li Po and Tu Fu (eighth century) at the time when the Manyoshu was being compiled.

If we consider world literature as a whole, Japan has been a forerunner in the novel, the diary, and drama about the common man. It was in Japan that the novel was born, in the tenth century, at a time when Europe was still plunged in the dark Middle Ages. Western European literature was making strenuous efforts to break through the heavy crust of their barbarian popular Latin or Anglo-Saxon languages and trying to lisp the first infantile poems of their troubadours, their naïve stories of saints and crude heroes. Japan had already produced in Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji the most genial novel in its language and one of the greatest works of world literature.

With The Tale of Genji comes another genre in which Japan pioneered and remains today one of the outstanding producers: the diary (nikki). In their diaries Japanese writers have developed a kind of biographical writing in which the idiosyncrasies of their national character are marked more clearly than in any other genre.

In the theatre, both in the literary text and in the scenic art of bringing words to life, the Japanese genius again was able to find an art strongly expressive of its national personality. If we consider all these genres together, or if we compare them with the creations of Western literature, we come to the most surprising and provocative reflexions.

FORM AND CONTENT IN JAPANESE POETRY

Poetry in Japan is esteemed, as in no other country in the world. Many Japanese emperors, great politicians, warriors, and scholars were poets. Today, poetry still holds a high position officially and socially. It is one of the duties of the emperor to preside at the Kosho Hajime, New Year's poetry contest, which takes place in the Imperial Palace.

Every year the emperor chooses a theme and a word for the poets competing. Japanese from all over the world (and today even a few foreigners) submit their compositions in tanka form; the selected ones are read before the throne. The Imperial Bureau of Poetry (O-uta Dokoro) was permanently established in 1888 by the Meiji emperor. In former days these palace competitions were so intense "that some of the competitors actually died from despair."

Poetry is so widely cultivated in Japan that there are more than one thousand reputable poetry magazines and innumerable poetry clubs all over the country. It is a frequent practice for cultured Japanese to write poetry during their leisure, at least as a sort of mental exercise. Even in small remote villages haiku contests are held and the winning poems are exhibited on the main door of the temple. The admirers of great poets erect large stones carved with their favorite poems (called kahi, or poetry monuments). This shows not only the wide regard for poets and poetry but also the high standards of education in Japan.

A foreign reader easily comes to the conclusion that poetry is the genre that counts least among Japan's impressive achievements, and that probably on account of the nature of its development and its widely consecrated technique it is the one that has less deepened the movements of the heart, and explored less the fields of human destiny. As Michel Revon put it, Japanese poetry has more finesse than inspiration.

Japanese poetry, which expresses through a very limited range of notes the feelings of the heart and the pleasures of the spirit in the pure contemplation of natural beauty, seems perhaps too sky and self-contained to a foreigner accustomed to the vast flights of thought of great Western poets. The self-imposed formulas of the tanka, a form of 31 syllables, and. haiku, with 17, of course cannot allow the range of poetic eloquence necessary to express the raptures, the indignations, the fertile rebellions of the spirit. This explains the fundamental tone of Japanese poetry—a delicate serenity, a refined spiritual sadness, a quintessence of the deep feeling of communion of man with nature.

The shortness of the poem has, in addition, the disadvantage that its creation is too easy for bad poets; therefore, there is the danger of seeing it debased to becoming the routine of a literary school or a mere technical exercise. This happened, in China with a concentrated form, tz'u, which, though longer than tanka, obeyed strict rules precisely establishing the number of lines of the poem, the number, length, and distribution of tones in each verse.

Tanka, a form of waka, appeared very early in Japanese poetry. The Manyoshu consists of a collection of 4,516 poems, all tanka with the exception of 262 longer poems known as choka. The choka, or long narrative poem, never exceeded 150 lines, and was not continued after the eighth century.

THE CLASSIC ANTHOLOGIES

In the Manyoshu we see how soon Japanese poetry reached maturity, creating forms which have prevailed since then. The predominant lyric tone, the genuine simplicity, the atmosphere of peace and melancholy, the concentration, the subtle delicate suggestion, and the highly polished phrase remain as permanent qualities. That is why the Nara period is considered by Japanese to be the golden age of poetry. "Never since has the native muse been so delicate in sentiment, refined in language, or displayed such exquisite skill in phrasing and composition."

Among the 450 poets of the Manyoshu, of which 70 are women, there are people of all classes, from emperors to beggars; this contributes to its fresh spontaneity and poetic sincerity, unmatched in Western mediaeval anthologies. The poetry or me Manyoshu is great poetry.

A collection of ancient Japanese songs, collectively known as Nihon Jodai Kayo, has recently been translated into English by Donald Philipi. It includes 313 poems or songs; the majority were probably sung and handed down until the time they were put into writing. Philipi's translation is entitled This Wine of Peace, This Wine of Laughter. They belong to the pre-Nara and Nara period (710-794) and some of them were contemporary with the Manyoshu; they were selected from a number of other sources, mainly from the Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters) and from the Nihongi (Chronicles of Ancient Japan). These ancient songs have a charming simplicity, the freshness and perfume of wild flowers.

