Matsuo Basho

Matsuo Basho: see Basho.

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Basho

 or Matsuo Basho orig. Matsuo Munefusa

(born 1644, Ueno, Iga province, Japan—died Nov. 28, 1694, Osaka) Japanese haiku poet, the greatest practitioner of the form. Following the Zen philosophy he studied, he attempted to compress the meaning of the world into the simple pattern of his poetry, disclosing hidden hopes in small things and showing the interdependence of all objects. His The Narrow Road to the Deep North (1694), a poetic prose travelogue, is one of the loveliest works of Japanese literature.

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Matsuo Basho 

(pen name; another pen name, Matsuo Munefusa; real name, Jinshichiro). Born 1644 in Ueno, Iga Province; died Oct. 12, 1694, in Osaka. Japanese poet and theoretician of verse.

Basho was the son of a samurai. In 1664 he began to study poetry in Kyoto. In 1672, Basho entered the civil service in Edo (present-day Tokyo); he later became a teacher of poetry. He gained recognition as a poet of the comic renga, or linked verse. Basho was the creator of the genre and aesthetics of haiku. In the 1680’s, following the philosophy of Zen Buddhism, Basho adopted the principle of illumination (satori) as the basis of his creative work.

Basho’s poetic legacy is represented by seven anthologies written by him and his pupils, namely, Winter Days (1684), Spring Days (1686), A Neglected Field (1689), The Bottle Gourd Pumpkin (1690), The Monkey’s Straw Coat (book 1, 1691; book 2, 1698), and A Sack of Coal (1694). He also wrote lyrical diaries in prose and verse (the most famous of these being The Narrow Road to the Deep North), as well as prefaces to books, poems, and letters, which contain his thoughts on art and poetic technique. Basho’s poetry and aesthetics influenced the development of Japanese literature in the Middle Ages and the modern period.

WORKS

Basho bunshu. Tokyo, 1969.
In Russian translation:
Lirika. Translated and with an introductory article by V. N. Markova. Moscow, 1964.

REFERENCES

Grigor’eva T., and V. Logunova. Iaponskaia literatura. Moscow, 1964.
Abe Kimio. Matsuo Basho. Tokyo, 1961.
Hirota Dziro. Basho no geidziutsu. Tokyo, 1968.
Makoto Uoda. Matsuo Basho. New York, 1970.

I. A. BORONINA