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a metaphor for bonsai
of Matsuo Bashō: "The old pond / a frog jumps in, / sound of water." A few lines free of
the superfluous have the strength to cross the centuries and immediately recall the whole environment and an atmosphere that is not explicitly described, but evoked. A old pond with its primeval mosses that cover ancient rocks, surrounded by trees bathed by a cool, sunny day, horsetails, grasses, duckweed and water lilies. Suddenly the silence of this intimate environment is broken with a splash in the water by a frog—a testament to the silent life of the pond. The scents of the ancient site that permeate the humid air... everything, even the smallest detail contributes to the vision evoked. But this is only one of the visions that each of us can have. Here is the inadequacy of language to describe reality, but instead, the
haiku with its energy and vital form, devoid of the superfluous, takes us beyond the
rational in a dimension more real, complete and universal.
When we intend to shape a tree, the first action is to study it, understand how to make it essential, or rather to eliminate all those plant parts that hide
the soul of the tree, to reveal its natural living force, its formation in the passage of time, its history, everything that brings us back to the natural environment in which it lived. So here is the vision of the artist in
the creative act of bonsai in communion with the plant, with few branches, a special twist of the trunk, and dead wood that create a “haiku”—a bonsai with evocative power (in the case of great bonsai masters) that does not want to express perfection, does not want to impress with technique, but wants to offer the observer the "truth," free of conditions. A bonsai, that over
time, will have the strength to "evoke" and "transport" the careful observer—a connoisseur of nature—into the world in which the tree belongs, and bear witness to
the ever-changing.
In my opinion, literati, or Bunjin, is the style that harmonizes the most with the essence expressed in haiku poetry and often recalls the artist's vision of the environment and nature of that particular species of bonsai, free from constraints.
The relation between haiku poetry to bonsai
maybe now appears clearer, but it is essential
for the bonsai artist, as well as the haiku
poet, to be in nature where the trees live, fully unshackled from the routine of everyday, to
be immersed in that reality, to fully understand
the concepts of superfluous and essential that characterize life, and this time, the survival of these living beings. It is no coincidence that the great masters of haiku, homeless and often traveling alone, living and feeling the places in which they journeyed, found the inspiration to capture the essence of these places, and compose haiku that transcend time.
Pinus mugo, “Samurai,” Danilo Scursatone collection.
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