After the Manyoshu, poets began to give more attention to form, and decadence was the result. The official prestige of poetry continued the same, nevertheless, and twenty-one anthologies were made by imperial command between the tenth and the fifteenth centuries. The first of the anthologies, the Kokinshu (Collection of Poems, Ancient and Modern), was compiled about 905 by Ki no Tsurayuki—one of the principal poets of anthology. The Kokinshu has 1,111 poems, only 5 of which have more than 31 syllables. Many of these poems were composed in court poetry tournaments, like those of some European anthologies. The use of words is most elaborate; technique is much improved, but there is nothing of the spontaneity and vigour of the Manyoshu. Japanese poetry, bent towards aestheticism, had taken the progressively sterile path of concentration in form. This tendency towards decadence is accentuated in the Shin Kokinshu (New Kokinshu), published at the beginning of the thirteenth century, the last of the three classic anthologies most esteemed by the Japanese.

Besides the official anthologies, there were private compilations called kashu made within certain families. Teika Fujiwara (1162-1241) produced a collection of eighty-three poems collected over a period of five centuries called Kindai Shuka (Superior Poems of Our Time). The most famous of all private anthologies is the Ogura Hyaku-nin-isshu (One Hundred Poems from One Hundred Poets), organized in the first half of the thirteenth century, perhaps by Teika Fujiwara also. It has the peculiarity of containing poems following a chronological order, rather than the system of classification by topics adopted in the official anthologies; it includes poems from the seventh century until the time it was published. Indeed, the existence of these anthologies indicates the volume of rich Japanese poetry and its social importance.

Tanka was the dominating poetic form for centuries. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, with the rising of a wealthy middle class, new poetic liberties were required in form and in subject, A new form appeared, the haikai, consisting of 36, 50, or 100 lines. The first verse, hokku, became independent later, and was called haiku. This short poem of 17 syllables continues to be the favourite form of Japanese people today.

Basho, in the seventeenth century, brought the haiku form to perfection. With the creation of this new form poetic expression became still briefer, more dependent on the powers of concentration and suggestion; technically, it requires greater skill. Basho wrote that "he who creates three to five haiku poems during a lifetime is a haiku poet. He who can create ten is a master."

Tetsujiro Inoue has rebelled against the constraint of the traditional forms: "Tanka, in form and content, is incapable of satisfying today's aspirations. The poets who are still attached to tanka and to the other old forms waste their energy in putting into words old fashion ideas; by nature these old forms belong to the past and are no longer good for our time.

There are modern poets, though, that maintain the old devotion for the traditional forms. Santei (Masao Kume) writes: "Often I wonder why I did not spend my whole life as an artist, as a pure haiku poet. In regard to a unity in life, art, and mental attitude, there is no other artist for whom it is so harmonized as for the haiku poet."¹

THE CONCEPT OF POETRY

The concept of poetry that we can find in the classic forms could correspond in a general way to the one expressed by Ki no Tsurayuki (884-946) in the preface of the Kokinshu:

Japanese poetry has its roots in the human heart and flourishes in countless thoughts. As people in the world are interested in so many kinds of things, it is in poetic words that they shape the meditations of their hearts on what they see and they hear. Who shall not be touched hearing the warbler sing among the blossoms and the frog in his water dwelling? It is poetry which moves heaven and earth, moves god and devils to pity, softens man and woman, consoles the hearts of fierce warriors.

About the subjects fit for poetry, Tsurayuki writes:

Pleasure livens the spirit of the poet; joy overflows his heart. He compares his love to the rising smoke of Mount Fuji; he remembers a friend when he hears an autumn insect chirp; he makes companions of the pine trees of Takasaeo and Suminoe; he is reminded of the old days of Otoko-yama, and consoles himself by composing verses even when dejected. He sees the blossoms scatter in a spring morning and hears the leaves fall in an autumn evening. He looks in the mirror and is sad he is growing old, and considers the inconstancy of life at the sight of dew in the grass and of foam on the water. He was prosperous yesterday, and today is poor; he feels abandoned in the world; his mends leave mm. He pledges his love swearing to god, meets clandestinely, passes a sleepless night, and is peevish in the morning. Sometimes he will confide his grief and feel indignation; he hears smoke rises no more from Mount Fuji and that old Nagae bridge is newly spanned. Then he feels relieved by betaking himself to poetry.

Lyricism animated by the pleasure of contemplating the beauty of nature, the joys and sorrows of love, parting and death, and the melancholy towards the passing of time are the main subjects of Japanese classic poetry. The tone is nearly always emotional, and melancholy is its prominent note. There are few exceptions which reach the plane of intellectual or moral reflexion, as happens often with the great Chinese poets.

In the anthology Kindai Shuka, we can see that the main emphasis is on life's sadness. In the curious preface, the author, Teika Fujiwara, writes the following about Tsurayuki, his predecessor:

Tsurayuki, in ancient times, preferred a style in which the conception of the poem was clever, the loftiness of tone difficult to achieve, the diction strong, and the effect pleasing and tasteful, but he did not compose in the style of overtones and eternal beauty.

