[Part – 3]
Natsume Soseki |
Kusamakura
The next book up for grabs
on our tryst with the metaphor, would be yet another Japanese delight!
It’s by Natsume Soseki
and it’s titled Kusamakura!
This amazing novel – that I’ve
so loved reading, was published first in the year 1906! It’s first English
translation however, was made available to us all, only in the year 1965, under
the title, The Three-cornered World!
For those of us who love retreating
into the mountain-side for that much-needed solitudinal tryst with Nature and for
celebrating the artistic me-space within us, this book is sure gonna be a cool
read of sorts!
A whole lot of lovely books
of all hues whiz past your thoughts even as you flip through each page of this highly
intriguing read!
Be it Browning’s ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’,
or Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist, or
Lewis Hyde’s The Gift, you’ve got an
array of such artistic delights popping up every now and then, lining up your
thought-feed!
Such is the power of Soseki,
Natsume Soseki, and his intense read - Kusamakura!
The humorist in Soseki, Natsume Soseki,
doubles up as an artist, in his delineation of the protagonist of this, his
endearing novel!
The word Kusa
Makura translates to mean, the Grass Pillow!
And the term ‘Grass Pillow’
stands a metaphoric expression for a journey, and specifically, an artistic
journey or a poetic journey of sorts!
Much akin to Kobo Abe’s
nameless narrator of our last past post, Soseki’s protagonist also goes
unnamed!
The artist-protagonist’s musings
on art and the artist are in fact, Soseki’s too! That way the protagonist to
Kusa Makura acts his able mouthpiece too!
Like Abe’s or a Calvino’s,
Soseki’s protagonist is quite fed up with the daily humdrum existence of his
city life and hence decides on a journey to the mountains, in search of the
true meaning of art, and beauty as well!
He gets to stay at a sylvan
hot spring resort, where, he happens to be the only guest! And on a beautiful
moonlit night he chances upon a woman by name Nami, singing in the garden lawns
of the resort! Nami happens to be the daughter of the owner of the resort, and
our protagonist is drawn to her – not in a romantic way, but rather in an
artistic way!
From then on, the protagonist
is on song - giving out his views on art and the artist! One is reminded of a Ben
Okri or a Jidduji and their takes on art and the artist, in like fashion!
To the artist-protagonist of
the novel, there’s beauty everywhere around us. Only if we have the eye for
appreciation, we can celebrate beauty with elan, he avers!
Quite a lot of references on artists
and artistic theories abound throughout the novel, and he gives his takes on
almost every other art form from calligraphy to poetry to painting to pottery!
Many Western artists also
adorn his pages!
Reading up on the translator’s
preface holds good to understanding the novel better! Not only because the
translator happens to be Meredith McKinney, the award-winning translator of
classical and modern Japanese literature, who also happens to be Judith Wright’s
daughter, but also because she gives us a gist to the storyline of the novel!
Says Meredith on the novel –
A nameless young artist
sets off on a purposely aimless walking trip across the mountains to the remote
village of Nakoi, where he stays at a hot spring inn and indulges in an
artistic experiment: to observe all he sees, humans included, with a detached, aesthetic
eye, in the manner of the artists and poets of old.
The novel traces this process,
recording his experiences in the first person, most particularly his encounter
with the startling, intriguing, and beautiful Nami, the daughter of the
establishment. The scene is perfectly set for a romantic entanglement—but
nothing happens.
In the final chapter, he joins
Nami and her family as they travel by boat down to the town, returning himself
and us to modern civilization.
Nami, the center of the novel,
is (as Soseki pointed out) the still point, the enigma, around which the artist
moves, watching and pondering the highly dramatized series of images of herself
that she proffers him. When at last he glimpses in her a moment of unguarded
pity, it completes the “picture” he has been working toward in his mind, and
with it the novel.
