Pilgrimage Journeying in Matsuo Bashō and Alexander Von Humboldt ______

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Pilgrimage Journeying in Matsuo Bashō and Alexander von Humboldt ______

THOMAS HEYD University of Victoria, Canada ([email protected])

In this paper I argue that the concept of pilgrimage provides a unifying trope for the otherwise seemingly unfocused travel accounts of Bashō’s Narrow Road to the Interior (2005) and Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland’s Voyage aux régions equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent (1807-1834). I begin with a brief description of debates regarding the notion of pilgrimage. After that I show how pilgrimage as trope may be applied to the texts of these authors. This is followed by an application of the classical stages of pilgrimage to particular phases of Bashō’s and Humboldt’s recounted experiences. I conclude that pilgrimage offers an illuminating new way to understand the travel accounts of these two writers.

Key words: pilgrimage; Alexander von Humboldt; Matsuo Bashō; journeying; tropes; interpretation

1 Pilgrimage

In the scholarly literature a number of contrasting conceptions of pilgrimage compete with each other. Ian Reader (1993), for example, contrasts a “functionalist perspective,” which views pilgrimage “as a process that reaffirms existing social order” (1993: 10),1 with a perspective originating with Victor Turner2 (1979), which “views pilgrimage not as reinforcing an existing social order, but as creating, albeit temporarily, an alternative and idealised order and transient community of pilgrims” (Reader 1993: 11). Reader also notes, however, that when groups of pilgrims are confronted with each other, conflicts may predominate over and against the communitas that, according to Turner, would be created by the pilgrimage process (Reader 1993: 12). A different angle on pilgrimage is suggested by those who “have voiced objections to Turner’s emphasis on social relations at the expense of individual meanings” (Reader 1993: 12), such as “spiritual improvement and the realisation of practical benefits and rewards sought from the divine world at pilgrimage sites” (Reader 1993: 12-3). However, the supposition that pilgrimage generally is “a journey undertaken for a religious motive” (Coleman 2008; also see Edith Turner 2005)3 contrasts with the view that it could just as well be undertaken for secular reasons (see Reader 1993: 6). So, aside from applying the term to visits to religious sites, such as Rome, Mecca, Jerusalem, and Bodh Gaya, we also commonly apply the term to journeys directed at places where great thinkers, writers, or artists, such as Immanuel Kant, Leo Tolstoy, and Paul Klee, lived and created. Furthermore, we see the term used in the context of visits to sites where emblematic aesthetic qualities are present, as regarding travels to Venice, Yellowstone National Park, or the gardens of Kyoto. Often what is pursued is a trace from the past, as in the site where Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre stood, but there may also be a contemporary reality, as in Mt. Fuji functioning as an image

Journal of World Philosophies Articles/24 for the spirit of Japan or as in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater (1935) representing US American inventiveness in architecture. In this context it is interesting to consider Yi Fu Tuan’s account of the relation of space and place (Yi Fu Tuan 1974),4 according to which we have the ability to extract meaningful places out from the great expanse of space, just as we can carve out meaningful moments from the unstoppable onward movement of time. By being present in certain distinctive ways at certain locations of space we overlay meaning on them, thereby transforming them into recognizable places. Pilgrimage is one very notable way of being present and, thereby, making places. Once established, such places are further re-made and trans-formed through subsequent instances of pilgrimage visitation. One further set of lenses consists in reframing pilgrimage in terms of movement, in contrast with seeing it as strictly place-oriented (Coleman and Eade 2004).5 This is an effective way of sidestepping the debates about whether pilgrimage necessarily entails a process that generates new social relations, or is religiously oriented, while making sense of the fact that moving through space on extended journeys requires sacrifices in time, financial resources, and possibly more personal matters such as health. (While Humboldt reports that during his travels up and down tropical rivers his health was better than it had been in Europe, both Bashō and Sora complained of the effects of travel on their wellbeing.6 So, insofar as pilgrimages entail the necessity of overcoming significant obstacles through effort, endurance, and single-mindedness in the attempt to reach a particular goal, they become recognizable as a particular type of patterned movement through space that starkly contrasts with other sorts (such as routine deliveries, reaching leisure destinations, commuting, and so on). As such, whether social cohesion is generated or not, whether it is done in groups or not, whether it is for religious reasons or not, all become issues of secondary importance only. It is in this sense that I propose that, even though neither Bashō or Humboldt explicitly describe their journeys as “pilgrimages,” conceiving of their respective travel reports in these terms has significant explanatory pay-off that justifies viewing them this way.

