Two commentaries on poetry is found in the single
quote below which I found in a book by Robert Hass
called "The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho,
Buson, and Issa" in the chapter called 'A Note on
Haikai, Hokku, and Haiku'.
"Here is how another fourteenth-century treatise
puts it: '...contemplating deeply the vicissitudes of
the life of man and body,k always keep in your heart
the image of mujo (ephemerality), and when you go to
the mountains or the sea, feel the pathos (aware) of
the karma of sentient beings and non-sentient things.
Give feeling to those things without a heart and
through your own heart express their beauty in a
delicate form. Through the four seasons of the plants
and trees, feel the truth of -swirling petals and
falling leaves,- being enlightened by the changes of
birth, old age, illness, and death...' (Gary Ebersole,
'Matsuo Basho and the Way of Poetry in the Japanese
Religious Tradition,' pp. 514-15). This connects to
and in some way clarifies the sources of Basho's
attitude in the more practical instruction he gave his
students two hundred years later: 'In kasen
{thirty-six-verse poem} there should be no desire to
retrace even one step. As the series progresses, it
brings renewal to our hearts, and this is only because
of the consciousness that does not look back, that
pushes the movement forward."
SA commentary:
From this passage above, I see how renga is not
to be a story, but a fluid, changing, dynamic,
ever-fluxing poem naturally shifting. This links with
how haiku became a word taken from haikai (means
'sportive' or playful') and hokku (which is the first
verse in the renga).
red and yellow leaves,
SA
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