this is the representative work of Matsuo Bashō (1644 ~ 1694), a famous Japanese haiku poet. Haiku is a short poem in the traditional Japanese poetry form and one of the shortest metrical poems in the world. It expresses the author's feelings in an extremely short form, and uses metaphors, symbols and other means. The language is implicit, meaningful and concise, which is easy to remember and spread. As an independent poetic style, haiku was formed in the 15th century. Originally known as "harmony", it is a humorous poem that mainly expresses the life of citizens. Xi Saint Matsuo Bashō promoted it from humor to sincerity, and led it to the artistic conception of lyric poetry, which established its position in the history of Japanese literature. Haiku has two basic characteristics. First, each haiku is composed of three lines and seventeen syllables, with five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line and five syllables in the third line, that is, it forms the format of "five, seven, five" without rhyme. Second, each haiku must have one and only one "seasonal topic". The so-called "seasonal topic", also known as "seasonal language", is a natural phenomenon or personnel phenomenon related to the four seasons. It includes two aspects. First, natural phenomena, that is, using the romantic scenery, birds, animals, insects, fish, flowers and plants related to the four seasons as signs and hints, make readers know at a glance that the haiku is chanting things in that particular season of the four seasons. The second is social phenomenon, that is, religion, customs, personnel (including festivals, anniversaries, commemorations), etc. are used to imply a specific season festival throughout the year.

This haiku is Matsuo Bashō's most famous work, and it is also the abbreviation of "Banana Style" (that is, "Banana Style"). It is characterized by simplicity and preciseness, "humor reaches sincerity", leisure, elegance, lingering feelings, slender beauty, the meaning of happiness in sorrow, sadness in joy, elegance and vulgarity, and implicit and meaningful language. Japanese scholar Takahama Yuko introduced in Understanding and Appreciation of Haiku: "This poem is a major symbol of the establishment of a new era of banana culture. Different from the funny haiku in the past, this sentence depicts the real situation truthfully and has an epiphany. One day, when Banana lived alone in Dichuan Caoan, she heard the sound of water coming from the ancient pond in the courtyard. That noise was caused by the frog jumping into the water. Because it is extremely quiet around, the sound of water is particularly clear. In this haiku, Bajiao realized that the life of Daoism is not funny and scattered, but in such a quiet place. "

This haiku is characterized by its plain appearance and profound connotation, short form and endless aftertaste. By the quiet ancient pond, everything was silent, and everything seemed motionless. Suddenly, there was the sound of a frog jumping into the water. The whole poem came to an abrupt end, as if everything had been finished, and as if everything had not been finished. Although this haiku is finished in form, it is not finished in the reader's mind. It is always telling the reader something. This narrative, carefully analyzed, includes the following "aftertaste". First, the aftertaste of hearing. When a frog jumps into the pond, is the sound of its diving "plop", "snap" or other sounds? It's intriguing. Second, the visual aftertaste. As the saying goes, "a stone stirs up a thousand waves." After the frog jumped into the pond, the water in the pond rippled from small to large, which expanded and disappeared layer by layer, lingering in front of readers for a long time, making people daydream. Third, the meaning is lingering. The English poet Blake once said, "To see a world in a grain of sand/A heaven in a wild flower/Hold infinity in the palm of your hand/And eternity in an instant." Liang Zongdai's translation vividly shows that at the moment when the artist was inspired by generate, the rationalists and mechanists insisted on strictly and accurately distinguishing sand grains from the world, wild flowers from heaven, finite and infinite, and instantaneous and eternal entered an undifferentiated fit state, the world was restored to unity, and human nature was restored to harmony. Banana's haiku is similar to this, but it is unique.

