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Matsuo Basho (pseudonym) named Kinzaku at birth, Munefusa upon reaching adulthood; another name - Jinshichiro - a great Japanese poet, theorist of verse.

Born in 1644 in the small castle town of Ueno, Iga Province (Honshu Island). He died October 12, 1694 in Osaka.

The masters of the past worked so diligently on haikai poetry that they were able to compose only two or three haiku in a lifetime. It is easy for a beginner to copy nature - that is what they warn us against.

Basho Matsuo

Basho was born into a poor family of samurai Matsuo Yozaemon, was his third child. The father and elder brother of the future poet taught calligraphy at the courts of wealthier samurai, and already at home he received a good education. In his youth, he was fond of Chinese poets such as Du Fu. In those days, books were already available even to middle-class nobles. From 1664 he studied poetry in Kyoto. He was in the service of the noble and wealthy samurai Todo Yoshitada, after saying goodbye to whom, he went to Edo (now Tokyo), where he had been in the civil service since 1672. But the life of an official was unbearable for the poet, he became a teacher of poetry. Among his contemporaries, Matsuo gained fame primarily as a master of renga. Basho is the creator of the genre and aesthetics of haiku.

In the 1680s, Basho, guided by the philosophy of the Buddhist school of Zen, put the principle of “illumination” at the basis of his work. Basho's poetic heritage is represented by 7 anthologies created by him and his students: "Winter Days" (1684), "Spring Days" (1686), "Dead Field" (1689), "Gurd" (1690), "Straw Monkey Cloak "(book 1st, 1691, book 2nd, 1698), "A bag of coal" (1694), lyrical diaries written in prose combined with poetry (the most famous of them is "On the paths of the North"), as well as prefaces to books and poems, letters containing thoughts about art and views on the process of poetic creativity. Poetry and aesthetics of Basho influenced the development of Japanese literature of the Middle Ages and Modern times.

Foreword

At the end of the 17th century, a man of not the first youth and poor health wandered along the roads of Japan for many years, looking like a beggar. More than once, probably, the servants of some noble feudal lord drove him off the road, but not a single eminent prince of that time was awarded the posthumous glory that fell to this inconspicuous traveler, the great Japanese poet Basho.

Many artists lovingly painted the image of a wandering poet, and Basho himself knew how, like no one else, to look at himself with a sharp eye, from the side.

Here, leaning on a staff, he walks a mountain road in autumn bad weather. A shabby dressing gown made of thick, varnished paper, a cane cloak, straw sandals do not protect well from cold and rain. But the poet still finds the strength to smile:

The cold came along the way. At the bird's scarecrow, or something, In debt to ask for sleeves?

The most essential things are stored in a small travel bag: two or three favorite books of poetry, an ink pot, a flute. The head is covered by a hat, large as an umbrella, woven from cypress shavings. Like tendrils of ivy, the patterns of writing wind around its fields: travel notes, poems.

No road difficulties could stop Basho: he was shaking in the saddle in winter, when his very shadow "froze on the horse's back"; walked from steep to steep in the midst of the summer heat; he spent the night wherever he could - “on a pillow of grass”, in a mountain temple, in an unwelcome inn ... He happened to rest on the crest of a mountain pass, “beyond the far distance of the clouds”. The larks hovered under his feet, and there was still "half of the sky" to the end of the journey.

In his time, "aesthetic walks" in the bosom of nature were fashionable. But there is no way to compare them with Basho's wanderings. Road impressions served as building material for his creativity. He spared no effort - and even his very life - to get them. After each of his travels, a collection of poems appeared - a new milestone in the history of Japanese poetry. Basho's travel diaries in verse and prose are among the most remarkable monuments of Japanese literature.

In 1644, in the castle town of Ueno, Iga Province, the third child, a son, the future great poet Basho, was born to a poor samurai Matsuo Yozaemon.

When the boy grew up, he was given the name Munefusa instead of his previous childhood nicknames. Basho is a literary pseudonym, but he ousted all other names and nicknames of the poet from the memory of his descendants.