And about the technique of composition, Fujiwara states concisely: "The art of Japanese poetry appears to be shallow but is deep, appears to be easy but is difficult."²

More recently, Norinaga Motoori (1730-1801), in his treatment of the nature of poetry in Sekijo Shishuku-gen (Observations from Long Years of Apprenticeship to Poetry), states the source and aim of poetry: Poetry "comes only from emotion. This is because emotion is more sensitive to things." The aim of poetry is to "give expression to an awareness of poignancy of human life." ³

This "sensibility of things" or "deep feeling in one's heart is expressed in Japanese by the word aware. Aware signifies all deep emotions, melancholy and amusement, sorrow and pleasure, love and regret. Anything which impresses the feelings strongly is aware. To write poetry is to express the feeling of aware. Quoting Tsurayuki, Motoori says, "A verse appears of itself from the aware of things and thus a master-poet is one who has the clearest understanding of aware,"⁴

LIMITATIONS

The limitations imposed by an aristocratic tradition brought about an inevitable complexity of technique and perfection in form. It brought also a certain monotony of subject, as the themes which the poets were allowed to treat were also limited. Bound by these two sorts of limitations, in form and in subject, Japanese poetry was condemned never to go beyond a charming simplicity of ideas, and to concentrate on power of suggestion and subtlety of expression.

About the limitations in subject Donald. Keene writes:

There are few poems written in burning indignation, like some of the greatest Chinese poetry, few of religious exaltation, few which touch more than vaguely on metaphysics or ethics. This list might be prolonged almost indefinitely until we are left with a very limited variety of subjects considered fit for poetry, and within that limited variety, a limited number of ways of treating them.⁵

To a Western reader this scarcity of variety and absence of freedom appears still more limiting than it really is, because probably no Westerner will ever be able to grasp the full beauty and depth of a Japanese poem. It requires a cultural heritage of thousands of years to find resonance to certain phrases, to develop an insular inclination towards seeking for meaning, and to prolong the subtlest hint or vaguest suggestion in depth. It requires a state of absolute identity with nature that Westerners are not normally able to attain. R. H. Blyth says that "to understand, to read properly a single haiku requires years of unconscious absorption of all the culture of India, China and Japan that comes to fulfilment in these small verses."

A Westerner finds it difficult to understand the full meaning of haiku. He probably cannot even understand why great Japanese writers today prefer Eastern to Western poetry. Soseki Natsume, the greatest of Japanese writers from Saikaku until today, says Oriental poetry "appears to me to be more palatable than Faust or Hamlet." For Soseki, the Oriental poet is the true poet; he has to attain a pure state of mind to be able to enter the realm of pure poetry. That is why, in this summit of serenity and simplicity, he can find poetry in the most ordinary things: "Basho found even the sight of a horse urinating near his pillow elegant enough to write a hokku about."

Be this as it may, the reader from the West can only make a judgement according to his own poetic standards. And according to these, G. B. Sansom sums it up in these words: "The Japanese poetical genius is often described as incapable of sustained flights, and perhaps this is true enough as a general view."

Lin Yutang thinks Chinese poetry also "lacks grandeur and power and richness. . . . Chinese lyrics are dainty, but never very powerful. By their terseness, narrative and descriptive passages are necessary limited in character."⁶ Still, I find a dramatic greatness in, for instance, Chang Heng's poem "The Bones of Chuang Tzu" and a splendorous grandeur in "The Szechwan Road" by Li Po.

Japanese poetry is, by its nature, restrained and brief. Foreign readers cannot apprehend the delicate shades, the subtle touches which can be grasped only in the original. Besides, the written characters have, in the skilful choice of a good poet, their own poetic content. But if it is impossible to translate a poem perfectly, what can pass into a foreign language in a poem rich in deep feeling and thought is always enough to show the high quality of its inspiration; otherwise great poets would seldom be known outside their own language.

The foreign reader, though admiring the noble simplicity of traditional forms, feels unsatisfied with their brevity and short range of subjects. But even the Japanese feel today the effect of these impoverishing limitations, and the proof is that their best poetry by contemporary poets follows the Western forms of expression.

These considerations, though, should not lessen the prominent role that poetry has played in Japanese culture. As in China, poetry in Japan has taught a view of life and, through union with nature, brought comfort and. elation to the soul. Poetry enhanced that unity of knowledge, that height of wisdom which is the main characteristic of Japanese and Chinese poetry; it tends to create a synthesis and to express and envisage life as a whole.

In Japan as well as in China, poetry has taken the role of religion: it purifies man's soul, brings him to feel the mystery and beauty of the universe, inspires him with tenderness and compassion for his fellow men and for the humble creatures of life.

In China and Japan, poetry in classic times was intimately linked with painting, expressing itself through calligraphy, the basis of Far Eastern aesthetics. Poetry gives Oriental painting (which follows predominantly the Chinese pattern) its inner projection and its spirit,

BASHO: HIS SYMBOLIC POETRY CONFRONTED WITH WESTERN SYMBOLISM

Basho Matsuo (1644-94), the greatest Japanese haiku poet, has widened the range of poetry, showing a vigorous reaction against the common use made in his time of haikai, which was generally practised by the uncultured merchant class. Haikai means "comic," "lighthearted," or "free," and was used in opposition to the serious form, waka, and the linked verse, renga. Basho widened and deepened the subjects for haiku and enlarged the philosophical aspect. His religious ideas were a combination of both the Tendai philosophy and the quiet naturalism of Taoism and Zen. As is typical of Japanese, Basho put his ideals into practice in his everyday life; born a samurai, he dressed as a Zen priest when he became a haiku master and led a simple, poor life. It was common at the time for a man to adopt the tonsure when he decided to become a writer or an artist; it meant that he had decided to devote his life to art. One of the greatest successors of Basho was Issa, who was also a modest man and led the life of a farmer.

