Recently, I was reading the works of some Japanese writers, I wrote a book review that shared several novels before, thank you for the active messages and exchanges with readers and friends, and today I share with you Yasunari Kawabata's "Snow Country".
Even more frightening than the truth is the darkness of human nature
Hell is on earth, and others are hell
Where will morality be placed when survival is threatened?
Born to be human, you deserve it
In 1968, the famous Japanese writer Yasunari Kawabata won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his three works, "Snow Country", "Ancient Capital" and "Thousand Cranes", and he was also the third Asian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature after Tagore (Indian) and Samuel Joseph Agnon (Israeli). What I share with you today is one of these three works, "Snow Country".
"Snow Country" is about a rich and idle man, dance researcher Shimamura, who takes a train to the snow country and has a series of emotional entanglements with the geisha komako and the beautiful girl Leaf.
"Yasunari Kawabata greatly appreciates the delicate beauty and likes to use the kind of language that is often sad and symbolic at the end of the pen to express life in nature and human destiny." This is the Nobel Prize for Literature to Yasunari Kawabata, and it is also the whole content and meaning contained in "Snow Country" and to be conveyed.
<h1 class="ql-align-justify" > the background of Yasunari Kawabata's creation of "Snow Country":</h1>
Although "Snow Country" is a novella and not too long, it took 13 years intermittently (Yasunari Kawabata began to write in 1935, and it was only bound and published in 1948). The reason for this is that japan launched a war of aggression against China at that time, and at the same time, the Japanese government also severely attacked domestic literary creators in order to strengthen its domestic rule, and Kawabata Yasunari was also affected, because he did not join the ranks of praising Japanese imperialism, but he also did not join the "anti-war literature". He set the story background of "Snow Country" in a place far away from all right and wrong, which may have been the inner expectation of Yasushi Kawabata at that time.
Poster for the movie "Snow Country"
<h1 class="ql-align-justify" > where is the "beauty" of Snow Country? </h1>
"Beauty", this is the most intuitive feeling when reading "Snow Country". Yasunari Kawabata's writings, as if they were alive, can be sprinkled into a beautiful painting on their own.
For example, in this text description of Shimamura's first encounter with Leaf on a train:
"The view of dusk moves behind the mirror. In other words, the illusion reflected in the mirror and the real thing behind the mirror are shaking, like the superimposed shadow in the movie. There is no connection between the characters and the background. Moreover, the characters are a transparent illusion, and the scenery is a hazy undercurrent in the night mist, and the two dissolve together, depicting a transcendent symbolic world. Especially when the lights in the mountains reflect on the girl's face, the indescribable beauty makes Shimamura's heart almost tremble. ”
The twilight outside the window flew by, the car window obscured the figure inside the window, the confused eyes looked out of the window, the pulsating twilight and transparent figure blurred the vision... Such a beautiful stroke makes people feel quiet and distant and pleasant to read.
In the snow country, there are all the beautiful people and things: snowy, overlapping mountains, twilight, sunset, melodious piano, Yiren Gupan... It's all too beautiful to say.
Another example is this passage describing night: "The ravine is particularly prone to darkness, it is already cold at dusk, the night is hazy, and the distant mountains surrounded by white snow under the sunset are slowly approaching..." A picture of the winter night sunset is immediately presented in front of the eyes.
When describing everything about the snow country, Yasunari Kawabata seems to pour all his talents into it, without reservation, he uses words to describe, but also with life containing passion to carve.
<h1 class="ql-align-justify" > the view of "nothingness" contained in Snow Country:</h1>
There is a saying in the Bible and Ecclesiastes: The void of emptiness, everything is a void. And this is also a core idea that "Snow Country" wants to express, perhaps, this is also Kawabata Yasuhito, through "Snow Country" to convey his own views on life, for the world. In this regard, we will start with the main characters of "Snow Country" to analyze.
Komako: A woman with a frank temperament and a passion for life
She was born at the bottom, and her fate was full of twists and turns. She was sold and redeemed several times, but she always maintained her enthusiasm for life. In order to repay the kindness of the master who taught her the skills of the three-stringed piano, she sold herself as a geisha to earn money and treat the master's son Xingnan. Despite her misfortunes, she never gave up her life. She has had the talent to learn the piano since she was a child, and her piano skills are even better under the guidance of her master; in addition, she likes to read books and take notes, and she will also record the events around her in the form of a diary; she longs for the bustling urban life of Tokyo, and she wants to fight hard so that she can go there one day.
Stills from the movie "Snow Country"
However, in Shimamura's view, Komako's entire life is meaningless and futile, and the beauty she expects is nothing more than a void. Even Komako's love for Shimamura seemed futile to Shimamura, because he slowly grew tired of Komako, he was just a passer-by in the snow country, he was going to leave after all, and when he left, he did not have love for her, even if Komako had fallen in love with him wholeheartedly.
