しにもせぬ旅寝の果よ秋の暮
I didn't die
at the end of sleeping on my journey --
autumn twilight
たびねして我が句をしれや秋の風
sleeping on a journey
know my verses!
autumn wind
The first verse is included in the main text of Nozarashi kikô, when Bashô arrives at Ôgaki. The second one is only in the preface to the Nakagawa Jokushi 中川濁子 illustrated version. There's a handwritten comment by Bashô in the Sodô preface:
この一巻は必ず記行の式にもあらず、ただ山橋野店の風景、一念一動を記すのみ。ここに中川氏濁子、丹青をしてその形容を補はしむ。他見恥づべきものなり。I'm wondering about the fervor for travel, and its association with fûga. All of the verses and scenes in Nozarashi kikô, especially the ones up to Ôgaki, are very dramatic, very tragic. It's as if he's viewing the landscape through various filters: often it's Chinese poetry, or Saigyô's; he also links what he sees to Buddhist teaching. After Atsuta, the text is nearly all just hokku, the prose appearing alongside just like the short prefaces one often finds in hokku anthologies.
This journal doesn't necessarily follow the form of my trips. It's just to give a sense of the scenery of "mountains, bridges, fields, and shops," recorded in an evocative way. Here Mr. Nakagawa Dokushi has kindly supplemented the my outlines with his own finer colors. I should be embarrassed that others look at it.
In other words, it's strikingly different from Narrow road to the interior. Both, obviously, are fictionalized travelogues. And being the first of many, it's fair enough that it's kind of short and choppy, sort of a rehearsal. Kashima journey, the one that follows it chronologically, is similar: short, mostly verse towards the end.
So it's interesting that Buson chose Nozarashi kikô as a subject in the first place. As Yayoshi and others point out, there are lots of Buson versions of Narrow road to the interior, and only one of Nozarashi kikô, and while there's no definitive proof that this one was the only one Buson ever did, it's probably safe to assume that there was more of a demand for Narrow road to the interior paintings.
I'm thinking about the association that Ogata and Yamashita make with Bashô's commencement of his "definitive Bashô style" with his late-life production of travel journals. Was it that travel, and its potential for realizing the idealized "free-and-easy" lifestyle that poets of old were imagined to have, compelled Bashô to take his show on the road, and chronicle it later? Was it that after having undertaken these journeys to visit disciples (and establish relationships with new disciples), Bashô was then obligated to thank them by including them (or verses acknowledging them) in narratives?
The latter idea is a realistic if a bit dull, I guess. The former is more aesthetic, and would clearly appeal to Bashô Revival poets, and anyone itching to transcend the mundane aspects of working life. Pragmatism and art being the obverse and reverse, as usual. Buson would certainly have appreciated that.
*芭蕉と蕪村の世界 (World of Bashô and Buson) by Yamashita Kazumi 山下一海 (Musashino shoin 1994).