A few memorable lines,
so absorbing, so lovely, so admirable, so splendid, and so beautiful, from the novel,
for us all –
Excerpts from Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and from
Chapter 9
Well, the protagonist’s
take on Art in the opening chapter, makes you dance! literally! I soooo mean
it! He gives us such a beautiful perspective to beauty and to art! Hence I can’t
part with much on this little post! Just a few snippets –
Chapter 1
As I climb the mountain path, I ponder —
However you look
at it,
the human world is not an easy place to live. And when its difficulties
intensify, you find yourself longing to leave that world and dwell in some
easier one—and then, when you understand at last that difficulties will dog you
wherever you may live, this is when poetry and art are born.
The creators of
our human
world are neither gods nor demons but simply people, those ordinary folk who
happen to live right there next door.
You may feel the human realm is a difficult place,
but there is surely no better world to live in. You will find another only by
going to the nonhuman; and the nonhuman realm would surely be a far more
difficult place to inhabit than the human.
So if this best
of worlds proves
a hard one for you, you must simply do your best to settle in and relax as you
can, and make this short life of ours, if only briefly, an easier place in
which to make your home.
Herein lies the poet’s
true
calling, the artist’s vocation. We owe our humble gratitude to all
practitioners of the arts, for they mellow the harshness of our human world and
enrich the human heart.
Yes, a poem, a
painting,
can draw the sting of troubles from a troubled world and lay in its place a
blessed realm before our grateful eyes. Music and sculpture will do likewise.
Yet strictly
speaking, in fact,
there is no need to present this world in art. You have only to conjure the
world up before you, and there you will find a living poem, a fount of song.
No need to commit your thoughts to paper — the heart
will already sing with a sweet inner euphony.
No need to stand before your easel and limn with
brush and paint — the world’s vast array of forms and colors already sparkles
within the inner eye. It is enough simply to be able thus to view the place we
live, and to garner with the camera of the sentient heart these pure, limpid images
from the midst of our sullied world.
And so even if no
verse
ever emerges from the mute poet, even if the painter never sets brush to
canvas, he is happier than the wealthiest of men, happier than any strong-armed
emperor or pampered child of this vulgar world of ours—for he can view human
life with an artist’s eye; he is released from the world’s illusory sufferings;
he is able to come and go at ease in a realm of transcendent purity, to
construct a unique universe of art, and thereby to destroy the binding fetters
of self-interest and desire.
When I had lived
in this world for twenty
years, I understood that it was a world worth living in. At twenty-five I
realized that light and dark are sides of the same coin; that wherever the sun
shines, shadows too must fall.
Now, at thirty,
here is
what I think: where joy grows deep, sorrow must deepen; the greater one’s
pleasures, the greater the pain. If you try to sever the two, life falls apart.
Try to control them, and you will meet with failure.
Money is
essential,
but with the increase of what is essential to you, anxieties will invade you
even in sleep.
This, from Chapter 2
I open my sketchbook again. This scene could
be a painting, or a poem.
I picture in my mind’s eye the figure of the bride,
imagine the scene as if it were before me. Pleased with myself, I jot down
Praise be to the bride
who rides across the mountains
through blossoming spring.
John Everett Millais - Ophelia |
The odd thing is
that,
although I can clearly picture her clothes and hair, and the horse and the
cherry tree, I simply cannot visualize the bride’s face. I try out this one and
that, until suddenly the face of Ophelia in Millais’s painting springs unbidden
to my mind, fitting itself perfectly under the takashimada hair.
This is from Chapter 9 –
“Are you
studying?”
she inquires.
I’ve returned to my room and am reading one of the
books I brought along, strapped to my tripod on the journey over the mountain.
“Do come in. I don’t mind in the least.”
She steps boldly
in, with no
hint of hesitation. A well-formed neck emerges above the kimono collar, vivid
against its somber hue. This contrast first strikes my eye as she seats herself
before me.
“Is that a Western book? It must be about
something very difficult.”
“Oh, hardly.”
“Well, what’s it about, then?”
“Yes, well, actually, I don’t really understand
it myself.”
She laughs.
“That’s
why you’re studying, is it?”
“I’m not
studying.
All I’ve done is open it in front of me on the desk and start dipping into it.”
“Is it
interesting
to read like that?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Why?”
“Because with
novels
and suchlike, this is the most entertaining way to read.”
“You’re rather strange, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I suppose I am a little.”