Leaf: A woman who is pure and immaculate, beautiful and incomprehensible
Yasunari Kawabata once said that Yezi was an ideal figure in his mind. The leaves in "Snow Country" are pure, ethereal, mysterious, and she seems to be a pure saint in an illusory world.
When she first appeared, she felt illusory: her face was reflected in the car window, intertwining with the scenery outside the window. And her voice was sharp and cool, "so beautiful that it was almost sad." Such leaves are intoxicating and intriguing. And Ye Zi is also a kind girl, she is dedicated to taking care of the walking man without asking for anything in return, after the death of the walking man, she often goes to the grave in front of the tomb of the walking man, and in the end she also dies because of saving people.
The leaves have a double purity of body and soul, and appear lighter, poetic, and more nihilistic. So at the end, Yasunari Kawabata arranges a fire, and Leaves is killed in the fire.
Shimamura: A wealthy and idle man who came to Snow Country from Tokyo
Shimamura is a rich and idle son of a rich family, and his ancestors have left him a lot of property. He was very interested in Western dance, so he collected extensive information related to Western dance, but he never saw Westerners perform Western dance, nor did he watch Japanese people dance Western dance. In his opinion, the most "beautiful" experience is not really seeing, but imagining itself in his mind, admiring the illusion of dance in his fantasy. From this point of view, Shimamura spends time, energy, and money, wading through mountains and rivers, accumulating years and years to study Western dance, which is actually a kind of futility and nothingness.
Moreover, although Shimamura already has a wife, on an emotional level, he is also a state of emptiness, so he meets Komako again and again and has skin kisses with Komako. However, when the colt fell madly in love with him, he felt bored again. For the leaf, he only felt that the leaf was a glimpse of his life, and the leaf in reality did not exist. Shimamura was not sad at the moment, on the contrary, he felt that the death of the leaf was as magnificent as the pouring of the milky way, and felt that she "appeared free because of the loss of life."
Komako was finally left alone with only himself, the leaf fell into the sea of fire and died, and Shimamura, he "poor Komako, but also pity himself", he was extremely conflicted in his heart, but he could not find his own pure land of soul.
In Yasunari Kawabata's pen, all the characters show the emptiness of life, as if everything is in vain: to love, to work hard for the ideal, to struggle, to find, and finally in vain.
<h1 class="ql-align-justify" > the genesis of Yasushi Kawabata's literary style:</h1>
The so-called "material mourning" is a bit like the "allegorical feelings of things" and "lyricism of borrowing things" in our ancient poems, which is a concept of sad emotions generated by seeing and hearing things.
Due to the geographical location of Japan, various natural disasters often occur: earthquakes, tsunamis, etc., which makes the Japanese people have such a feeling in their hearts that even the best things in the world will be fleeting. This idea of the impermanence of life catalyzes the "material sorrow" view of Japanese literature. Especially during the Heian Dynasty of Japan, the "Tale of Genji Monogatari" created by Zi Shibu opened the era of "Material Sorrow" in Japanese literature, and "The Tale of Genji" was also known as the Chinese version of "Dream of the Red Chamber".
Obviously, the writing style of "Snow Country" is influenced by the concept of "material mourning". Snow, night, sunset, mountains, long tunnels, flickering lights, etc., such things themselves give the whole book a cold and silent color, but also pave the style of the whole book.
In addition, Yasunari Kawabata's personal growth experience has also had a non-negligible impact on his works.
Yasunari Kawabata
Yasunari Kawabata has had relatives died one after another since he was a child, and he was well aware of the impermanence of life, old age, illness and death, and this kind of thinking was applied to his literary creation. As a child, he was sent to the altar of Buddhism, and was exposed to works of classical literature that often had Buddhist consciousness, and the concept of "impermanence" in Buddhism deepened deeper into his consciousness. Yasunari Kawabata's personal experience has made his sad, nihilistic literary style.
On April 16, 1972, Yasunari Kawabata suddenly committed suicide and died. Although he did not leave any words of farewell to the world before his death, he said in 1962 that "it is best to commit suicide without a suicide note." A wordless death is an infinite life. From this point of view, it seems that he gave the image of the leaf in "Snow Country". In the story, he let the pure and immaculate life of the leaf end in the way of death in this world, and he also chose to end his life.
<h1>epilogue</h1>
In Kawabata Yasunari's eyes, no matter what he was born in the world, no matter what he did, the end result was futile, so he chose to die—this is another way of living that he thinks. However, we are not Yasunari Kawabata, whether we have thoroughly explored life and seen through human nature, all we can do is to try to explore the meaning of life, and try to perfect, to fill life, rather than being passive and lazy, wasting our own lives.