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This year marks the 120th anniversary of Yasunari Kawabata's birth.
Yasunari Kawabata (1899~1972) Figure | Visual China
The entrustment and metaphor of private fiction
Between January and February 1926, "The Dancing Girl of Izu", which was written for eight years, was published in the magazine "Literary Times" co-founded by Kawabata and Yokomitsu Toshiichi. Since then, as Kawabata's famous work and early masterpiece, its fame has even surpassed the later aesthetic masterpiece "Snow Country", which is one of the three novels that Kawabata Yasunari was mentioned when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968.
This is a juvenile affair, between an unexpected encounter and a doomed parting: the young student "I" met a group of wandering artists on the way to travel, and developed a hazy feeling with the little dancer Azo, but in the end due to the hierarchical concept of Japanese society and the huge difference in social status between the two sides, they did not become a family. The French film master Robert Bresson said in his book "Notes on Film Writing": "Film writing is a kind of writing composed of moving pictures and sounds. Kawabata's Izu dancer, named "Azo", has since borrowed the way movies are written six times, and has become a video narrative in the style of pure beauty in Japan in the second half of the 20th century. Six different versions bring together generations of outstanding Japanese actresses, first starring Tanaka Atsuyo in 1933, and Yoshinaga Koyuri in 1963 and Momoe Yamaguchi in 1974 are the two most well-known versions of the heroine.
Stills from "The Dancing Girl of Izu"
Yasunari Kawabata once confessed: "Whether it is "The Dancing Girl of Izu" or "Snow Country", I wrote it with gratitude for love. In fact, instead of carrying simple gratitude, Kawabata almost puts his own love journey in his novel. On July 8, 2014, Yasunari Kawabata's love letter was discovered in his former residence in Kamakura City, Kanagawa Prefecture, including a letter written by Yasunari Kawabata to his first love, Chiyo Chiyo, during his college years, and 10 letters from Chiyo to him, which was an unforgettable love affair that "broke up for unknown reasons" and became the main theme of Kawabata's early works such as "Fire in the South", "Bonfire", "Extraordinary", and "Her Costume". "The Dancing Girl of Izu" is an autobiographical novel based on his journey to Izu when he was 19 years old, and the "I" in the work is Yasunari Kawabata in high school.
John Maxwell Coetzee, a white South African novelist who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003, concludes almost in a categorical manner at the end of The Replay: "All autobiographies tell stories, and all works are autobiographical." "The bearing and metaphor of the novel is a realistic strategy of the stoic, lonely, sensitive, and soft Kawabata personality, and it is also a kind of worldly desire that the writer intends to give poetic expression. Based on the broader perspective of Japanese literary thought, it can be clearly seen that Kawabata's metaphor and entrustment of feelings in novels are a unique type of novel that originated in the Taisho period (1912-1925) - "private novels", also known as "self novels".
According to research, the term "private novel" began to appear in the press of the time in 1920. Some of the comments have a clear ironic and critical connotation, such as "private novels are nothing more than flipping around and fiddling with the trivial daily life, and using novels to speak out publicly." It was not until 1922 that an anonymous article was published in the July issue of Shincho magazine: "In the Japanese literary world, private novels that only record the direct experience of writers have begun to be regarded as serious literature and art, and works that really shape characters, characters, and edit stories are regarded as popular novels." From 1924 to 1925, Masao Kume published "Private Novels and Mood Novels", bluntly saying: "Writers who directly expose their private novels are literature, and art can only be a reproduction of their own lives." "War and Peace", "Crime and Punishment", "Madame Bovary", etc., although advanced, are in the final analysis only great popular books. Since then, as a "specialty" of Japanese literature, private novels have experienced from depreciation to praise, and even to the altar realm of only "non-private novels and no novels", at least until "World War II", it has always occupied the mainstream of Japanese literature.
Kawabata's "The Dancing Girl of Izu" has the characteristics of a distinctly private novel:
The dancer saw me standing still, immediately gave up her cushion, turned it over, and pushed it to my side.
"Oh..." I answered only once, and sat down on this cushion, and because of the panting and panic of the climb, even the words "thank you" could not be spoken in my throat.
I sat down near the dancer, and in a panic took a cigarette from her sleeve, and the dancer pushed the ash dish in front of me in front of the accompanying woman. I still had no words.
- Silence, deeds speak louder than words, sensitivity and roundabouts, inner tenderness.
