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Title: The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (Penguin Classics)
ISBN: 0140441859
Author:
Matsuo Basho
Publicate Date: 1967-02-28
Publish: 1967-02-28
List Price: $13.00
Average Customer Rating: 3.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $5.98
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $4.75
Amazon Merchant Price: $10.40
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1: Anything on Basho is great.
Anything on Basho is great. Even tought i can't agree with the author's choice of using a four line verse translation for the haiku. i think it gives a different rythm not intended. once you've read any three verse translation you'll know what i mean.
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2: Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home...
As an English teacher in Japan on and off for the past 20 years, I am always asked, on meeting new students, why I came to Japan. The answer, for me, is simple: this book. You see, as a college senior, I found myself drifting in no direction, with no roots or life plan. A slacker? Perhaps. But as I studied for my last final exam, I stood to ward off sleep, stretched, and wandered aimlessly through the library stacks until I found myself immersed, by chance mind you, in the Japanese poetry section. I took out the first volume I saw, Basho's classic Narrow Road to the Deep North: I was hooked from the first line.
Is this story important?
I think so. For, in all honesty, this "little book" changed my life - it really is THAT good!
Although this 17th century text is obstensibly a travel diary of prose poems and haiku gathered from Basho's peripatetic wanderings through nothern Tokugawa Era Japan, the "narrow road to the deep north" is merely a metaphor for our own, personal inward journey...and it was, for me, an epiphany. My dream, from that moment on was to move to Japan, study kanji, and ultimately read Narrow Road's original text. (Having accomplished my goal, I must admit I find this translation to be inferior to, say, The Narrow Road to Oku, translated by Donald Keene.)
Still, this penguin version (with a new cover, no less) remains a sentimental favorite, if for nothing else, its wonderfully clear, no nonesense approach to Basho.
Thus, I strongly recommend it for its psychological depth (belied by a disarming stark surface simplicity). I think that even readers with ZERO knowledge of Japan, haiku, or Buddhism (like me, years back) will find that Basho's profound and spare use of words strike - like a temple bell at dusk - at something deep inside, something universal.
Buy it today!
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3: Surprised...
This is a wonderful collection of travel sketches and poetry. Albeit, I was slightly disappointed in the translation and format. One who is used to the traditional 3 line haiku may have to relax their preconception of how a haiku should look. The other elements are there, except in an entry made by Basho himself whereas he noted that he'd neglected including a "season word." One would read this to relive the writer's journeys- the poetry, while closely associated with Basho, should be accepted as inspirations of the journey and not the reason for reading the collection.
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4: Seminal work marred by questionable translation
"Narrow Road to the Deep North" is one of the classics of Japanese literature, and a seminal work by Matsuo Basho, possibly Japan's greatest poet. A wandering spirit, he traveled across his home nation during a time when travel was dangerous, arduous, and almost impossible to the average citizen. Not only did he perfect his medium, the haiku, during his travels, but he also introduced the rare sights of Japan to his audience, painting a canvas of imagery that few would ever be able to see with their own eyes.
Unfortunately,this classic work is not fully realized in this translation. The translator, Nobuyuki Yuasa, is himself not a native speaker of English. Poetic translation is difficult under any circumstances, and when translating into a non-native language the task is made even more difficult. Yuasa makes use of fairly grandiose English words where Basho used simple language, and he attempts to fill in perceived gaps of foreign understanding with additional lines not included in the original. (Example: Basho's most famous poem includes the stanza "Mizu no oto" literally "The Sound of Water." Yuasa has given this as "A Deep Resonance" ) Yuasa also made use of a 4-stanza method of translating the haiku, which he defends in the introduction, but does not transfer the original intent of the form.
Unfortunately, the original Japanese versions of the haiku are not included, so a capable reader is not even able to attempt their own understanding.
Included in this single volume are several of Basho's travelogues, including "The Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton," "A Visit to Kashima Shrine," "The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel" and "A Visit to Sarasina Village." The works are heavily end-noted, to clarify culture terms and names of note. Unfortunately, this is another flaw in the volume, as the end-notes are often short, and checking them interrupts the flow of the tale. Foot-notes would have been a better choice.
For a more capable translation of Basho's poetry, see Makoto Ueda's biography "Matsuo Basho." Hopefully in the future a better translation of all of these wonderful and important travelogues will be issued.
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5: Unquenchable love of poetry
Basho's combination of prose and poetry is attractive indeed.
It contains excellent images:
'I wavered ceaselessly like a bat that passes for a bird at one time and for a mouse at another.'
'A thicket of summer grass is all that remains of the dreams and ambitions of ancient warriors.'
The author's goal is 'to obey nature, to be one with nature.'
His literary goal is 'l'art pour l'art': 'Whatever such a mind sees is a flower, and whatever such a mind dreams of is the moon. It is only a barbarous mind that sees other than flower, merely an animal mind that dreams of other than the moon.'
But he remains completely insensitive for real barbarous practices:
'I saw a child, hardly three years of age, crying pitifully on the bank, obviously abandoned by his parents. ... Alas, it seems to me that this child's undeserved suffering has been caused by something far greater and more massive - by what one might call the irresistible will of heaven.'
Besides abandoned children, there are also abandoned ageing mothers and drifting concubines. 'Their life was such that they had to drift along even as the white froth of waters that beat on the shore.'
The author's real belief is fatalism: the irresistible will of heaven and the eternal law.
These more or less innocent travel sketches are only for haiku aficionados.
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