Iga Province was located in the very cradle of the old Japanese culture, in the center of the main island - Honshu. Many places in Basho's homeland are known for their beauty, and folk memory has preserved songs, legends and ancient customs there in abundance. The folk art of the province of Iga was also famous, where they knew how to make wonderful porcelain. The poet loved his homeland very much and often visited it in his declining years.

Wandering raven, look! Where is your old nest? Plum blossoms everywhere.

So he portrayed the feeling that a person experiences when he sees the house of his childhood after a long break. Everything that used to seem familiar is suddenly miraculously transformed, like an old tree in spring. The joy of recognition, the sudden comprehension of beauty, so familiar that you no longer notice it, is one of the most significant themes of Basho's poetry.

The poet's relatives were educated people, which presupposed, first of all, knowledge of the Chinese classics. Both father and elder brother supported themselves by teaching calligraphy. Such peaceful professions became the lot of many samurai at that time.

Medieval strife and civil strife, when a warrior could glorify himself with a feat of arms and win a high position with a sword, ended. The fields of great battles are overgrown with grass.

At the beginning of the 17th century, one of the feudal lords managed to take over the others and establish a strong central government in the country. For two and a half centuries, his descendants - the princes of the Tokugawa clan - ruled Japan (1603-1867). The residence of the supreme ruler was the city of Edo (now Tokyo). However, the capital was still called the city of Kyoto, where the emperor deprived of all power lived. Ancient music sounded at his court, and verses of the classical form (tanka) were composed at poetry tournaments.

The "pacification of the country" contributed to the growth of cities, the development of trade, crafts and art. Subsistence farming was still at the heart of the officially adopted way of life in the country, but at the end of the 17th century, money gained more power. And this new force imperiously invaded human destinies.

Huge wealth was concentrated in the hands of money changers, wholesalers, usurers, winemakers, while indescribable poverty reigned in the narrow streets of the suburbs. But, despite the difficulties of urban life, despite the poverty and overcrowding, the attractive force of the city was still very great.

During the years of Genroku (1688–1703), urban culture flourished. Simple household items became wonderful works of art in the hands of craftsmen. Carved charms, netsuke, screens, fans, caskets, guards of swords, colored engravings and much more, created in that era, now serve as decorations for museums. Inexpensive books with excellent illustrations, printed by woodcuts from carved wooden boards, came out in large circulations for that time. Merchants, apprentices, shopkeepers fell in love with novels, fashionable poetry and the theater.

A constellation of bright talents appeared in Japanese literature: in addition to Basho, it included the novelist Ihara Saikaku (1642–1693) and the playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653–1724). All of them, so different from each other - the deep and wise Basho, the ironic, earthly Saikaku and Chikamatsu Monzaemon, who reached a high intensity of passions in his plays - have something in common: they are related by the era. The townspeople loved life. From art, they demanded authenticity, accurate observations of life. Its very historical convention is increasingly permeated with realism.

Basho was twenty-eight years old when, in 1672, despite the persuasion and warnings of his relatives, he left the service in the house of a local feudal lord and, full of ambitious hopes, went to Edo with a volume of his poems.

By that time, Basho had already gained some fame as a poet. His poems were published in the capital's collections, he was invited to participate in poetry tournaments ...

Leaving his homeland, he attached to the gate of the house where his friend lived, a leaflet with verses:

cloud ridge I lay down between friends ... We said goodbye Migratory geese forever.

In the spring one wild goose flies to the north, where a new life awaits him; the other, saddened, remains in the old place. The poem breathes youthful romanticism, through the sadness of separation one feels the joy of flying into an unknown distance.