Basho left a comparatively small poetic production. He wrote about two thousand verses, of which only one hundred, says Blyth, are really good. He wrote the best part of his work after he was forty. He used several pen names; the name Basho, which means banana tree, was taken from the tree in his hermitage at Fukagawa.

Basho is one of the greatest world poets. The Japanese love him with deep reverence. Japanese people deem the poet and the artist worthy of particular respect, like beings apart from general humanity. Basho was a true poet, a high idealist who devoted his life to the cult of poetry. But for him poetry did not merely mean verses or literature—for him poetry was the voice of the universe; the poet was the man who could, hear in his heart the beautiful harmonies of nature's voices.

Basho's haiku, being the highest exponent of Japanese poetry, show characteristic refined qualities. The qualities are present not in thought, but in emotion; not in eloquence, but in brief suggestion; not in abstract discourse, but in objective experience; not in detached contemplation of beauty, but in a strong feeling of reality and in the dissolution of self in nature. The attitude of humility necessary for the intimate approach to nature that brings the dissolution of the poet's personality is expressed in the titles of Basho's works: Minashi Guri (Empty Chestnut), published in 1683; Fuyu no Hi (A Winter Day), an anthology of haiku by Basho and his disciples, and the first of seven major anthologies; Kawazu Awase (Frog's Contest), Ham no Hi (Spring Day), Hisago (A Gourd), and Saru Mino (Straw Coat for Monkey).

For a Westerner to try to criticize Basho's poetry is somewhat of a heresy, and to pretend to understand it seems a despicable pretence. Therefore, two main attitudes have been followed by Western critics towards haiku: either to praise its delicate lyricism, its subtle sensibility to the beauty of nature—this is the honest approach; or to pretend that haiku can never be understood before one has mastered the whole culture of India, China, and Japan, in all their poetic, philosophical, and religious impenetrable thought—this is the approach of the savants. Both are of course facile and lack seriousness, because what is really needed here is to find a common ground where human understanding becomes possible, however strange the poet may be to the reader. It could also be said that to understand Dante it is indispensable to know all Greek and Roman literature and philosophy, theology, poetry, and all the thought of the European Middle Ages. Of not so great a poet C. M. Bowra has written that "Mallarme's poetry is more difficult than almost any other great poetry in the world. It requires for its appreciation a knowledge which it is almost impossible to obtain fully." When so much is demanded, ordinary man feels left outside the privileged circle of the rare initiated ones; then poetry becomes aimless and loses its human appeal.

A few examples of Basho's haiku may be better than any wrought explanation. Translated literally, some of them, in their power of concentration and richness of suggestion, are not far from some of the best modern poetry that we have today.

Uguisu ya	A warbler
Take no ko-yabu ni	In the grove of bamboo shoots
Oi o naku	Growing old, sings.

A world of dense suggestion is contained here in the idea of the new life springing from bamboo shoots, while an old bird is singing in its last days of joy. Another example:

Shiraga nuku	White hairs are pulled out
Makura no shita ya	Ah, under the pillow
Kirigirisu	A cricket.

The same feeling of melancholy is briefly sketched in this scene: while some tender hand is pulling out Basho's white hairs, a cricket is chirping under the pillow on which he rests his head. Still another example:

Kami-gaki ya	Around the shrine a fence
Omoi mo kakezu	Unexpectedly
Nehan-zo	A statue of Buddha entering Nirvana,

This haiku, composed at the Ise Shrine, expresses the union of Shintoism and Buddhism, so characteristic of Japanese religious eclecticism. It may be related to the doctrine of Ryobu Shinto, which arose at the beginning of the ninth century, preaching that Shinto gods were manifestations of Buddhist divinities. In the feeling of embracing the two religions, Basho rejoices. Consider:

Te ni toraba	If I took it in my hand
Kien namida zo	It would melt with my hot tears
Atsuki aki no shimo	Autumn frost.

The power of concentration in this haiku is so great that the most important element of it is not even put into words: Basho is talking of the white hair of his dead, mother which he saw on his return to his native place after a long absence.

These very imperfect translations, which follow the original as literally as possible, transmit, I hope, the true spirit of the haiku. We can see that they contain a very condensed poetic emotion, an extraordinary force of suggestion and purity of symbolism, as well as a beauty and freshness grasped directly from reality. Haiku is the most unique poetic form in the world; in no other country can anything similar be found.

A description of the way Basho composed his most famous poem, left by his disciple Shiko, may help us to penetrate a bit more into the mysteries of haiku. Every Japanese knows the poem by heart:

Furuike ya	Ah, the old pond
Kawazu tobikomu	A frog jumps in
Mizu no oto	Sound, of water.

It 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 of his time were contained, Before the powerful mental effort to conceive and elaborate such a work, we can only wonder, fascinated and overwhelmed.

The poems of the great Western poets are more open, fuller of the force of suggestion and can be prolonged to deeper and denser meanings than haiku. That is why the Divina Commedia today still appeals to our anxieties, our yearning for the absolute. There is in all these Western poems, of course, a part which is dated, attached to the temporal or local circumstances surrounding the poet. In haiku everything is alive, because all that is temporal is left out. Here is really the fundamental difference, This explains why Japanese poetry is a contented poetry even when it is sad; the poet is always resigned to his lot be-cause he is serene and knows that misfortune cannot last long in a life so brief, in such, an inconstant world.

