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The Art of Bashō; Tuesday, Second Period [05/30].
Tuesday, May 30th, 2023 04:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sake_shinigamiGathered once again underneath the tree by the pond in the park, the students would find, in addition to the usual offering of tea, a small stack of books, which Shunsui encouraged them to take once they had settled into their spots.
"Ohayô, my intrepid poetry lovers ♥," he greeted with a smile, a nod, and a gesture toward the books now hopefully in their hands. "Today, we take another step forward on the journey of Bashō, or, perhaps more accurately, a step back, for while Bashō gained his acclaim through his travelogues as we discussed last week, what you hold in your hands now is a copy of his first published work, which isn't a book of his poetry at all, but rather an anthology of poems from a contest in which he judged, published in 1672. Kai Ōi, or The Seashell Game, is a compilation of sixty haiku by thirty-six poets, although only two are by Bashō himself ♥. The entire premise is based on a children's game, wherein two seashells are placed beside each other and compared, just as Bashō takes two poems and compares them, and determines which he finds to be the superior one. One of the best known examples can be found on the pages marked in your books, so let's have a look, at two poems about the color of autumn leaves:
"Our first, from the poet Sanboku:
How like it is to
A midwife's right hand–
Crimson maple leaf!
"And our second, from the poet Dasoku:
I haven't crimsoned.
Come and look!" So says the dew
On an oak branch
"And then, as you can see, a commentary from Bashō follows, wherein he essentially declares the first poem the finer of the two, by 'thousands of leagues.' Which begs the question: do you agree with Bashō on his assessment ♥? What do you think might be his reasoning? We can talk about some of the selections and decisions made in Kai Ōi, and then, of course, perhaps we'll do a little bit of a seashell game of our own ♥."
"Ohayô, my intrepid poetry lovers ♥," he greeted with a smile, a nod, and a gesture toward the books now hopefully in their hands. "Today, we take another step forward on the journey of Bashō, or, perhaps more accurately, a step back, for while Bashō gained his acclaim through his travelogues as we discussed last week, what you hold in your hands now is a copy of his first published work, which isn't a book of his poetry at all, but rather an anthology of poems from a contest in which he judged, published in 1672. Kai Ōi, or The Seashell Game, is a compilation of sixty haiku by thirty-six poets, although only two are by Bashō himself ♥. The entire premise is based on a children's game, wherein two seashells are placed beside each other and compared, just as Bashō takes two poems and compares them, and determines which he finds to be the superior one. One of the best known examples can be found on the pages marked in your books, so let's have a look, at two poems about the color of autumn leaves:
"Our first, from the poet Sanboku:
How like it is to
A midwife's right hand–
Crimson maple leaf!
"And our second, from the poet Dasoku:
I haven't crimsoned.
Come and look!" So says the dew
On an oak branch
"And then, as you can see, a commentary from Bashō follows, wherein he essentially declares the first poem the finer of the two, by 'thousands of leagues.' Which begs the question: do you agree with Bashō on his assessment ♥? What do you think might be his reasoning? We can talk about some of the selections and decisions made in Kai Ōi, and then, of course, perhaps we'll do a little bit of a seashell game of our own ♥."