In Edo, the poet joined the followers of the Danrin school. They took material for their work from the life of the townspeople and, expanding their poetic vocabulary, did not shy away from so-called prosaisms. This school was innovative for its time. Poems written in Dunrine's style sounded fresh and free, but most of the time they were just genre pictures. Feeling the ideological limitations and thematic narrowness of contemporary Japanese poetry, Basho turned to classical Chinese poetry of the 8th-12th centuries in the early 1980s. In it, he found a broad concept of the universe and the place that a person occupies in it as a creator and thinker, a mature civil thought, a genuine power of feeling, an understanding of the high mission of the poet. Most of all, Basho loved the poems of the great Du Fu. We can talk about their direct influence on Basho's work.

He carefully studied both the philosophy of Zhuangzi (369-290 BC), rich in poetic images, and the Buddhist philosophy of the Zen sect, whose ideas had a great influence on Japanese medieval art.

Basho's life in Edo was difficult. With the help of some well-wishers, he got a job in the civil service in the department of construction of waterways, but soon left this position. He became a teacher of poetry, but his young students were rich only in talent. Only one of them, Sampu, the son of a wealthy fisherman, found a way to really help the poet: he persuaded his father to give Basho a small gatehouse near a small pond, which at one time served as a fish garden. Basho wrote about this: “For nine years I led a miserable life in the city and finally moved to the suburbs of Fukagawa. A man once said wisely: "The capital of Chang'an has been the center of fame and fortune since ancient times, but it is difficult for someone who has no money to live in it." I think so too, for I am a beggar.”

In poems written in the early 1980s, Basho liked to draw his wretched Banana Hut (Basho-an), so named because he planted banana palm saplings near it. He also depicted in detail the entire surrounding landscape: the swampy, reed-covered bank of the Sumida River, tea bushes, and a small dead pond. The hut stood on the outskirts of the city, in spring only the cries of frogs broke the silence. The poet adopted a new literary pseudonym "Living in the Banana Hut" and finally began to sign his poems simply Basho (Banana Tree).

Even water had to be bought in winter: “Water from a frozen jug is bitter,” he wrote. Basho acutely felt like an urban poor. But instead of hiding his poverty like others, he spoke of it with pride. Poverty became, as it were, a symbol of his spiritual independence.

Among the townspeople there was a strong spirit of acquisitiveness, petty-bourgeois hoarding, hoarding, but the merchants were not averse to providing patronage to those who knew how to amuse them. People of art very often were accustomed to money-bag merchants. There were such poets who composed hundreds and thousands of stanzas in one day and thereby created an easy glory for themselves. This was not the purpose of the poet Basho. He draws in his poems the ideal image of a free poet-philosopher, sensitive to beauty and indifferent to the blessings of life ... If the gourd, which served as a jug for rice grain in Basho's hut, is empty to the bottom, well, he will insert its flower into the neck!

But, indifferent to what others valued most, Basho treated his work with the greatest exactingness and care.

Basho's poems, despite the extreme laconism of their form, cannot in any way be regarded as fugitive impromptu. These are the fruits of not only inspiration, but also a lot of hard work. “The person who has created only three or five excellent poems in his whole life is a real poet,” Basho told one of his students. “The one who created ten is a wonderful master.”

Many poets, contemporaries of Basho, treated their work as a game. Basho's philosophical lyrics were a new phenomenon, unprecedented both in the seriousness of tone and in the depth of ideas. He had to create within traditional poetic forms (their inertia was very great), but he managed to breathe new life into these forms. In his era, he was valued as an unsurpassed master of "linked stanzas" ("renku") and three-line ("haiku"), but only the latter fully stood the test of time.

The form of a lyrical miniature demanded severe self-restraint from the poet, and at the same time, giving weight to each word, it allowed a lot to be said and even more to suggest to the reader, awakening his creative imagination. Japanese poetics took into account the counter work of the reader's thought. So the blow of the bow and the reciprocal trembling of the string together give rise to music.

Tanka is a very ancient form of Japanese poetry. Basho, who did not write tanka himself, was a great connoisseur of old anthologies. He especially loved the poet Saige, who lived as a hermit during the dark years of internecine wars in the 12th century. His poems are surprisingly simple and seem to come from the heart. Nature for Saige was the last refuge, where in a mountain hut he could mourn the death of friends and the misfortunes of the country. The tragic image of Saige all the time appears in Basho's poetry and, as it were, accompanies him in his wanderings, although the eras in which these poets lived and their social existence were very different.