All great Western poets, on the contrary, are rebels; unsatisfied with the world, they try to change it, to transform man himself; the greatest ones are those who led a most unhappy life, were persecuted, exiled from their countries, and had their works burnt. Doubt and desperation gnawing at all their certitudes, they were even doubtful about the justification of their own work: Virgil on his deathbed at Brindisium wanted to destroy the manuscript of the Aeneid; Dante hid. the last thirteen cantos of the Divina Commedia inside a wall, where they were discovered after his death only by chance. Gogol burned all the second part of his greatest novel and died in despair, and Kafka wanted to have all the work for which he is famous destroyed. The Japanese poets, however, usually die in peace and follow the tradition of composing a serene poem on their deathbed. These are fundamental differences between East and West: poetry tells in words of the very heart of man.

It is impossible for me to understand why a genius like Basho limited himself to the brevity of haiku. There are reasons which are understandable even for a Westerner—respect for tradition and for the venerated authority of predecessors. It is a fact that absence of subjective feeling eliminated eloquent discourse, and that it is easier to give strong reality to objective things and to atmosphere in an extremely concentrated form. There is a great tendency in the Japanese spirit for elaborating on the small: for example, the netsuke (miniature carved figure), bonsai (dwarf tree), the minute doll, and the sculpture on a grain of rice. But all these should be valid reasons for a poet of a common quality, not for a towering genius. After long meditation on this puzzling problem, I think that the real explanation lies in the fact that the original source of poetry in the Japanese soul flows inwards, and not outwards. Basho kept for himself the beautiful poetic discourse and gave out only the essentials of his deep meditation; thus his haiku are like the koan of Zen meditation. Nobody after Basho can hope to understand the deep thought and vast implications in the marvellous light surrounding his creation.

Whatever the emotive and mental development that a Japanese reader finds in Basho's poetic suggestions, he can be sure that they will never be as rich as those Basho himself imagined, and might have developed and explained, if he had proposed to do it. Nobody would be able to attain the depth and breadth Dante reached by developing his central poetic ideas; fortunately, he did not leave it for the reader to do. On the other hand, we could do very well without Dante's explanations and commentaries on his sonnets and canzone in Vita Nuoua; most of the time they are obvious and redundant. Too much and too little are both far from perfection.¹⁰

As this effort of internalization obliged Basho to withhold too great a spiritual energy, he felt the need of some liberation, and so he went wandering on long trips through Japan, finding in the calm beauty of the scenery the image of blissful peace of mind He wrote notes of his travels. These travel notebooks, so rooted in Japanese tradition, are unique in world literature, and are composed both in verse and prose by many poets. This proves that the poetic forms were not wide enough for the poets to liberate all their inspiratory forces; therefore they had to continue their message in prose, which in this case is a mere extension of the poem.

Art is substance as well as form, of course, and both must be fused into a whole. In the West also, form has been carefully worked out, The sonnet has had great lovers, such as Petrarch and Camoëns; and a single, perfect sonnet made Arvers famous. But also in the West, excessive preoccupation with form gave rise to poetic movements which failed on account of their over-elaboration. It happened in the seventeenth century in Spain with Gongora, chiefly with his followers and imitators; in Italy with Marino; in France with the mannerisms of the Hôtel de Rambouillet.

In Japan, the excessive care for form never brought a decadence similar to Gongorism on account of the short and simple form of haiku. Poets could polish it like a jewel, brighten its light, chisel its shape, and reduce it to the pure essence of beauty. Perfection was attained through a harmonious combination of form and substance. The brevity of the poem made possible this difficult balance.

But if there was never a disintegration in form, the haiku and tanka degenerated in repetitions of theme. As we will see, before the time Japan began to breathe the new winds of the West, the poets were reproducing the same images and ideas, with few minor alterations.

THE CONCEPT OF NATURE

The poet, says Rimbaud, must know himself entirely. He searches his soul, suspects it, tempts it, learns it. After having learnt it, he must cultivate it. . . . The Poet becomes clairvoyant through a long, immense, reasoned unruliness of all his senses."

Even for a poet as free and rebellious as Rimbaud, reason takes a predominant place in the poetic creation. Wilhelm Dilthey affirms that the poetic enlightenment of Schiller's imagination comes always from an intense and conscious work. Schiller himself said that the poet "is the one capable of transmitting his own sensible state to an object, so that that object impels us to pass into that same sensible state, which means that it acts vividly on us." Thus the poet concentrates completely on his own powers; even his madness is reasoned. He transfers his poetic state to the objects; he does not dissolve himself into the nature that surrounds him; on the contrary, he absorbs nature into himself to build with it his own poetic world ; he transforms nature by the prodigy of his imagination, the power of imagination by which he creates a world distinct from the normal world.

Paul Valéry writes in Mémoires d'un Poème:

I would prefer to have written a mediocre work with all lucidity than a master-piece in a flash in a state of trance. Because a flash resolves nothing. It brings me nothing that can surprise me. It interests me much more to be able to produce at my will a very small flash than to wait for projecting here and there the great sparks of an uncertain storm.

To realize the complex poetic operations of imagination, let us look to Dryden:

The first happiness of the Poet's imagination, is properly Invention, or finding of the thought; the second is Fancy, or the variation, deriving or moulding of that thought as the judgement represents it proper to the subject: the third is Elocution, or the Art of clothing and adorning that thought so found and varied, in apt, significant and sounding words. The quickness of the Imagination is seen in the Invention, the fertility in the Fancy, and the accuracy in the Expression.

