Basho
Basho
1. Where and when does Basho start his travels?
Basho's journey starts from a 17th Century Japanese city called Edo (present-day Tokyo). He had a cottage in a quiet, rural part of the city. He left Edo in the Spring season, " It was the Twenty-seventh Day, almost the end of the Third Month." (p. 2112)
2. Why does Basho start his travels?
Like many of us do, Basho was beginning to question the purpose of his existence. In comparison to what Dante was going through during the time he wrote the Inferno, Basho is having somewhat of a mid-life crisis.
" I myself fell prey to wanderlust some years ago, desiring nothing better than to be a vagrant cloud scudding before the wind... But the year ended before I knew it... Bewitched by the god of restlessness, I lost my peace of mind; summoned by the spirits of the road, I felt unable to settle down to anything."
Also, consider the political context surrounding Basho. He lives in an Imperialist society where material benefits are held on high and there is a huge gap between the social elite and the poor. At this point, Basho feels the world is out of balance. He sought an austere existence, lived in solitude and consecrated his life to poetry. The purpose of his travels was a "poetic devotion to nature." Also, for Basho, this pilgrimage through nature was a search for inspiration from places made famous by literature and history. This is an interesting parallel to Montaigne... but Basho actually visited the places he read about in books. At the beginning, he makes his point clearly "travel is life."
3. What is the role of the haiku poems in the text?
Basho takes these small little poems and places them throughout the text to tell the story of his travels. Each haiku tells the reader where Basho is, what he is doing and what is going on around him. Each poem expresses...
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