2 Two Journeys

Oku no hosomichi, which stands for Narrow Road to the Interior (Bashō 2005),7 is the fictionalized account of a long journey to the interior of Japan, and possibly to the interior of the soul, by the Japanese haiku poet Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694). Voyage aux régions equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent8 (Humboldt and Bonpland 1807-1834) is the personal account of Alexander von Humboldt’s (1769- 1859) five-year journey to the Americas, undertaken in search for scientific insights on the inter- relationships among vegetation, climate, geographical features, latitudes, geology, and sociocultural factors. (Humboldt was accompanied by the botanist Aimé Bonpland, who is co-author of the travel account even if Humboldt did most, if not all, of the writing.9) Both Oku no hosomichi and Voyage aux régions equinoxiales report on voyages to far-away places that had extraordinary attraction for their leading personages. Both journeys entailed considerable hardships but also constituted sources for deeply felt insights. While in both cases the travels were considered memorable to such a point that they motivated carefully crafted travel accounts, the reader may wonder what the organizing principle is that would give unity to each of these reports and reflections on great multiplicities of sites and phenomena.

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The Trope of Pilgrimage as Hermeneutic Lever

Texts do not have their interpretations inscribed on their cover. Adequate interpretation of texts is an undertaking that the founder of the science of hermeneutics, Hans-Georg Gadamer, described as “a fusion of horizons.”10 As understood by him, the horizons under consideration in interpretation are generated by the question that the words of the text may be an answer to, on the one hand, for their author(s) and, on the other, for diverse contemporary readers (Gadamer 2004). Interpretation, conceived in this way, should motivate contemporary interpreters both to carry out close reading of texts as well as imaginative explorations of possible frameworks that may facilitate the determination of the respective horizons. In short, the task is to find appropriate, non- arbitrary ways to render texts meaningful. Specifically, regarding the travel accounts of Bashō and Humboldt, I argue that seeing the accounts of their voyages through the trope of pilgrimage gives coherence and makes meaningful the great plurality of narrative elements and scientific data in their writings that otherwise would remain opaque.11 However, if pilgrimages are journeys to a particular place associated with some presence, as suggested earlier, then it may at first be difficult to identify any one obvious singular pilgrimage destination, either in Bashō’s or in Humboldt’s case. At first sight, Bashō seems to have unsystematically sampled a plethora of places of historical or religious importance (utamakura). In line with this view, we may note that David Barnhill argues that one should describe the kind of travel represented by Bashō in Oku no hosomichi as “wayfaring.” He defines this “as a mode of life that is constituted principally by a religious journey or journeys,” which “has an indefinite, unbounded quality, both spatially and temporally” (Barnhill 1990: 278).12 Mario Wenning, furthermore, proposes to view Bashō’s way of travel as Daoist wandering, that is, a kind of travel that is intent on crossing boundaries, and which has a certain “directedness” but no definite direction (Wenning 2014).13 Humboldt, similarly, seems to have traversed a variety of landscapes in a somewhat aleatory manner, only concerned with collecting data on botanic and zoological species, geological and meteorological processes, and societies. In other words, in neither Bashō’s nor Humboldt’s case is it obvious at first sight that it would make sense to view their journeys as pilgrimages. My proposal, however, is that, despite first appearances, viewing their accounts through the trope of pilgrimage may help us to tie together the great multiplicity of apparently disconnected elements of their travel accounts.

Matsuo Bashō at Dewa Sanzan

In 1689 Bashō undertook a 2,400 km journey stretched over a period of six months, encompassing what was at the time considered the deep North of Japan.14 The undertaking was arduous, because Bashō was travelling on foot with all his overnight and writing gear. He had to traverse several barriers controlled by guards, and sometimes had to cross forests and rivers considered dangerous at the time. On his way he sought out acquaintances who would host him and his companion Sora to engage in poetry-making sessions. As I have argued elsewhere (Heyd 2008)15 and summarize here, this journey may be seen as a vision quest and pilgrimage that climaxes in Dewa Sanzan (the “Three Mountains” of the province Dewa), Haguro-san, Gassan, and Yudono-san. Buddhist tradition says that at the moment of his enlightenment the Buddha sat under a flowering bodhi tree while the moon was shining, which makes bodhi trees, moon-viewing, and flowering trees of special relevance within Buddhism. Bashō’s desire to view the moon, expressed very early in Oku no hosomichi, is consistent with the view that the journey described in this text may ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 23-35 Copyright © 2019 Thomas Heyd. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.02