These few testimonies of Western poets are enough to show that poetry in the West demands a full concentration of the poet, a complete introspective use of all his powers of reason and intuition in order to appropriate the objects of the outside world, and to build with them an inner world of transcending beauty totally transformed.

The concept of nature in Oriental poetry is totally different. Nature is not a physical manifestation of its creator, but something which exists by itself. Nature was not created for man, and is neither benign or hostile to him. In Japanese and Chinese poetry, man's destiny is neither to struggle against nature nor to dominate it as in the West. Man is embraced in the eternal cycle that goes with nature: birth, growth, and decline, death and rebirth. It is this contrast between the mutability and transience of human life on the one hand, and the permanence and eternal renewal of the life of nature on the other that gives much Chinese poetry special poignancy and endows it with a tragic sense, writes J. Y. Liu in The Art of Chinese Poetry.

In Spirit of Japanese Poetry, Yone Noguchi states:

Poetry should express the truth in its own. way; by that truth we Japanese mean nature; again by that nature the order of spontaneity, Lao Tze says: "Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven its law from Tao; but the law of Tao is its own spontaneity."

For Yone Noguchi, spontaneity means God,

Basho has left a lucid description of the spiritual operation required of the poet. He has to bury his self in the object he is going to treat poetically.

When you see an object, you must leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself; otherwise you impose yourself on the object, and you do not learn. The object and yourself must become one, and from that feeling of oneness issues your poetry. However well phrased it may be, if your feeling is not natural—if the object and yourself are separate—then your poetry is not true poetry, but merely your subjective counterfeit.

You can learn about the pine only from the pine, or about the bamboo only from the bamboo.¹¹ The exact words of Basho are: "As to the pine follow the pine, as to the bamboo follow bamboo." The Japanese word for "follow" is narau, which also means "to imitate," " to learn," "to be in accord with." One of Basho's disciples commented: "Narau is to enter into the object and to bring out what is innerly there and to give it a literary form. When, however, the expression is not in accord with the feeling naturally emanating from the object, there is a split between the object and the expression which violates sincerity." Thus the suchness of things is warped. The poet must become a pine into which the human heart has entered. This process is different from, if not opposite to, the one described by Western poets. Poetry, for Basho, comes from spiritual enlightenment.

For the Japanese reader the poem is not only what is written, but also the invitation to collaborate and widen, by his own imagination, the rich suggestions in the poem. Through a training of many centuries, the Japanese reader can decipher in a few syllables a whole philosophy of life, which he enlarges and deepens through his own meditation.¹²

We can better understand the concept of nature in Japanese poetry if we think of those painted scrolls in which the human figure is lost in the vast landscape as merely one element of it, like a tree or a stone.

A few rare and vague strokes most carefully conceived and thrown on the silk are but mere suggestion of a rich world of beauty, invisible in the harmony of the wide empty spaces. Painting for centuries has been intimately associated with poetry, especially when expressed in its abstract form, calligraphy; thus it exerted a great influence upon poetry, having suggested, many poetic concepts.

The Chinese painter Wang Li, when asked who his master was, gave an answer similar to the previously quoted description by Basho: "I learned from my heart, my heart learned from my eye, and my eye learned from the Hua Mountain."¹³ Another Chinese painter, Chin Nung, said, "You paint the branch well and you hear the sound of the wind." Yasunari Kawabata wrote about the poet: "Seeing the moon, he becomes the moon; the moon seen by him becomes him. He sinks into nature, becomes one with nature." In Western poetry, on the contrary, the influence of painting as well as the influence of music was one of exaltation; they have lifted the force of imagination in the works of great poets like Hugo and Goethe.

In the East, as the attitude of man towards nature is pure contemplation, man loses his individuality to be anonymously dissolved in the universe to which he naturally belongs. Basho has expressed this poetical and psychological process in very condensed lines of the previously mentioned poem:

Furuike ya	Ah, the old pond
Kawazu tobikomu	A frog jumps in
Mizu no oto	Sound of water.

The depersonalization of the poet into the surrounding serenity of nature is complete. There is not even the faintest allusion to the beauty of the quiet water into which the frog jumps. The frog breaks the mirror of the water's surface as the sound breaks the silence. This absolute immobility of things is the face of eternity; that is why the small incident of breaking the silent surface of this absolute world takes on enormous proportions. The spirit of the poet is in the total (the silent world) and in. the incident (the splashing of the water) with such a high degree of identification that any intrusion of personal emotion becomes impossible.

Before this vagueness, this quintessence of emotion, it becomes very difficult for the foreign reader to make a judgement about this poetry. For him it remains incomplete, as he is not able to cooperate fully with the poet and explore the possible developments of its complex and multiple meanings.

In early Japanese poetry natural phenomena were considered divine and mountains were sacred. Mount Fuji was worshipped as a tutelary god, as, in minor degree, were other mountains like Tateyama and Tsukuba. The ocean, rivers, and lakes were the homes of gods. For many Japanese they still are. This deep religious feeling, rooted in Shintoism, could not be classified simply as animism, but is certainly one of the explanations for the predominant position nature still takes in Japanese poetry today.

