OSHER 109 - Basho: Poet of the Seasons

Basho is a celebrated 17th century Japanese poet. He was devoted to the burgeoning genre of hokku, the direct ancestor of today's haiku. The hokku characteristically had a seasonal theme, like today's haiku. This course will focus on the hokku and examine how Basho treated seasonal motifs, jewels in the rhythmic passage of time in nature. It will be a joint exploration, a field work, in one of the literary cultures of the world, and in a mode of experiencing nature in that culture. Basho wrote in Classical Japanese, but no knowledge of that language is required, nor any previous acquaintance with his poetry. Instructor Yukio Kachi hopes to be able to serve you as a guide along a path across the gaps in time, space, culture, and language, back to Basho.