Over time, the slipper began to be clearly divided into two stanzas. Sometimes they were composed by two different poets. It was a kind of poetic dialogue. It could be continued as long as you like, with any number of participants. This is how "linked stanzas" were born, a poetic form very popular in the Middle Ages.

In "linked stanzas" three-line and couplet alternated. By connecting them two by two, it was possible to get a complex stanza - five lines (tanka). There was no single plot in this long chain of poems. The ability to make an unexpected turn of the topic was appreciated; at the same time, each stanza echoed in the most complex way with its neighbors. So a stone taken out of a necklace is good on its own, but in combination with others it acquires a new, additional charm.

The first stanza was called haiku. Gradually, haiku became an independent poetic form, separated from the "linked stanzas", and gained immense popularity among the townspeople.

Basically, haiku is a lyrical poem about nature, in which the season is certainly indicated.

In Basho's poetry, the cycle of the seasons is a changeable, moving background, against which the complex spiritual life of a person and the inconstancy of human destiny are more clearly drawn.

An “ideal” landscape freed from everything rough - this is how the old classical poetry painted nature. In haiku, poetry regained its sight. A man in haiku is not static, he is given in motion: here a street peddler wanders through a whirlwind of snow, but here a worker turns a grain mill. The gulf that already in the 10th century lay between literary poetry and folk song became less wide. A raven pecking a snail in a rice field with its nose - this image is found both in haiku and in a folk song. Many village literates, as Basho testifies, fell in love with haiku.

In 1680, Basho created the original version of the famous poem in the history of Japanese poetry:

On a bare branch Raven sits alone. Autumn evening.

The poet returned to work on this poem for several years until he created the final text. That alone speaks to how hard Basho worked on every word. He renounces here the trickery, the play with formal devices, so valued by many of his contemporary masters of poetry, who, precisely for this, have created fame for themselves. The long years of apprenticeship were over. Basho finally found his way in art.

The poem looks like a monochrome ink drawing. Nothing superfluous, everything is extremely simple. With the help of a few skillfully chosen details, a picture of late autumn is created. There is a lack of wind, nature seems to freeze in sad immobility. The poetic image, it would seem, is a little outlined, but it has a large capacity and, bewitching, leads away. It seems that you are looking into the waters of the river, the bottom of which is very deep. At the same time, it is extremely specific. The poet depicted a real landscape near his hut and through it - his state of mind. He does not speak of the loneliness of the raven, but of his own.

The reader's imagination is left with a lot of scope. Together with the poet, he can experience a feeling of sadness inspired by autumn nature, or share with him a longing born of deeply personal experiences. If he is familiar with the Chinese classics, he can recall Du Fu's "Autumn Songs" and appreciate the peculiar skill of the Japanese poet. A person versed in the ancient philosophy of China (the teachings of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu) could be imbued with a contemplative mood and feel himself co-inherent in the innermost secrets of nature. To see the great in the small is one of the main ideas of Basho's poetry.

Basho put the aesthetic principle of "sabi" into the basis of the poetics he created. This word does not lend itself to literal translation. Its original meaning is "sorrow of loneliness". "Sabi", as a specific concept of beauty, defined the entire style of Japanese art in the Middle Ages. Beauty, according to this principle, had to express a complex content in simple, strict forms conducive to contemplation. Peace, dullness of colors, elegiac sadness, harmony achieved by meager means - such is the art of "sabi", calling for concentrated contemplation, for renunciation of everyday fuss.

"Sabi", as Basho widely interpreted it, absorbed the quintessence of classical Japanese aesthetics and philosophy and meant for him the same as "ideal love" for Dante and Petrarch! Communicating a sublime order to thoughts and feelings, "sabi" became a spring of poetry.