While Japanese poetry is pure contemplation, Western poetry, in its highest expressions, is the fruit of an active attitude. The highest measure of Western life is not contemplation, but action, which is the source of a new being. We see this in Dante, whose poetry is not simply a reflected image of the world as it is; Dante acts and creates his own distinct world. His aim is to take men away from their unfortunate existence and lift them to another state of radiant happiness. As Merejkowsky puts it, Dante is not content in telling something to men, but wants to make of them something they are not, to lift them to the plenitude of their being. This dissatisfaction with nature as it is, this extreme ambition, is the core of Western poetry, which lies at the opposite side of the serene ideals of the East.

Western poetry has no limits to its flight; its aim and ambition are boundless. There are no barriers to its inspiration, as its essence and soul are infinite and eternal. Eastern poetry admits a point, at the highest peak of poetic activity, where further creation becomes impossible. Too great an inspiration, writes Tokoku Kitamura, as that of Basho at Matsushima, causes so complete a submergence of self in the universe that it makes writing impossible. That is why Basho would go no further than to murmur mere exclamations after the name of the beautiful islands:"Matsushima ya, Matsushima ya, Ya Matsushima." Zeami expressed the same idea when he affirmed that the highest point of proficiency in Noh is one in which all performance becomes impossible.

With this concept of nature is linked a sense of time particular to Japanese and Chinese poetry. There are numerous poems written about the nostalgia of seeing the autumn leaves fall, the beautiful red leaves of the maple tree, the fall of snow associated with old age, or tender poems chanting the beauty of new spring leaves or cherry blossoms. But also haiku is linked necessarily, by the rules of its construction, to the seasons of the year. This is so important in haiku collections that seasonal themes received a special name, saijiki.

Here is a haiku inspired by the feeling of the seasons.

Summer:

Yagate shinu	That soon will die
Keshiki wa miezu	Nobody could see
Semi no Koe	In the voice of the cicada.

In this very condensed poem, Basho evokes the hot summer day (the voice of the cicada is enough to suggest the heat of summer and the solitude of the fields), the transience of life, and the brevity of joy (even when a spiritual one).

Autumn:

Meigetsu ya	Bright full moon
Ike o megurite	The pond I wandered around
Yomosugara	All night long.

Spring:

Na no hana ya	Oh rape-flowers
Tsuki wa higashi ni	Moon in the East
Hi wa nishi ni	Sun in the West.

Winter:

Chiru susuki	Falling grass of susuki
Samuku nam no ga	The cold increases
Me ni mieru	Before the eyes.

Here is beauty in simplicity. The principle underlying all Japanese artistic expression is perhaps the control of feeling. This can be seen in the simplicity of time, in the sobriety of colour in painting, and in the austere elegance of classic sculpture and architecture. This simplicity tends to be heightened by a refinement, purity, and luminous synthesis. But what I like best in Japanese poetry, what gives an impression of grandeur as in certain poems about nature by great Chinese poets like Li Po and Tu Fu, is the poetry of Noh, Here we can marvel at the weight of every word and be overwhelmed by its strength and universal beauty. Who could but admire the passage of Hagoromo, beautifully translated by Arthur Waley?

Now upon earth trail the long mists of Spring;

Who knows hut in the valleys of the moon

The heavenly moon-tree pats her blossom on?

The blossoms of her crown win back their glory:

It is the sign of Spring,

Not heaven is here, hut beauty of the wind and sky

Blow, blow you wind, and build

Cloud-walls across the sky, lest the vision leave us

Of a maid divine!

This tint of springtime in the woods,

This colour on the headland.

Snow on the mountain,

Moonlight on the clear shore,—

Which fairest? Nay, each peerless

At the dawn of a Spring day.¹⁴

THE CONCEPT OF LOVE

The concept of love in poetry is basically linked with the position of the woman in a certain society. We do not need here to go as far as to consider the economic situation of women and their place in the family ; but it is obvious that the way a poet looks at the lady of his dreams and her situation necessarily influences the tone of the song he sings to her. An analytical study of the relation between the position of the woman in a certain society and the character of the poetry she inspires has never been done; but it is easy to see that the devoted way the troubadours addressed their belles is far from the direct, abrupt and even sometimes brutal apostrophes of the poets of our time, Japanese included. From an anonymous English troubadour: Ma très douce et très aimé. . . . Night and day for love of thee suspiro. From one of the greatest Japanese modern poets, Sakutaro Hagiwara (1888-1942): "Woman, with your breasts like rubber balls." Western poetry has suffered for many centuries from the influence of the courteous type of love of the Middle Ages, in which the woman was worshipped by the knight-poet who died from love for her. In this worshipping of the troubadour and kneeling before his belle, there is certainly a deep religious influence suggested by the ideal of the Virgin Mother. All the great epic poets invoked goddesses or women to give them inspiration. Venus, Beatrice, Dulcinea, and Eleanora are not only literary creations, but also sources of creative power; Milton's Muse has been identified by some critics with the feminine principle in the cosmic creation.

Denis de Rougemont, in his interesting book Love in the Western World, asserts that the religion of love has dominated the Western world until today, opposing love to life and pursuing passion to death. Its foremost expression is the myth of Tristan and Iseult—love is a "boundless desire." This idea appears in the tradition of courtly love in the great literary works of the Renaissance and of the Romantic Movement.

