0011 How Rilke Might Have Translated Bashó On Poetry Poem by Michael Shepherd

Be solitary.
Love solitude, and don’t look for poetry;
don’t seek what former poets sought;
see what is still and changeless;
see also what is changing;
be filled with the true nature of things – mountains, rivers, trees, grasses, falling blossoms, the scattering leaves,
and, yes, humanity too, its true nature –
and the universe will become your companion.
So your solitude will be full of the universe;
and you will watch, unmoved, the reality
and the vacuity of the world.

Concentrate your thoughts, in solitude,
on an object, on each object;
in this concentration,
the space between oneself and the object will disappear,
and the essential nature of the object can be perceived.

Then be quick to express it, while it lives for you;
say quickly what is in your mind;
as a woodcutter fells a tree, or
a swordsman leaps at his enemy, or
as you cut a ripe watermelon with a sharp knife,
or take a large bite at a pear;
this immediacy will be the life of your poem,
for nature will write the poem for you.

The language may be untrue;
but it will live with the truth.

You may feel that writing so quickly,
you may always fail; but pay no attention;
know no other thing than writing poetry;
let it make you penniless, if that is
what it needs, to speak itself.

Then, in your solitude,
which is so full of everything,
the poetic spirit will lead you wherever you must go,
make you a friend of nature,
and every form of existence will reveal
its individual feelings to you –
which are similar to those of men;
and all things, you will know, have their fulfilment.

In this solitude, your mind will be undistracted;
and then, enlightened by nature itself,
you may return to the world,
with a lightness of being, and poems
as light as looking
at the sandy bed of a shallow river;

as a tree untouched by the axe,
seemingly useless,
vulnerable to wind and rain,
at ease in itself.
Like a poet.



(This text is Bashó's advice to a poet. But the medieval Japanese poet and the modern European poet seem to be so close in their search for essence, for being, that some of Bashó's phrases have the same ring as Rilke's own advice to a young poet. I have tried to bring this out discreetly..)