Journal of World Philosophies Articles/26 be understood as a pilgrimage. (Notably, moon-viewing also was the explicitly stated motive for the long walks described in three of his four other published travel diaries.) However, if we follow the character Bashō of Oku no hosomichi on his journey to the North of Japan, it is significant that most of his moon-viewing experiences are described as unsatisfactory. In passing he notes, for example, the reflection of the moon on the waters surrounding Matsushima, as well as the image of the moon on the sand in front of the Myōjin Shrine, but only on Gassan, which in English translates as Moon Mountain, does he celebrate the moon as such. Notably, on this mountain there is a shrine dedicated to the moon god Tsukiyomi no Mikoto (Bashō 1985: n. 289, Barnhill 1990: 278),16 and the three mountains together, Gassan, Haguro-san, and Yudono-san, were believed to be shintai, abode of the gods (Bashō 1985: n. 284). So, in a certain way it seems that Gassan was seen as an abode for the moon in a similar way as the sun goddess Amaterasu’s mirror was believed to be the physical abode of that deity. Furthermore, near Yudono-san Bashō discovers a cherry tree, half-buried in snow, that blooms out of season. This is significant because in the literature both the cheery tree and the moon have been associated with Buddhist enlightenment.17 Even the fact that, according to Oku no hosomichi, Bashō’s first stop at Dewa Sanzan is devoted to poetry-making may not to be gratuitous, since, as Thomas Rimer points out, “a poem at its best represents the creation in words of a moment of aware, the verbalization of a profound response to the deep truth reflected in a passing moment as felt by a person of genuine sensibility” (Rimer 1988: 117).18 So, seen as a mode of verbalizing his insights at Dewa Sanzan, the heightened awareness represented by the poetry-making at Haguro-san neatly complements his experiences on the other two mountains, namely, of being overtaken by the beauty of the moon on Gassan and of being amazed by the cherry tree flowering out of season on the way to Yudono-san. Everything points toward the conclusion that at Dewa Sanzan Bashō reaches a location that is heavily laden with the symbols of Buddhist Enlightenment. Consequently, it makes considerable sense to interpret his journey as having this site as the destination of a pilgrimage.

Alexander von Humboldt on Tenerife

Though initially Humboldt seeks to participate in a scientific expedition that is to be led by Captain Baudin and sponsored by the French Government, and that is supposed to take him on a ship journey around the world, war brings those plans to naught. Unwilling to give up, he travels to Spain on foot in 1799, accompanied by his friend the botanist Aimé Bonpland. (Making altitude measurements as he goes, he proves for the first time that the center of the country is on a high plain.) Eventually, thanks to Humboldt’s diplomatic connections, despite not being a Spanish subject, the King grants him the exceptional privilege to do scientific research in the Hispanic Americas. His travels from 1799 to 1804 take him to what later will become Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Cuba, and Mexico, ultimately adding on a visit to the United States of America, where he meets Thomas Jefferson. As already noted, this voyage is not a precisely planned out trip, even if Humboldt has set himself the practical goal of measuring all there is to measure with the many scientific instruments that he masters and carries along with him while collecting all the specimens that he can carry (and in triplicate!). He also endeavors to report on everything that he can find out about local people, their customs, and their economic and sociopolitical conditions. He is, in any case, willing to go where the winds of fortune take him, as long as it allows him to advance scientific knowledge.

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So, for example, when, instead of landing in Cuba as planned, the ship that he is travelling on is diverted and lands in Venezuela, he simply takes up the unexpected but welcome challenge of exploring the Orinoco region. As such, the travels described in his Voyage may be seen as a kind of “scientific wandering.” Nonetheless, not all of his journey is as unfocused as all that. Though Humboldt has trained himself in a multiplicity of sciences, including botany, meteorology, astronomy, and even physiology, his “home discipline” is geology. He had been taught by Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749-1817), the proponent of the theory of “neptunism,” which claims that rocks came about through crystalline processes under the sea. However, Humboldt is keen to test that theory against its opponent, “plutonism” or “volcanism,” which claims that at least some rocks came about through the action of fire underground. For this reason, Humboldt already attempts to visit the Vesuvius volcano near Naples in 1795, but is impeded in carrying out his intentions due to war in the area. Consequently, once on his way to the Americas, he is keenly interested in visiting the volcanic Teide Peak on Tenerife. (Tenerife is located on the Canary Islands, which, fortunately for him, were the normal launching point for Spanish travels to the Americas at the time.) Importantly, Humboldt’s account of his ascent of the Teide points at a model for the integration of the multiplicity of geological, biological, geographical, and social facts that he was to collect during the remainder of his travels. While Humboldt’s ascent of the Teide Mountain probably is not the high point of his travels, since he has not even arrived at the “equinoctial regions” (i.e., the regions where day and night tend toward equality), there is reason to believe that this climb provides him with the fundamental insights that would guide him for the remainder of his journey.19

3 The Stages of Pilgrimage

While wayfaring or wandering may be seen as Bashō’s “mode of travel,”20 my proposal is that viewing Bashō’s journey as pilgrimage provides unity to the assemblage of haikus and travel descriptions called haibun (combination of haikai prose and poetry) that makes up Oku no hosomichi. Similarly, viewing Humboldt’s ascent of the Teide volcano on Tenerife as pilgrimage allows us to recognize the underlying point of his Voyage in sufficiently clear outlines to render what initially may have seemed to be a very long report of aimless “scientific wandering” as a more coherent, focused undertaking. As indicated above, there are many ways to think through the concept of pilgrimage. As is well known, Turner starts off with Arnold van Gennep’s (van Gennep 1960) claim that pilgrimages entail “liminality,” that is, being “at the threshold” of a new condition or identity.21 While Victor Turner’s (1979) claim that pilgrimage creates a new community has been contested in the recent literature,22 I suggest that his supposition—that for the individuals involved, pilgrimage generates a new identity through deep insights at the destination of their journey—may still be to the point, as well as empirically supportable.23 Turner (1979) claimed, moreover, that there are three stages of pilgrimage: the departure from the common ways of life, or separation, with its difficulties and expectations; the journey, culminating in an eminent destination; and the changed perspective, often accompanied by sadness at having ended the pilgrimage, that accompanies the reintegration into ordinary ways of life. Both the account of Bashō’s travel to the North of Japan and Humboldt’s journey to the equinoctial regions by way of Tenerife and the ascent of the Teide volcano may be seen to present aspects fitting the stages described by Turner. Here are some of the possible ways given by this ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 23-35 Copyright © 2019 Thomas Heyd. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.02