There is nothing similar to this feeling of worship and spiritual devotion in Japanese poetry. The woman was never an ideal. The social influence of woman with her position lower than man, and the Buddhist thought which confirmed this did not encourage poets to assign high places to women in their dreams. About this Tanizaki wrote:

Ancient Japanese court literature and the drama of the feudal ages, with Buddhism a strong and living force behind it, had its classical dignity, but with the Edo Shogunate and the decline of Buddhism even, that disappeared. While the dramatists and novelists of the Edo period were able to create soft, lovely women, women who were likely to dissolve in tears on a man's knee, they were quite unable to create the sort of woman a man would feel compelled, to kneel before.¹⁵

But this says too little. Love, as it was sung by the poets of the West, was unknown to the Far East. It is known that the very word for love could not be pronounced, in Japan, in polite company.

Lin Yutang wrote this:

The most singular contrast between Chinese and Western art is the difference in the source of inspiration, which is nature itself for the East and the female form for the West. . . . Whereas the Chinese painter symbolizes spring by a fat and well-shaped partridge, the Western painter symbolizes it by a dancing nymph with a faun chasing after her.¹⁶

Love in Chinese poetry is seldom if ever Platonic. Besides, the note of friendship is more frequent than in Western poetry; to this J. Y. Liu adds, "There are many Chinese poems by men professing affection for other men in terms which would, bring serious embarrassment if not public prosecution to an English poet."¹⁷ In Japan, said Junichiro Tanizaki, the "liberation of love is the most substantial influence we have received from Western literature.

In the Manyoshu, we find, love themes treated with fresh candour, hidden ardour, and conjugal attachment. We cannot find there the fire, the eloquent rapture, the maddening love known in Western poetry. Japanese lovers are never very outspoken, and they do not cultivate eloquence. On the other hand, there is a grace and fire in this reserve that has its own charm.

The prince of the poets of the Manyoshu is Hitomaro, surnamed Kakinomoto because as a child he was found under a persimmon tree by a warrior named Ayabe, When Ayabe asked the divinely beautiful child who he was, he answered; "No father or mother have I, but in the moon and the winds, and in poetry I find my joy." The following is one of his poems:

Tasokare to ware o na toi so	In this twilight of life ask not who I am
Nagatsuki no tsuyu ni nuretsutsu	Long time drenching in September dew
Kimi matsu ware o	For you waiting.

Conjugal love is frequently expressed with a quiet tenderness or with the nostalgia of separation that retains the fresh candour of young courtship days. Ladies are often more daring to speak of their flame. Here is a sample tanka by the Japanese lady poet who has the reputation of being the most ardent lover, Ono no Komachi. Her life inspired both ancient and modern Noh plays.

Yumeji niwa	On. the path of dreams
Asm mo yasumezu	My feet never cease running to you
Kayoe domo	But the vague dreams are not
Utsutsu ni hitome	Worth a glimpse
Mishi koto wa arazu	Of the real you.

Another tanka:

Hito ni awan	About the one I want to see
Tsuki no naki niwa	When there is no moonlight in the garden
Omoi okite	I think when I wake up
Mune hashiribi ni	My breast ablaze
Kokoro yake ori	My soul consuming itself in fire.

It is curious to note that the ladies declare their feeling more vividly than men, even when it is about the loss of the emperor, as in this longer poem:

Utsusemi shi kami ni taeneba	Mortal am I whom gods will not suffer
Hanareite asa nageku kimi	Separate each morning I lament you
Sakariite waga kouru kimi	Gone away I long for you
Tama notaba te ni makimochite	Were he a jewel that I could hold in my hand
Kinu naraba nugu toki mo naku	Were he a robe that I could never take off
Waga kouru kimi zo kizo no yo	The Lord whom I love so, last night
Yume ni mietsuru	In my dream could I see.

Concerning the phenomenon of more vibrant and less contained emotion in feminine poetry in Japan up to the present, one explanation is in the fact that women are allowed, by social morals and convention, to express a love that would be in the case of a man considered degrading to masculine pride and man's superiority.

The subject of love seems less attractive to Japanese poets than the beauty of nature, even in the more spontaneous classic anthologies of tanka. Among the twenty-six books of the Kokinshu, six are dedicated to nature and five to love. Many of the love poems are listed by the compilers as anonymous simply for the purpose of discretion.

SIGNIFICANCE OF JAPANESE LYRICISM IN WORLD POETRY

To conclude this chapter about classic poetry, we may say that in the rare cases in which old Japanese poets were not tied by the strict rules of tradition, they show a deep emotion, a high element of lyricism, a vehement strength, and a force and inspiration comparable to the best poetry of the West. We see it in the poetry of the Noh, which attains a force and eloquence unique in Japanese poetry. For mc, Motokiyo Zeami is the greatest poet of Japan. After Noh poetry, which goes back to the fifteenth century, we have to wait for the modern poets, inspired by the liberty enjoyed by their Western equals, to find a poetry of universal appeal both in its variety of themes and in its free form, rebellious against all the iron rules and inhibitions of the past. The ardent poems of Akiko Yosano have a strength, fervour, and inspired liberty that bring them into the class of the world's best poetry.

But on the whole when we consider Japanese classic poetry, even with its brevity and limited subject matter, we are moved and impressed by its immense production, by its beauty, and by the richness in the particular field that Japanese poets preferred to explore. Its most refined subtlety, its peculiar gift for deep suggestion and infinite gradation of shades represent a unique contribution to world poetry. Without Japanese classic poetry, one side of nature—its most delicate beauty—would still not be revealed.