First of all, haiku shows the unique oriental thought of realizing the vitality of life in leisure, so as to "follow nature" and "return to nature". There was silence around the ancient pond, and the surface of the pond was peaceful, adding a sense of silence. In this ancient silence, only those who are extremely quiet and carefree can hear the clear but tiny noise made by the frog suddenly jumping into the water. On the one hand, haiku sets off the quiet leisure of the soul with the sound of frogs entering the pond, and on the other hand, it shows a vibrant spring breath full of life awakening and impulse in a quiet and peaceful atmosphere with the jumping sound of frogs waking up in spring. After the underwater sound, the water surface of the ancient pond was quiet again. At such a wonderful moment, the movement and stillness have reached a perfect combination-on the surface, it is endless quiet, but inside it contains the rhythm of nature's life and the infinite mystery of nature, as well as the poet's inner passion, lingering aftertaste and endless taste. In the relaxed nature where the poet seems to be silent and lip-synching, it also embodies the thought of "following nature" and "returning to nature" unique to the orientals-creation is silent, everything moves at the right time, but it will eventually return to nature, and everything can follow nature and blend into nature in silence and leisure.

Secondly, this haiku embodies some philosophies of Zen. Zen is a very oriental religion. It has a world outlook theory of "the unity of Brahma and Me", which on the one hand emphasizes the emptiness of the world, and on the other hand attaches importance to experiencing and capturing active life in the "empty" world, and makes individual life return to eternal reality to achieve "the unity of Brahma and Me". In order to achieve the state of "the unity of Brahma and Me", Zen emphasizes the intuitive experience of the individual-epiphany, and the "green and green bamboos are all dharma bodies; The ordinary phenomenon world of gloomy yellow flowers is nothing more than prajnaparamita, to grasp the origin of existence as a whole-to show the eternal moment, so as to enter a wonderful, beautiful, happy and mysterious spiritual realm in which Brahma and I are the same, things are forgotten, and the universe and mind are integrated. This haiku expresses the poet's intuitive expression and grasp of the universal truth-"the unity of Brahma and Me" through the ordinary phenomena such as ancient ponds, frogs entering the water and underwater sounds. A silent ancient pond is condensed with a mysterious and ethereal "past", while the frog who wakes up from hibernation symbolizes a vibrant "present". At the moment when the frog jumps into the water and makes a sound, the "past" and "present" suddenly merge into one in an intuitive epiphany, while the underwater sound and ripples are infinitely extended to the boundless future. In this way, banana intuitively shows the absolute identity of time through the image of frog entering the water-the past, present and future are unified in a mysterious moment, which permeates the indifferent "empty" realm of Zen; The frog who wakes up from hibernation symbolizes the revival of life. The water in the ancient pond is the source of life, and the frog who wakes up from life jumps into the pond, which is a symbol that individual life returns to eternal reality and is integrated with it. In this way, in this short haiku with only 17 syllables, Banana vividly and profoundly expresses the ideal realm of Zen in an intuitive way, and shows the philosophical relationship between individual life and the universe.

there are two artistic features of this poem. One is improvisation and naturalness. This kind of poem is often "the article is natural, and the wonderful hand is rare". After long-term thinking and long-term brewing, at a magical moment, under the trigger of a foreign object, such as Newton's discovery of gravity when he saw the apple fall to the ground, the poet suddenly became enlightened, and without thinking, he improvised this pen as if it were handy ("Spring grass grows in the pond," said Xie Lingyun, a poet of the Jin Dynasty in China. The second is to write static by moving. There are two main ways for poets to write silence. One is to write stillness with stillness, such as "told even more in silence than they had told in sound" in Bai Juyi's Pipa. One is to write quietness by moving, such as "The cicada is quiet in the forest, and Tonamiyama is more quiet" in Wang Ji, a poet of the Six Dynasties in China. Matsuo Bashō is good at writing silence by moving. His other famous haiku, "Silence, cicadas go into rocks" (translated by Lin Lin), exaggerates the extreme silence with subjective feelings-it makes people feel that cicadas have infiltrated into rocks. This haiku is no exception. When Tagore, an Indian poet, visited Japan in 1916, he read it and praised it: "Enough, no more unnecessary poems are necessary. The mind of Japanese readers seems to have long eyes. The ancient and old pool is forgotten, quiet and dark. The sound of a frog jumping into the water is clearly audible, showing how quiet the pool is! " This haiku has a great influence, so that today, more than 2 years later, the publication of the American Haiku Society still uses Frog Pool.