Journal of World Philosophies Articles/28 perspective to parse the stories in Bashō’s Oku no hosomichi and in Humboldt’s Voyage aux régions equinoxiales.

Departure or Separation

At the beginning of Oku no hosomichi, Bashō recounts that he is beckoned to travel by Dōsojin, the spirits of the road. This prompts him to write, “From which year was it? I was summoned by the winds of the scattered clouds, with no end to thoughts of wandering” (Shirane 1998: 230).24 As a counterpart, Humboldt tells us that he always had Wanderlust, that he hoped to advance science, and that he engaged in his studies in order to be able to travel (von Humboldt and Bonpland 1814-1829: 3).25 Both Bashō and Humboldt mark their departure from the commonly known realm by literally embarking in boats, itself a trope of high signal value for change in life. Compare their departures, for example, on the one hand, with the scene of Charon and his boat in Dante Alighieri’s “Inferno” (Alighieri 1935),26 and on the other, with the image of “crossing over” as a metaphor on the path to Buddhist enlightenment (see Shaw 2012).27 So, after leaving Edo (today’s Tokyo), Bashō embarks to cross the Arakawa River (now called the Sumida River), lands in the city of Senju on the other side, and writes the first haiku of his journey. Humboldt embarks on the corvette Pizarro in La Coruña (in Galicia on mainland Spain) on June 5, with a view to reach the Canary Islands as his first stop away from Europe. Two weeks later, on June 17, 1799, Humboldt’s ship lands on the small island La Graciosa (which is separated from Lanzarote by a narrow channel), mistaking the former for the latter. It is on La Graciosa where Humboldt enthusiastically does his first scientific observations outside of European soil. As he begins his walk, Bashō gets a first taste of the hardships of the long walk ahead of him and reflects on the fates of sages who preceded him on the road to the North, on which some of them died. Humboldt devotes the weeks of his ship voyage to the Canary Islands to reading through the works of scientists such as the naturalist Pierre Marie Auguste Broussonet who preceded him there. Both envisage their own travels into the unknown in light of those who had already attempted similar endeavors and prepare their minds for the new experiences to come. Their departures from their respective known worlds are not without hindrances and the fear of potential obstacles. Bashō complains of the load represented by the many presents that he was given to take along on his trip, and of the difficulty of finding appropriate ways of disposing of these things in due course. Humboldt has to face the possibility of being forced to return to Europe by the English navy, which was blockading access to the Canary Islands and on the lookout for Spanish vessels. It was only thanks to the fog enveloping Tenerife that Humboldt’s ship could slip between the English naval forces and make harbor in Santa Cruz.

The Journey

Both Bashō and his companion Sora shave their heads and wear the garb of begging monks, thereby immediately associating themselves with the assorted wanderers of seventeenth-century Japan, which, besides monks, also include merchants and prostitutes. In order to reach the area in the north of Japan located outside of the Edo government’s control, Bashō and Sora face a serious, potential obstacle in the Shirakawa Barrier border crossing (located in today’s Fukushima Prefecture), since the military could impede individuals to cross. By succeeding in crossing that border, Bashō and Sora make a definitive break with the well-known, pacified parts of the world of their time. Bashō ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 23-35 Copyright © 2019 Thomas Heyd. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.02