“What’s wrong
with
reading from the beginning?”
“If you say you have to start at the beginning,
that means you have to read to the end.”
“What a funny
reason!
Why shouldn’t you read to the end?”
“Oh, there’s
nothing wrong
with it, of course. I do it too, if I want to know about the story.”
“What do you read
if it
isn’t the story? Is there anything else to read?”
There speaks a
woman,
I think to myself. I decide to test her a little.
“Do you like novels?”
“Me?” she says
abruptly.
Then she adds rather evasively, “Yes, well . . .”
Not very much, it seems.
“You’re not clear whether you like them or not,
then?”
“Whether I read a novel or not is neither here nor
there to me.” She gives the distinct impression that she takes no account of
their existence.
“In that case,
why should it
matter whether you read it from the beginning, or from the end, or just dip
into it in a desultory way? I don’t see why you should consider my way of
reading so strange.”
“But you and I are different.”
“In what way?” I ask, gazing into her eyes. This
is the moment for the test, I think, but her gaze doesn’t so much as falter.
She gives a quick laugh. “Don’t you
understand?”
“But you must have read quite a lot when you were
young,” I say, abandoning my single line of attack and attempting a rearguard
action.
“I like to
believe
I’m still young, you know. Really, you are pathetic.”
My arrow has gone wide again. There’s no
relaxing in this game.
Finally pulling
myself together,
I manage to retort, “It shows you’re already past your youth, to be able to say
that in front of a man.”
“Well, you’re far from young yourself, to be able to
make that remark. Is it still so fascinating, for a man of your age, all this
talk of being head over heels and heels over head, and having pimples, and such
adolescent stuff?”
“It is, yes, and it always will be.”
“My, my! So
that’s
how you come to be an artist, then.”
“Absolutely. It’s
because I’m
an artist that I don’t need to read a novel from cover to cover. On the other
hand, wherever I choose to dip in is interesting for me. Talking to you is
interesting too. In fact, it’s so interesting that I’d like to talk to you
every day while I’m staying here. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind falling
in love with you. That would make it even more interesting. But we wouldn’t
need to marry, no matter how in love with you I was. A world where falling in
love requires marrying is a world where novels require reading from beginning
to end.”
“That means that
an artist is
someone who falls in love unemotionally.”
“No, it’s not
un-emotional.
My way of falling in love is non-emotional. The way I read novels is
nonemotional too, which is why the story doesn’t matter. I find it interesting
just to open up the book at random, like this, like pulling one of those paper
oracles out of the box at a shrine, see, and read whatever meets my eye.”
“Yes, that does
look
like an interesting thing to do. Well then, tell me a little about the place
you’re reading now. I’d like to know what intriguing things emerge.”
“It’s not
something
one should talk about. Same with a painting—the worth of the thing disappears
completely if you talk about it, doesn’t it?” She laughs. “Well then, read it
to me.”
“In English?”
“No, in Japanese.”
“It’s tough to have to read English in Japanese.”
“What’s the problem? It’s a fine nonemotional
thing to do, after all.”
“So who are this man and woman?”
“I’ve no more
idea
than you do. That’s why it’s interesting. It doesn’t matter what relationship
they’ve had till now. The interest lies in the scene before us at this moment,
their being here together—just like you and me.”
“You think so?
They
seem to be in a boat, don’t they?”
“In a boat, on a
hill,
what does it matter? You just take it as it’s written.
Once you start
asking
why, it all turns into detective work.”
She gives a
laugh.
“All right then, I won’t ask.”
“The usual novels are all invented by detectives.
There’s nothing nonemotional about them—they’re utterly boring.”
So why wait? Do try grabbing for
yourself a copy of this wonderful read ASAP!
In short, if you are looking
to be drenched in the Barthean ‘pleasures’ of a text, this one’s for you!
In fact, the novel serves
an amazing prequel of sorts to the Barthean take on the effects of the text! Where
he describes and divides the ‘effects of texts’ into two: the first one, he
calls ‘pleasure’, while the second, he calls, ‘bliss’ or orgasmic!
So which one is yours!?
;-)
And well, our little tryst with metaphor continues…
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