Poetics based on the principle of "sabi" found its fullest embodiment in five collections of poems created by Basho and his students in 1684-1691: "Winter Days", "Spring Days", "Dead Field", "Gourd" and Monkey's Straw Cloak (book one).

Despite its ideological depth, the “sabi” principle did not allow depicting the living beauty of the world in its entirety. Such a great artist as Basho was bound to feel this. The search for the hidden essence of each individual phenomenon became monotonously tedious. In addition, the philosophical lyrics of nature, according to the principle of "sabi", assigned a person only the role of a passive contemplator.

In the last years of his life, Basho proclaimed a new guiding principle of poetics - "karumi" (lightness). He told his students: "From now on, I strive for poems that are shallow, like the Sunagawa (Sandy River) River."

The words of the poet should not be taken too literally, rather they sound like a challenge to imitators who, blindly following ready-made models, began to compose verses in a multitude with a claim to thoughtfulness. Basho's later poems are by no means shallow, they are distinguished by high simplicity, because they speak of simple human affairs and feelings. Poems become light, transparent, fluid. They show subtle, kind humor, warm sympathy for people who has seen a lot, experienced a lot. The great humanist poet could not shut himself up in the conventional world of the sublime poetry of nature. Here is a picture from a peasant life:

perched a boy On the saddle, and the horse is waiting. Collect radish.

Here are the preparations for New Year's Eve:

Sweep the soot. For myself this time The carpenter gets along well.

In the subtext of these poems there is a sympathetic smile, and not a mockery, as happened with other poets. Basho does not allow himself any grotesque that distorts the image.

A monument to Basho's new style are two poetry collections: "A Bag of Coal" (1694) and "A Straw Monkey Cloak" (book two), published after Basho's death, in 1698.

The creative manner of the poet was not constant; it changed several times in accordance with his spiritual growth. Basho's poetry is a chronicle of his life. An attentive reader, rereading Basho's poems, each time discovers something new for himself.

This is one of the remarkable properties of truly great poetry.

A significant part of Basho's poems are the fruits of his travel thoughts. Many poems, full of piercing power, are dedicated to dead friends. There are poems for the occasion (and some of them are excellent): in praise of the hospitable host, as a token of gratitude for the gift sent, invitations to friends, captions for paintings. Little madrigals, tiny elegies, but how much they say! How one can hear in them a thirst for human participation, a request not to forget, not to hurt with offensive indifference! More than once the poet abandoned his too forgetful friends, locked the door of the hut in order to quickly open it again.

“Hokku cannot be made up of different pieces, as you did,” Basho told his student. “It must be forged like gold.” Each poem by Basho is a harmonious whole, all elements of which are subordinated to a single task: to express the poetic thought most fully.

Basho created five travel diaries written in lyrical prose interspersed with poetry: "Bones Whitening in the Field", "Journey to Kashima", "Letters of a Wandering Poet", "Sarashin's Journey Diary" and the most famous - "On the Paths of the North" Lyric prose his is marked by features of the same style as haiku: it combines elegance with "prosaism" and even the vulgarity of many expressions, is extremely laconic and rich in hidden emotional overtones. And in it, too, as in poetry, Basho combined fidelity to ancient traditions with the ability to see life in a new way.

In the winter of 1682, a fire destroyed much of Edo, and Basho's Banana Hut burned down. This, as he himself says, gave the final impetus to the decision that had long matured in him to go wandering. In the autumn of 1684, he left Edo, accompanied by one of his students. Ten years with few breaks. Basho traveled around Japan. Sometimes he returned to Edo, where his friends built his Banana Hut. But soon he was again, "like an obedient cloud", carried away by the wind of wanderings. He died in the city of Osaka, surrounded by his disciples.

Basho walked along the roads of Japan as an ambassador of poetry itself, kindling love for it in people and introducing them to genuine art. He knew how to find and awaken a creative gift even in a professional beggar. Basho sometimes penetrated into the very depths of the mountains, where “no one will pick up the fallen fruit of a wild chestnut from the ground,” but, appreciating solitude, he was never a hermit. In his wanderings, he did not run away from people, but approached them. Peasants doing field work, horse drivers, fishermen, tea leaf pickers pass in a long line in his poems.