Journal of World Philosophies Articles/29 also gives an early indication of his interest in the signifiers of enlightenment when, shortly thereafter, his account describes their encounter with a monk “who had abandoned the world” while resting under a chestnut tree, which provokes in him thoughts on “the Buddha Amida’s Western Pureland” (Bashō 2005: 55). Similarly to Bashō, Humboldt makes a definitive break with the known world when, once on Tenerife Island, he leaves behind the European gardens and towns of the Valley of Orotava and, on this first stage of his climb up to the Teide Volcano, interns himself into the alien, indigenous vegetation. Leaving the parched coastal strip, he suddenly finds himself in the island’s humid cloud forest (fayal-brezal) and then encounters rare laurel forests (laurisilva) that are remnants from the Tertiary Era. His estrangement from the everyday is further exacerbated once he and his companions come out onto the treeless, very wide volcanic crater (Las Cañadas) marked by lava flows from many different geologic periods, volcanic ash and pumice stone, and spiked by large volcanic bombs. While Bashō’s trip has its low points, as when a horse urinates next to his bed, eventually Bashō and Sora face truly hazardous stretches of road. Notably, on their way to a further military- controlled checkpoint at the Shitomae Barrier, they have to travel through mountainous forests and along unmarked trails, which entails important hardships: “we pushed through bamboo grass, waded across streams, stumbled over rocks, cold sweat pouring [...]” (Bashō 2005: 64). When they finally reach the safe “domain of Mogami,” their guide informs them that they were lucky to have made it to the other side of these uninhabited forests, which Bashō comments by writing: “Even though it was all over, those words set my heart pounding” (Bashō 2005: 64). Humboldt’s climb to the summit of the Teide, in contrast, is dangerous in a different way and very demanding, since it requires him to ascend three thousand meters in one day, in part through humid cloud-forests and in part on scorchingly hot lava fields.28 Overnight, even a large bonfire barely keeps him and his companions from hypothermia. The other great problem is that, after passing their last water source at El Dornajito at one thousand meters above sea level, they have to carry all their liquid supplies with them. As it turns out, when Humboldt and his group eventually come down from the Teide Peak, they discover that their guides and porters had finished off all of the remaining wine and broken the water containers, leaving them to cross the waterless crater surrounding the Teide without supplies.

The Destination

When Bashō finally leaves the humid lowlands and arrives at the first of the three mountains of Dewa, Haguro Mountain, he is welcomed by a fresh breeze and the hospitality of the monks who quickly draw him into poetry-making. When he next climbs up to the peak of Gassan (1,950 meters above sea level), he is physically overwhelmed but earns an exquisite sight:

I walked through mists and clouds, breathing the thin air of high altitudes and stepping on slippery ice and snow, till at last through a gateway of clouds, as it seemed, to the very paths of the sun and the moon, I reached the summit, completely out of breath and nearly frozen to death. Presently the sun went down and the moon rose glistening in the sky (Bashō 1966: 125).29

Possibly Bashō’s poetic prose description is indebted to this poem by the twelfth-century wandering poet Saigyō Hōshi: ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 23-35 Copyright © 2019 Thomas Heyd. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.02

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A man with his mind at one with the sky-void steps into a spring mist and begins to wonder if he might have just stepped out of the world. (Saigyō, quoted in LaFleur 1973: 120).

Later on Bashō writes this haiku:

How many columns of clouds had risen and crumbled, I wonder before the silent moon rose over Mount Gassan. (LaFleur 1973: 120)

Just before reaching Yudono-san, the third and slightly lower of the Dewa Sanzan, Bashō encounters a late blooming cherry tree that reminds him of the Buddha’s Enlightenment. Finally, he is brought to tears at what he witnesses at the pilgrimage site of Yudono-san itself, though, as required by tradition, he will not reveal the details. (Apparently, at this site diverse types of mountain austerities [shugendo30] were practiced based on the belief that one might become a Buddha while still alive, undergoing mummification through slow starvation and desiccation [Earhart 1970: 50].31) In summary, the text makes clear that, after Bashō’s arduous journey up to this point, his experiences at these three mountains serve him as a culmination through his identification with the Buddhist quest for insight into ultimate things. Similar to Bashō’s climb on slippery trails up to the summit of Gassan, Humboldt’s final push up to the summit of the Teide Peak (3,718 meters) is marked by the slipperiness of the trail, though in this case made up of volcanic debris. The wind at the top, moreover, blows with such violence that he and his companions can hardly remain upright, while the temperature that he measures there is near zero degrees Celsius. Even if he himself is spared the trouble of walking on snow and ice, at this point in his account he reminds the reader of the story of Captain Baudin who dares to climb in winter, slides down two hundred meters to the point where the top of the mountain has a sheer drop-off (at La Rambleta, the site of the present cable-car service), and only is saved by a rock that sticks out of from the snow serving him as brake (Humboldt and Bonpland 1814-1829: 168-70). Humboldt spends his time on the peak measuring the temperature of the air and of the crater floor as well as the exact time of sunrise and the precise degree of blue of the sky, and making drawings of the crater. While these activities on the summit would appear to be rather prosaic, it is here, nonetheless, where he finds both a visual and a conceptual confirmation of his hypothesis of the unity and interaction of geologic phenomena, vegetational zones, and meteorological processes. In other words, it is here where he sees corroborated his supposition that nature is a unity (Einheit) that should be understood as a system, which requires that the diverse sciences be integrated so that geology, flora, fauna, and culture can be grasped together.32 He expresses the hypothesis of the unity of nature, for example, in a letter, written at the very beginning of his journey, in which he says: “I shall try to find out how the forces of nature interact upon one another and how the geographic environment influences plant and animal life. In ———————-- Journal of World Philosophies 4 (Summer 2019): 23-35 Copyright © 2019 Thomas Heyd. e-ISSN: 2474-1795 • http://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp • doi: 10.2979/jourworlphil.4.1.02

