Customer Reviews

The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (Penguin Classics)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

With the pressures and obligations that are present in today's fast paced world, it is important to enjoy life in all of its simplicity.

The master Haiku poet, Basho, lived in Japan during the late 1600's. Born into a noble class, he felt his life was more fulfilled living as a simple peasant. Valued for his inability to distinguish the difference between economic barriers, he was well respected and highly sought after as a teacher.

The 1000 Mile Pilgrimage

Travel and nature were very much a part of his life. During the spring of his 46th year, Basho set off on a 1,000 mile pilgrimage. Travelling by horse and on foot, he bathed in cool streams and rested in fragrant meadows. His amazing journeys are recorded in several journals and haiku collections called Back Roads to Far Towns and The Narrow Road to the Deep North. His philosophy was simple. Everything he needed to know about life was learned from nature

When he came upon a little violet hiding shyly in the grass on a mountain pathway, it whispered it's secret to him. "Modesty, gentleness and simplicity," it said, "these are truly beautiful things." Glistening drops of dew on a flower had words of wisdom for him as well, "Purity is the loveliest thing in life", they said. Basho once wrote, "Real poetry is to lead a beautiful life. To live poetry is better than to write it".

Everyone who reads Basho's words will take away something different. Enjoying nature, the ability to look beyond social boundaries and living a simple life make Basho's writing an encouraging and pleasant way to meditate on what life has to offer.

"The months and days are wayfarers of a hundred generations, and the years that come and go are also travelers. Those who float all of their lives on a boat, or reach their old age leading a horse by the bit make travel out of each day, and out of each day their life is made." ....Basho

Poetry translation is a thankless task, and in the final analysis it is rarely successful. Even when it is successful, it is usually for the wrong reasons. Lessing's translations of Shakespeare into German are a case in point; they are something of a minor classic in German literature, but that's because Lessing was a good poet himself. That doesn't mean that his translations are faithful.

Oriental poetry in English has a similar fate. We are used to accepting translations of Chinese poetry into blank verse, which is the last thing it resembles structurally in Chinese. However, it is true that the sentiment that we expect in blank verse tends to resemble the sentiments expressed in Chinese poetry, although it would be a mistake to carry that too far.

Then there is haiku, of which Basho is probably the greatest master. We all think we know what haiku is supposed to be - seventeen syllables (5-7-5), no rhyme, and a "surprise" at the end. This has become so familiar that the haiku has actually become a genre in English poetry. It doesn't take into account the almost stream-of-consciousness sensibility that haiku normally express in Japanese, and it can't, due to the limitations on what is acceptable sentence structure in English.

What I feel Mr. Yuasa achieved in his translation was to bring some of the Japanese sensibility of wabi and sabi into Basho's work, not by his translations of the poems themselves, but in his translation of Basho's commentary. This was a stroke of genius on his part. Anybody who has attempted translations of haiku feels the frustration of not being able to convey the atmosphere inherent in the poems; after all, there's only so much you can do with seventeen syllables! By letting the intimate loveliness of Basho's own commentary shine through, he provides a proper setting for the poems themselves. An excellent bit of work.

I periodically re-read this book as a reminder that all one truly "has" in life is one's experience. In his mastery of haiku Basho pares life down to one's experience and response to the present moment. In his travels it is not the destination that is important but the journey itself, an evocation of the transience of life.

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!

"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.

A book with five autobiographical travels, three of them being his expectant last journey of life, with required farwell party etc., of Basho with haiku injected by the author, his traveling companions, or persons met along the way. It was quite an interesting read on culture and the way of life in Japan during Basho's day. The book was satisfying and interesting as a travel journal and for a taste of Basho's personality and of the cultural mores of Japanese feudal society. A sense of the Japanese appreciation of nature and of symbols in nature was also conveyed. Haiku seems to embody something beyond words, natural symbols that we observe everyday captured; a sometimes great ineffable meaning in the mundane.

Some of the poetry was good, as far as the translation communicated, however quite a lot also seemed lost in translation that might have been expounded upon. Yuasa Noboyuki, the translator, and writer of the forward, might have done better by talking about these difficulties and that might have brought some light to many of the haikus. The translating haiku with all of the original sense is almost impossible, so I have been told. I also have been told that Ezra Pound expounded, someplace, on just how impossible translating haiku into English is. Noboyuki might have done better to expound on his difficulties translating Japanese haiku into English and his futile attempts to convey the totality of the haiku, which could have raised the vibrancy of some of them; it was vague effort that he included in talking about this aspect.

The poems were charming, as were the autobiographical travel stories of Basho. A good read.

Tension. We all feel it, though for many different reasons. Sometimes it's as if we're caught between two worlds, being pulled in different directions by different aspects of our lives, of our selves. Basho felt it, too, I think, which was one of the reasons he took to the road, leaving hearth and home for weeks, even months at a time, travelling around Japan in search of history, beauty, poetry, and himself.

As a travel narrative the book excels, describing, as Basho himself states, all the unique and arresting things he has encountered while omitting a bland historic report of every person and place he saw. The result is a dreamlike narrative, bouncing from rainy nights spent in temples to the solitude of a moonlit beach. He never sacrifices clarity for style, though. In fact, the raw, physical immediacy of his poetry is what struck me most my first time (and so far only) time through. The prose, too, is excellent, conveying his thoughts on art, his musings on Buddhism, and describing scenes with nearly as much flavor as the poetry.

My one problem with this text has more to do with the translation. I am not an expert on the Japanese language, but some of the terms employed seem a little loaded to an English reader, making me wonder whether Basho really meant some of the implications of the English words. In addition, as other reviewers have noted, the poems lose a lot in translation, including much of what makes haiku such an interesting form.

Granted, these are problems with any translation of poetry, but I still feel unsatisfied with this translation in a way I am not with other translations from Japanese. Perhaps it is a problem with the translation, or perhaps I find Basho so amazing that I just want his text to shine completely unhindered by the problems of my language.

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.

Author: Matsuo Basho
Title: The narrow road to the deep north
Time: 1689
Destination: Japan
Length: a half year
Type: walking
Rating: 9/10
The poet

[please note: I have been reading an English translation of this book.]

The story: MB is a Haiku poet of the Japanese Edo-period who likes to wander about and write poetry in the process. He takes long solo hikes or goes on treks with friends, sometimes in order to experience the wilderness and sometimes in order to find a certain shrine or a temple.

This book is a collection of short travelogues from several of MB's journeys. He writes in a very poetic voice (at least that's what the English translation suggests), and not only is he a very keen observer of his environment, but also of himself and his own motivations:

"My only mundane concerns were whether I would be able to find a suitable place to sleep at night and whether the straw sandals were the right size for my feet. Every turn of the road brought me new thoughts and every sunrise gave me fresh emotions."

Isn't it magical how we can relate to the feelings of a person who used to live more than 300 years ago?

I liked this book a lot. It's a 9/10.

The Japanese poet Basho is one of the great poets in history but is little known in the West. That is a shame. This small book is well worth reading and the Introduction makes it intelligible for Western people. To really appreciate it you should read it slowly and try to absorb the deeper meaning.