Basho captured their keen love for beauty. The peasant straightens his back for a moment to admire the full moon or listen to the cry of the cuckoo so beloved in Japan. Sometimes Basho depicts nature in the perception of a peasant, as if identifying himself with him. He rejoices in the thick ears in the field or worries that the early rains will spoil the straw. Deep participation in people, a subtle understanding of their spiritual world is one of the best qualities of Basho as a humanist poet. That is why in different parts of the country, as a holiday, they were waiting for his arrival.

With amazing fortitude, Basho strove for the big goal he had set for himself. Poetry was in decline in his time, and he felt called to raise it to the level of high art. The wandering road became Basho's creative workshop. New poetry could not be created, locked in four walls.

"The great teacher from the South Mountain" once commanded: "Do not follow in the footsteps of the ancients, but look for what they were looking for." This is also true for poetry,” Basho expressed such an idea in his parting words to one of his students. In other words, in order to become like the poets of antiquity, it was necessary not only to imitate them, but to go through their path anew, to see what they saw, to be infected by their creative excitement, but to write in their own way.

The lyric poetry of Japan has traditionally sung about nature, such as the beauty of the hagi bush. In autumn, its thin flexible branches are covered with white and pink flowers. Admiring the hagi flowers - this was the subject of the poem in the old days. But listen to what Basho says about the lone traveler in the field:

Wet, walking in the rain... But this traveler is also worthy of a song, Not only hagi in bloom.

The images of nature in Basho's poetry very often have a secondary plan, speaking allegorically about a person and his life. Scarlet pepper, green chestnut shell in autumn, plum tree in winter are symbols of the invincibility of the human spirit. An octopus in a trap, a sleeping cicada on a leaf, carried away by a stream of water - in these images the poet expressed his sense of the fragility of being, his reflections on the tragedy of human fate.

Many of Basho's poems are inspired by traditions, legends and fairy tales. His understanding of beauty had deep folk roots.

Basho was characterized by a feeling of the indissoluble unity of nature and man, and behind the shoulders of the people of his time, he always felt the breath of a huge history going back centuries. In it he found solid ground for art.

In the era of Basho, life was very difficult for ordinary people both in the city and in the countryside. The poet has witnessed many disasters. He saw children abandoned to certain death by impoverished parents. At the very beginning of the diary "Bones Whitening in the Field" there is this entry:

“Near the Fuji River, I heard an abandoned child crying plaintively, about three years old. He was carried away by a swift current, and he did not have the strength to endure the onslaught of the waves of our mournful world. Abandoned, he grieves for his loved ones, while life still glimmers in him, flying like a dewdrop. O little bush of haga, will you fly over tonight or will you wither tomorrow? As I passed, I tossed some food from my sleeve to the child.

You are sad, listening to the cry of the monkeys, Do you know how a child cries Abandoned in the autumn wind?

The son of his time, Basho, however, goes on to say that no one is to blame for the death of the child, as the decree of heaven predetermined. "Man is in the grip of a formidable fate" - such a concept of human life inevitably gave rise to a feeling of insecurity, loneliness, and sadness. Contemporary progressive writer and literary critic Takakura Teru notes:

“In my opinion, the new literature of Japan begins with Basho. It was he who most sharply, with the greatest pain, expressed the suffering of the Japanese people, which fell to his lot in the era of transition from the Middle Ages to the new time.

The sadness resounding in many of Basho's poems had not only philosophical and religious roots, and was not only an echo of his personal fate. Basho's poetry expressed the tragedy of the transitional era, one of the most significant in the history of Japan, and therefore was close and understandable to his contemporaries.