Journal of World Philosophies Articles/31 other words, I must find out about the unity of nature” (Whitfield 2006: 209, original text in von Humboldt 1973).33 Like Bashō, he does not limit himself to sober description, however. Under the influence of the Romantic Movement, spearheaded by his friends Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, Humboldt offers a personal, emotionally-laden description of the landscape at his feet, perceived as forming a harmonious whole made up of distinctly layered zones, interacting in reciprocally influential, dynamic ways:

From the summit of these solitary regions our eyes hovered over an inhabited world; we enjoyed the striking contrast between [on one side] the bare sides of the Peak, its steep declivities covered with scoriae, its elevated plains destitute of vegetation, and [on the other side] the smiling aspect of cultured country beneath; we beheld the plants divided by zones, as the temperature of the atmosphere diminished with the height of the site (Humboldt and Bonpland 1814-1829: 182-83).

In short, after the long, frustrating process of finding a way to begin his scientific travels, the fear that the British navy would send him back to Europe if caught on the way to the Canary Islands, and the sheer physical exhaustion brought about by climbing the very steep peak straight from sea level, Humboldt is now overcome by a sense of accomplishment. As such, this is a liminal place for Humboldt, literally—for being the highest point of his journey to date—as well as metaphorically—for offering him a vision of the totality, unity, and interactivity of natural and human phenomena exhibited on this island.

Reintegration

After Dewa Sanzan, the mood of Bashō’s journey often is tinged with disappointments, such as when the hoped-for full moon viewing at the Myōjin Shrine is thwarted by clouds. The journey is at its conclusion when Bashō takes one last boat trip and his friends come to meet him, “both rejoicing and comforting me, as if I had returned from the dead” (Bashō 2005: 77). He shows his deep sadness at abandoning his “journey to the interior” and returning to ordinary life with this final haiku:

Parting for Futami Bay is like tearing the body from the clam shell: autumn goes to its end. (Bashō 1966: 197)

Humboldt, similarly, has occasion to mourn his departure from the Teide Peak and his return to the ordinary world, with its wars, schedules, and misunderstandings:

We descended in the space of a few minutes down the Sugar Loaf [the cone-shaped Teide Peak], which we had scaled with so much toil; and this rapidity was in part involuntary, for we often rolled down on the ashes. It was with regret that we quitted this solitary place, this domain where Nature towers in all her majesty; we soothed ourselves with the hope of once again visiting the Canary Islands; but this, like many other plans which we then formed, has never been executed (Humboldt and Bonpland 1814-1829: 193).

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At the conclusion of his adventure on Tenerife, after traversing the island again and reaching his ship that would finally take him to the “the equinoctial regions” of Northern South America, he expresses his feelings even more starkly in a letter to his brother Wilhelm:

In the Villa Orotava there is a ‘dragon’s blood tree’ [Drachenblutbaum, Dracaena draco], of 45 feet in circumference. 400 years ago, in the times of the Guanches, it already was as thick as now. —I leave almost with tears in my eyes; I would like to settle here: although I've hardly left the European soil. If you could see these fields, these forests of millennial laurels, these grapes, these roses! Here they fatten pigs with apricots. All the streets teem with camels.— Now, on the 25th, we set sail (von Humboldt 1880).34

In summary, while neither Bashō nor Humboldt identify their travels as pilgrimages, the fact that their experiences fit the classical stages of such endeavors provides the reader with a way to make sense of the apparently random movements through space that constitute their respective travels.

4 Conclusion

I have suggested that, independently of the debates concerning whether pilgrimage is a source of new social relations or whether it needs to be thought of in religious terms, the concept contains a robust reference to a sequence of certain types of experiences that individuals, either in groups or not, pursue for their specific immanent value. That is, my suggestion is that pilgrimages may be understood in terms of the particularity of their inherent narrative structure, characterized by the classical stages noted by Turner (1979). As such, the concept of pilgrimage may serve as a meaning- making schema both for those directly involved in the experiences and for those who, as spectators, read or hear about them. So, more specifically, the thesis of this paper is that the application of the trope of pilgrimage ties together the otherwise largely disparate haibun vignettes of Bashō’s Oku no hosomichi on the one hand and the massive, unwieldy combination of narratives and scientific data contained in Humboldt and Bonpland’s Voyage aux régions equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent on the other. Regarding Bashō’s Oku no hosomichi, I have suggested that understanding its various parts through the symbols of Buddhist Enlightenment, represented at Dewa Sanzan by the moon and the cherry tree and celebrated through poetry-making, gives his travel account as a whole a depth and seriousness in intention that may be missed otherwise. Concerning Voyage aux régions equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent, I have argued that the idea of the unity of nature, which Humboldt first finds confirmed by his experience of the journey to and climb of the summit of the Teide, provides the reader with a focal lens for comprehending the remainder of his voluminous writings. While Dewa Sanzan had long been a site of Buddhist veneration in Japan, and the Teide peak had been considered the abode of the Indigenous Guanche deity Guayota prior to Spanish colonization, Bashō and Humboldt’s respective journeys add a new layer of significance to their standing as pilgrimage sites. Through their journeys, these places, carved out of indiscriminate space, become reaffirmed as meaningful places in the way described by Yi Fu Tuan (1974). Through the enrichment of their contexts by these two voyagers, who broaden the sense of pilgrimage through poetry-making and scientific endeavors respectively, these sites undergo reconstruction and

