Matsuo Bashō on the Journeyto the Interior of the Soul

When the Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō (1644—1694) set out from Tokyo in the late spring of 1689 on a trek to the sparsely populated north of Japan’s main island of Honshū (also called “Oku” – “Interior” or “Hinterland”), he was 46 years old and already famous among contemporaries as a master of “renku” poetry (also “haikai no renga” or “renga”), a precursor of the haiku verse form in which several poets take turns of producing their lines, thus completing the poem together.

It was to be Bashō’s third great journey, and there can be no doubt that he undertook it in the spirit of the “angya” (literally: “to walk”) – Zen Buddhist walking retreats in which, although the path (more precisely: each individual step) is as important as the destination, the wandering monk nevertheless never lingered long or even wandered aimlessly, but concentrated on completing a strict daily workload and heading for certain meaningful waypoints – for example, holy shrines, but also natural monuments. In 150 days, Matsuo Bashō covered a distance of 2,400 kilometers, an average of 16 kilometers a day, in sometimes impassable, snow-covered mountainous areas and in all weathers.

Matsuo Bashō described his trek through the north of the Honshū Peninsula in a famous travelogue entitled Oku no Hosomichi (“The Narrow Path to the Interior” or “The Narrow Road to the Hinterland”). Even before he set out, he had “dreamed of the full moon rising over the pine islands of Matsushima,” Bashō wrote in it. Indeed, for a sophisticated, established poet at the time, such an “angya” wandering trip offered another invaluable incentive: the opportunity for “uta-makura,” a special concept in Japanese poetry. Uta-makura referred to scenic “poem places” (such as the pine islands of Matsushima, which are ranked among the most beautiful landscapes in Japan) where earlier poets had composed famous verses, so that these places had found their way into classical Japanese literature. Many later poets imposed upon themselves the duty of making pilgrimages to these sites, emulating the poetic moods of their predecessors, and ultimately keeping the tradition alive through their own poems.

We find the reference to eternity right at the beginning of Oku no Hosomichi: “The days and months travel through eternity; they come and go like the years.” The opening quotation from above is a possible translation of the third part of the second sentence:

1. “[For] those who sail on ships over the water or ride on horses over the earth, …” (i.e. “[For] all travelers”)
2. “…every day is a journey, …” or “…the whole of life is a journey, …” or “…the journey is the whole of life, …”
3. “…and the journey itself its residence.” resp. “…and the journey itself its home.” resp. “…the journey is the home.”

An appropriate translation of the beginning of Oku no Hosomichi might thus be:

“The days and months travel through eternity; they come and go like the years. For those who spend their whole lives sailing the sea on ships or riding the earth on horses, the journey itself is life, the journey is their home.”

Die Art des Reisens, die Matsuo Basho zur Kunstform erklärt und zu vollenden versucht, ist jeder Art von stationärem Leben vorzuziehen. Was nicht vorzuziehen ist, ist irgendeine Art von Reisen. die sich schnell abnutzt, durch die man auslaugt, oder auch ganz einfach durch die man seine Humanität verliert oder nicht (wieder)findet. Matsuo Basho als humanistischer Reisender, als mitfühlender Reisender, als neugieriger Reisender, als ohne Eile Reisender, als überall Hinreisender, dem kein Ziel zu klein ist, wenn er dort nur einen Zuwachs an Humanität entweder in seinem eigenen Leben oder durch das Beispiel seines eigenen Lebens vermutet.

Wie Rebecca Solnit in A Field Guide to Getting Lost (2005) schreibt, ist das “Losgehen”, das “In die Fremde” oder “In die Irre gehen” genauso eine Kunst wie das “Wieder Heimkehren”, das “Zurückfinden”, neben die allerdings noch eine weitere Kunst tritt, nämlich das “im Unbekannten zu Hause zu sein, sodass man, wenn man sich mittendrin befindet, nicht in Panik ausbricht oder Schaden leidet: die Kunst, in der Irre zu Hause zu sein. Diese Fähigkeit ist vielleicht gar nicht so weit entfernt von Keats’ Fähigkeit, »das Ungewisse, die Mysterien, die Zweifel zu ertragen«.” Dieses Zitat des Dichters John Keats, auf das Rebecca Solnit verweist, passt exakt zum Geisteszustand Matsuo Bashōs, als dieser einige Jahrhundert zuvor “ohne alles aufgeregte Greifen nach Fakten und Verstandesgründen” (so Keats) das Ungewisse, die Mysterien und die Zweifel in seine eleganten, knappen Haikus überführte. ■