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Nasreddin Hodja & Matsuo Basho Two writers that I think are famous in their native countries, but deserve more credit, and are more alike than are often thought. Nasreddin Hodja (13th century) & Matsuo Basho (17th century) imo both have a way of describing the world through Hegelian Synthesis. They both like to take a normal idea as the thesis (sitting on a donkey) and add an antithesis (ride the donkey backwards) and then have the synthesis (I am not riding the donkey backwards, the donkey is going backwards and i'm riding the right way) With Basho you see it in his Haiku (he is the father of Haiku after all) has the ultimate thesis (nature, he likes to describe nature a lot) and then there is some disruption: artificial, or human - and it opposes or breaks this nature (antithesis) - and then there is a sort of resolution that comes from this - which ends in wabi-sabi or Yugen (synthesis)
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The both are sort of the epitome of their times -- the ultimate defining moments of their era. While Nasreddin lived during the Seljuk times, it is evident that he became mythical almost during the Ottoman times, as a sort of symbolism of Anatolian Wisdom, of pre-Ottoman times and integration into Ottoman Folklore (Ottoman Empire started around after his death) With Basho, it was at the time of Iemitsu Tokugawa. Interesting enough, this is the 3rd shogunate. So in that context, it wasn't so long after Ieyasu Tokugawa comes into power (the beginning of the 17th century) the prosperity of the Edo period is just starting, and aesthetics are just being formed for the first time in a relatively peaceful period (unseen in Japan for decades before this, as it was the warring states period) So there is both this luck, in a way, of being at the beginning of subsequent periods (Edo Period, Ottoman Empire period) and becoming almost folklore, by becoming the standard compete against, culturally speaking
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