Basho's work is so multifaceted that it is difficult to reduce it to one denominator. He himself called himself a "sad man", but he was also a great lover of life. The joy of a sudden meeting with the beautiful, cheerful games with children, vivid sketches of everyday life and customs - with what spiritual generosity the poet squanders more and more colors to depict the world! At the end of his life, Basho came to that wise and enlightened beauty, which is available only to a great master.

The poetic legacy left by Matsuo Basho includes haiku and "linked stanzas". Among his prose writings are diaries, prefaces to books and individual poems, and letters. They contain many of Basho's thoughts on art. In addition, the students recorded his conversations with them. In these conversations, Basho appears as a peculiar and deep thinker.

He founded a school that revolutionized Japanese poetry. Among his students were such highly gifted poets as Kikaku, Ransetsu, Joso, Kyosai, Sampu, Shiko.

There is no Japanese who does not know by heart at least a few of Basho's poems. There are new editions of his poems, new books about his work. The great poet over the years does not leave his descendants, but approaches them.

The lyric poetry of haiku (or haiku) is still loved, popular and continues to develop, the actual creator of which was Basho.

When reading Basho's poems, one thing should be remembered: they are all short, but in each of them the poet was looking for a way from heart to heart.

(real name Jinshichiro, 1644-1694) - a poet, a native of poor samurai. His name is associated with the appearance of the Japanese three-line haiku. Studied Japanese and Chinese poetry, philosophy. He gave particular preference to the Chinese poet Du Fu and the Japanese hermit poet Saiga, with whom he felt a spiritual kinship. Traveled a lot. His literary heritage is represented mainly by landscape lyrics and lyrical diaries (the best of them is « » , 1689). He created a literary school that revolutionized Japanese poetry: the “Base style” reigned for almost 200 years. Among his students are such talented poets as, and others. He laid the basis of the poetics he created sabi principle, based on concentrated contemplation, detachment from everyday bustle. His philosophical lyrics were a new phenomenon, unprecedented both in the seriousness of tone and in the depth of ideas. Basho's poetic principles found their most complete embodiment in five collections of poems created by him and his students in 1684-1691: "Winter Days", "Spring Days", "Dead Field", "Gourd Gourd", "Monkey's Straw Cape"(book one). In the last years of his life, he proclaimed a new guiding principle - karumi (lightness, grace).

Despite his wide popularity, many students and followers, Basho was extremely poor. Only one of the students, Sampu, the son of a wealthy fishmonger, was able to help the poet: he persuaded his father to donate a small hut near a small pond. Basho planted banana palm seedlings near it, from which the name of the poet's dwelling came - "Banana Hut", and later his literary pseudonym - "Living in the Banana Shack" or simply "Banana Tree". As D. Shiveli noted, “... he felt a special spiritual kinship with a banana tree, which, like himself, was lonely and defenseless, bent under the storms of this world. It symbolized the fragility and transience of his own life as he liked to describe it.

The last ten years of his life, after the fire that destroyed the Banana Hut, Basho spent wandering. He died in Osaka, surrounded by students.

Developed by Basho during the life of the poet, he gained extraordinary popularity: in Japan haiku even peasants composed, clubs of haiku lovers were organized, competitions of haikaists were organized. In the XX century. haiku craze crossed the borders of Japan. Today, amateurs from around the world take part in the annual competitions for the best three-verse.

Matsuo Basho (pseudonym) named Kinzaku at birth, Munefusa upon reaching adulthood; another name - Jinshichiro - a great Japanese poet, theorist of verse.

Born in 1644 in the small castle town of Ueno, Iga Province (Honshu Island). He died October 12, 1694 in Osaka.

Basho was born into a poor family of samurai Matsuo Yozaemon, was his third child. The father and elder brother of the future poet taught calligraphy at the courts of wealthier samurai, and already at home he received a good education. In his youth, he was fond of Chinese poets such as Du Fu. In those days, books were already available even to middle-class nobles. From 1664 he studied poetry in Kyoto. He was in the service of the noble and wealthy samurai Todo Yoshitada, after saying goodbye to whom, he went to Edo (now Tokyo), where he had been in the civil service since 1672. But the life of an official was unbearable for the poet, he became a teacher of poetry. Among his contemporaries, Matsuo gained fame primarily as a master of renga. Basho is the creator of the genre and aesthetics of haiku.