Journal of World Philosophies Articles/33 transformation, thereby becoming identifiable destinations for subsequent secular pilgrimages, as indeed they both have become.35

Acknowledgements I would like to recognize the helpful suggestions of two reviewers and by the editors of this journal.

Thomas Heyd teaches in the Department of Philosophy and in the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria, Canada. Presently, he is actively exploring the philosophy of science and scientific methodology of Alexander von Humboldt in the context of global climate change. He has widely published on environmental philosophy/ethics, aesthetics in relation to petroglyphs and pictographs, and history of philosophy, and has a long-standing interest in Japanese culture. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal Environmental Ethics, of the Eco-Social Studies Centre of the University of La Laguna (Tenerife, Spain), of the Advisory Council of the Toda Institute for Global Policy and Peace Research, of the Business Group of the International Society for Philosophy and Architecture, and of the European Network for Environmental Ethics, as well as Canadian representative of the International Society for Environmental Ethics. He was Research Fellow (2015) at the University of Victoria Centre for Global Studies, and Research Fellow (2014, 2015) at Université de Troyes Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies and Sustainable Development (CREIDD). His books publications include Encountering Nature: Toward an Environmental Culture (Ashgate, 2007), Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature (Columbia University Press, 2005), and Aesthetics and Rock Art (Ashgate, 2005; with John Clegg).

1 Ian Reader, “Introduction,” in Ian Reader and Tony Walter, Pilgrimage in Popular Culture (London: Palmgrave Macmillan, 1993), 1-25. 2 Victor Turner, Process, Performance and Pilgrimage: A Study in Comparative Symbology (New Delhi: Concept Publishing Co., 1979). 3 Simon Coleman, “Pilgrimage,” Encyclopedia Britannica (2008); http://www.britannica.com/ EBchecked/topic/460445/pilgrimage/274973/Pilgrimage-and-the-world#toc274974. Also see Edith Turner, “Pilgrimage: An Overview,” Encyclopedia of Religion (1987 and 2005); https://www. encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/pilgrimage-overview. 4 Yi Fu Tuan, Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974). 5 ed. S. Coleman and J. Eade, Reframing Pilgrimage. Cultures in Motion (London: Routledge, 2004). 6 See, for example, Matsuo Bashō, Cid Corman, Susumu Kamaike, Hide Oshiro, Back Roads to Far Towns: Bashō’s Travel Journal (Buffalo, N.Y.: White Pine Press, 2004 [1986]). 7 Matsuo Bashō, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, in Bashō’s Journey: Literary Prose of Matsuo Bashō, trans. and ed. D. L. Barnhill (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005 [1694]). 8 Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland, Voyage aux régions equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent, 30 vols., Paris, 1807-1834. 9 Also see Andrea Wulf, The Invention of Nature. Alexander von Humboldt's New World (New York: Vintage, Penguin, 2016). 10 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (London and New York: Continuum, 2004), trans. J. Weinsheimer and D. G. Marshall. Original: Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (Tübingen: Mohr, 1960).

