Basho and Haiku Poetics

Abstract

To explain Basho’s art of haiku, Yone Noguchi, a noted bilingual poet and critic, once quoted “Furu Ike ya” (The Old Pond), perhaps the most frequently quoted haiku: “The old pond! / A frog leapt into— / List, the water sound!”¹ One may think a frog is an absurd poetic subject, but Basho focused his vision on a scene of desolation, an image of nature. The pond was perhaps situated on the premises of an ancient temple whose silence was suddenly broken by a frog plunging into the deep water. As Noguchi conceived the experience, Basho, a Zen Buddhist, was “supposed to awaken into enlightenment now when he heard the voice bursting out of voicelessness, and the conception that life and death were mere change of condition was deepened into faith” (Selected English Writings 2: 74). Basho was not suggesting that the tranquillity of the pond meant death or that the frog symbolized life. Basho here had the sensation of hearing the sound bursting out of soundlessness. A haiku is not a representation of goodness, truth, or beauty; there is nothing particularly good, true, or beautiful about a frog leaping into the water.