The Nomadic Alternative – Page 198

Life. Bashō sees his wandering as involuntary, his feet propelled

by the same "wind-blown spirit" that drove him first to write poetry
and then onto the road.

Bashō belonged to the long line of inspired 'madmen', Chinese
or Japanese, Taoist, Buddhist or Zen, who opted out of the system
and took to the wilds - all heirs of those two irresponsible
hermits, 'Long-Rester' and 'Firm-Recluse', who were so antipathetic
to Confucius. From their cliff-top perches such men chuckled over
the wreckage of dynasties and mocked the pretensions of status-
seekers. Hermit life protested against tiresome responsibilities
and the irrelevant etiquette of officialdom. Time in the clattering
Capital was time wasted. Mountain climbing replaced social climbing.
And such became the conventions of poetry and painting that true
inspiration was only to be found in the wild places. But the posi-
tion of the Oriental artist foreshadowed a situation with which we
are all too familiar - no recognition outside the establishment,
no freedom of expression within it. The life of a compulsive wanderer
poet like Li Po was a perpetual see-saw between the court, where
he felt like a 'tiger in a cage' or a 'falcon on the gauntlet', and
the call of the hills. The choice was clear, as Hsieh Ling-Yun, the
originator of Chinese landscape poetry (385-433) understood. "I
shall do exactly as I please, despising the world in poverty and
obscurity, rather than pander to others for money and fame."

But the member of the establishment who prides himself on his
patronage of the arts and buys his way to intellectual respectability
finds the man who refuses to be bought both irritating and tantalizing.
Besides, the chorusing flock of acceptable artists he already sus-
pects of insincerity. And he uses a variety of stratagems to lure
the outsider into his flattered fold. Happily they are not always
successful. The reclusive Tang poet, Han Shan, shrieked "Thief,
thief!" at the gift-bearers of a worthy official who tried to lure
him from his cave on Cold Mountain.

An artist's most reliable way of escaping the insistent generosity
of a patron was to raise a screen of eccentricities. His outlandish