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11 The point of discussing Bashō’s and Humboldt’s accounts together, furthermore, is to show that supposedly rival secular and spiritual/religious conceptions of pilgrimage in fact share a common structure. Thus, common orientalizing dichotomies between purportedly rationalistic European and mystical Asian ways may be seen to be on tenuous grounds. 12 David L. Barnhill, “Bashō as Bat: Wayfaring and Antistructure in the Journals of Matsuo Bashō,” The Journal of Asian Studies 49, no. 2, (May 1990): 274-290. 13 Mario Wenning, “Crossing Boundaries: Zhuangzi and Bashō on the Art of Travel,” in ed. H.-G. Moeller and A. K. Whitehead, Landscape and Travelling East and West (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 9- 22. 14 But see Akasaka Norio, Tōhoku Studies: The Forgotten Tōhoku (Kōdansha Gakujutsu Bunko, 2009), who claims that Bashō did not really reach into the depth of Tohoku. 15 Thomas Heyd, “Interpreting Bashō’s Narrow Road to the Interior as a Journey to the Depths of Being,” in eds. G. Nash and G. Children, The Archaeology of Semiotics and the Social Order of Things (British Archaeological Reports/Archaeopress, 2008). 16 Matsuo Bashō, Auf Schmalen Pfaden durchs Hinterland, trans. G.S. Dombrady (Mainz: Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1985). 17 See, for example, Manabu Watanabe, “Religious Symbolism in Saigyō’s Verses: A Contribution to Discussions of His Views on Nature and Religion,” History of Religions 26, no. 4, (May 1987): 382-400; also see William R. LaFleur, “Saigyō and the Buddhist Value of Nature,” Part I in History of Religions 13, no. 2, (November 1973): 93-128. 18 Thomas Rimer, Pilgrimages: Aspects of Japanese Literature and Culture (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988). 19 Arguably, the high point of Humboldt’s voyage will be the ascent of Chimborazo, in Ecuador. There he declares that he has something like an epiphany. As I have argued elsewhere (Thomas Heyd, “Ascensión al Teide de Alexander von Humboldt”, HiN, International Review for Humboldt Studies 16, no. 30, (2015): 8; http://www.hin-online.de/index.php/hin/article/view/215), even if the immense importance of Humboldt’s climb of that Ecuadorian volcano is evident from serving as the background for his Naturgemälde der Anden, it is plausible that his certainty and insights regarding the integration of all natural processes already had substantially taken form on this earlier occasion in Tenerife. 20 Near the beginning of Oku no hosomichi Bashō declares his desire to travel “at full ease,” which is characteristic of what Barnhill (1990) calls “wayfaring” and Wenning (2014) calls “Daoist wandering.” 21 Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. Monika Vizedom and Gabrielle Caffee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960). 22 See, for example, Reader (1993); Ian Reader and Paul L. Swanson, “Editor’s Introduction: Pilgrimage in the Japanese Religious Tradition,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 24, no. 3/4 (1997): 225-70; http://www.jstor.org/stable/30233586 (accessed 17 March 2019), Coleman and Eade (2004). 23 Notably, according to Rimer, we should understand the journey of the literary persona “Bashō” described in Oku no hosomichi as a pilgrimage because it entailed an important “displacement from commonplace concerns,” characteristic of the deep, intuitive understanding generally sought for in pilgrimages (Rimer 1988: 1). 24 Haruo Shirane, Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Bashō (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998). When citing from Oku no hosomichi I have attempted to use those translations that proved to be the more accurate as well as evocative. 25 Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland, Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of the

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New Continent, during the years 1799-1804, trans. H. M. Williams, 7 vols. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1814-1829). 26 Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy (New York: The Union Library Association, 1935). Original: Divina Commedia, begun c. 1308 and completed 1320. 27 Sarah Shaw, “Crossing to the Farthest Shore: How Pāli Jātakas Launch the Buddhist Image of the Boat onto the Open Seas,” Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies 3, (2012): 128-56; http://www.jocbs.org/index.php/jocbs/article/view/29 (last accessed on March 17, 2019). 28 Notably, as one anonymous reviewer notes, Humboldt does his walks without the sort of mountaineering equipment that we are used to presently, which would make the walk up the Teide all the more challenging. We may add that Bashō and Sora also travel very long distances without the accoutrements, such as adequate shoeing, raingear, backpacks, water bottles, and so on, that long distance walkers consider convenient today. 29 Matsuo Bashō, The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches, trans. N. Yuasa (London: Penguin, 1966). 30 As noted by one of the anonymous reviewers, Shugendo was a practice that arose out of an integration of diverse religious elements. Paul L. Swanson, (“Shugendo and the Yoshino-Kumano Pilgrimage: An Example of Mountain Pilgrimage,” Monumenta Nipponica 36, no. 1, (Spring, 1981): 55- 84, 55-6; https://www.jstor.org/stable/2384087) proposes that it “is a blend of at least three different religious streams,” identified as Shinto, tantric Buddhism, and “Ying-yang and Taoistic magic.” 31 H. Byron Earhart, A Religious Study of the Mount Haguro Sect of Shugendō (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1970), 50. 32 Thomas Heyd, “Alexander von Humboldt y la unidad de la naturaleza,” HiN, International Review for Humboldt Studies 18, no. 35, (2017); http://www.hin-online.de/index.php/hin/article/view/260/474. 33 John Whitfield, Into the Beat of a Heart: Life, Energy, and the Unity of Nature (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2006). Original text in Alexander von Humboldt, Die Jugendbriefe Alexander von Humboldts 1787-1799, ed. I. Jahn and F. G. Lange, Fritz, Beiträge zur Alexander-von-Humboldt- Forschung 2 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1973). 34 Alexander von Humboldt, Briefe Alexander's von Humboldt an seinen Bruder Wilhelm (Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta, 1880). 35 There are a number of people who have published accounts of their walks on the route taken by Bashō on Dewa Sanzan and on other parts of his journey, as well as of Humboldt on the Teide and in South America. I have myself have followed Bashō on several steps of his travel, traversed the three summits of Dewa Sanzan, and repeatedly climbed the Teide Peak, initiating my walks from sea level, in commemoration of Humboldt’s climb in 1799.