In the 1680s, Basho, guided by the philosophy of the Buddhist school of Zen, put the principle of “illumination” at the basis of his work. Basho's poetic heritage is represented by 7 anthologies created by him and his students: "Winter Days" (1684), "Spring Days" (1686), "Dead Field" (1689), "Gurd" (1690), "Straw Monkey Cloak "(book 1st, 1691, book 2nd, 1698), "A bag of coal" (1694), lyrical diaries written in prose combined with poetry (the most famous of them is "On the paths of the North"), as well as prefaces to books and poems, letters containing thoughts about art and views on the process of poetic creativity. Poetry and aesthetics of Basho influenced the development of Japanese literature of the Middle Ages and Modern times.

A crater on Mercury is named after Basho.

Biography
Basho, Matsuo (1644-1694) - samurai from Ueno, Iga province. Later a haikai teacher, founder of the Basho Haikai School.
Matsuo Basho (pseudonym; another pseudonym is Munefusa; real name is Jinshichiro) (1644, Ueno, Iga Province, - 10/12/1694, Osaka), Japanese poet, verse theorist. Born into a samurai family. From 1664 he studied poetry in Kyoto. He was in the public service from 1672 in Edo (now Tokyo), then a teacher of poetry. Gained fame as a poet of comic rank. Matsuo Basho is the creator of the genre and aesthetics of haiku. In the 80s, Matsuo Basho, guided by the philosophy of the Buddhist sect Zen, put the principle of "enlightenment" as the basis of his work. Basho's poetic heritage is represented by 7 anthologies created by him and his students: Winter Days (1684), Spring Days (1686), Dead Field (1689), Gourd Gourd (1690), Monkey's Straw Cloak "(book 1st, 1691, book 2nd, 1698), "A bag of coal" (1694), lyrical diaries written in prose in combination with poetry (the most famous of them is "On the paths of the North"), as well as prefaces to books and poems, letters containing thoughts about art and views on the process of poetic creativity. Poetry and aesthetics of Matsuo Basho influenced the development of Japanese literature of the Middle Ages and modern times.
(Great Soviet Encyclopedia)

MATSUO Basho (real name - Munefusa, 1644-1694) - a great Japanese poet who played an important role in the development of the haikai poetic genre.
Basho was born in the province of Iga, in the central part of the island of Honshu, in a poor samurai family, as a child he received a good education. In 1672 he left his native place and settled in Edo (modern Tokyo), where he joined one of the leading poetic schools of that time - Danrin. In an effort to go beyond the principles of this school, whose adherents considered haikai poetry somewhat simplistically, he turned to Chinese literature and philosophy. He was close to the Buddhist sect Zen, which had a significant impact on his work. He enjoyed great prestige during his lifetime and had many students.
For a long time Basho lived on the outskirts of Edo - Furukawa, in a hut given to him by Sampu, one of his students. A banana (basho) was planted next to this hut, so the hut was named Banana (basho-an), hence the poet's pseudonym.
Basho traveled a lot around the country, participating in the composition of "strung stanzas" (haikai no renga). But he received the greatest recognition as a master of three-verses (haiku), which by that time had become an independent poetic genre.
The name of Basho is associated with the greatest transformations in haikai poetry, which, thanks to his efforts, gradually turned from purely playful, half-joking poetry into high poetic art. Basho developed the poetics of haikai, putting forward such fundamental principles as fuekiryuko (variability of the unchanging), sabi (noble sadness, patina), hosomi (refinement), karumi (lightness). He left no poetic treatises behind him, but many of his thoughts were written down by his students.
In addition to numerous three-line poems, his literary heritage includes essays (haibun) and travel diaries (kikobun), the most famous of which is the diary "Oku no hosomichi" ("On the paths of the North").