The famous Japanese contemporary writer Yukio Mishima once described Kawabata as facing him, "being stared at silently and deadly, and the timid people will wipe a cold sweat... A young female editor who had just debuted visited Kawabata for the first time, and she had good luck or bad luck because there were no other visitors. But Kawabata stared at each other for more than half an hour with that big demonic eye without saying a word, and the female editor finally had a nervous breakdown and 'wow' she fell down and cried."
The slightly "demonic" personality may stem from the loneliness of Kawabata's childhood. He lost his father at the age of two and his mother at the age of three, and was raised by his grandparents. His sister and grandmother died one after another, and at the age of 16, his last relative, his blind grandfather, was gone. Weak physique, nowhere to lean on the emotional home, he is surrounded by "orphan temperament" and "beneficiary temperament".
In fact, in addition to the writer's own personality factors, such a subtle and tangled, eager but somewhat evasive emotional paradox is also the charm of Eastern love. Junichiro Tanizaki, a representative writer of Japanese aesthetic literature, wrote in his "Yin Feng Praise": "In the Japanese tea ceremony, the hanging scroll hanging on the tea party since ancient times can have words and paintings on the screen, but it is forbidden to take the theme of 'love'. This is because 'falling in love' is against the spirit of the tea ceremony. This kind of contempt for love is not only a tea ceremony, but also not uncommon in the East... It's not that our tradition is not to acknowledge the art of love—it's true that we're very excited and secretly enjoy it—but try to pretend to be ignorant on the surface. This is our prudence, and it is also a social etiquette that no one has spoken of. "Love can also be high-level literature." This quote by Junichiro Tanizaki may be the best footnote to why "private novels" once swept the Japanese literary scene.
Synaesthesia of nature and love
In his 1968 Nobel Prize in Literature award-winning speech, Yasunari Kawabata began by quoting a Japanese song by Zen Master Michimoto, the ancestor of the Cao Dong Sect, "The True Face", the natural Japanese traditional aesthetic complex of the Dao broken avenue: "Spring flowers, autumn moon, cuckoo, summer, winter snow and cold plus... This Japanese song of Daoyuan is also the beauty of the four seasons of Acura. Since ancient times, the Japanese have randomly arranged the representatives of the four most beloved natural scenes in the spring, summer, autumn and winter seasons, and there is probably no more universal, more general, more ordinary, and can be said to be a song that is not a song. ”
This view echoes Yasunari Kawabata's famous essay "The Existence and Discovery of Beauty". He said: "Elegance is to discover the beauty of existence, to feel the beauty that has been discovered, and to create the beauty of feeling." It is true that the most important thing is that this environment 'exists in the natural environment', and the true face of the natural environment, may be the reward of the beautiful god. ”
Stills from Snow Country
Taking "The Dancing Girl of Izu" as an example, although Yasunari Kawabata believes that his depiction of scenery in the novel is lacking in conservatism, there are only a few strokes, which are plain and amazing: "Out of Yuno, and into the mountains." The morning light on the sea warms the belly of the mountain. We indulge in watching the rising sun. In front of the Kawazu River, the seaside of Kawazu is vividly remembered... The autumn sky is exceptionally clear, the sea is connected, and the smoke is scattered, like a spring color. From here to Shimoda, you have to walk twenty kilometers. Some distance away, the sea loomed. Chiyoko sang leisurely. ”
Kawabata went on to write: A suddenly ran out of the dim bath first... She is the dancer. White naked, slender legs, standing there like a small sycamore. ...... She spotted us, ran naked into the sun, tiptoed up, and straightened up. She's still a child. I was even more cheerful and excited, and giggled again. The brain was as clear as if it had been washed away. There was always a smile on his face. ”
Why is the depiction of nature indispensable in Japanese literature that expresses love? The answer can be found in the systematic study of Yasunari Kawabata's translator Ye Weiqu's "Trends of Japanese Literary Thought": from the perspective of the history of the development of Japanese literature and natural beauty, Japanese mythology first passed through natural mythology and entered the humanistic mythology. Ancient mythology worshipped nature as a god from the very beginning. Unite nature and God. At the same time, among the five kinds of natural vitality, the Japanese first discovered the beauty of nature from the tree, and the order of the five elements was the five elements of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water, headed by wood. They believe that plants are constantly reincarnated through seeds, germination, growth, or flowering and fruiting to sustain life, showing a strong sense of life and graceful beauty. Beginning with the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, sakura is regarded as a beauty. The Tale of Genji is not only full of depictions of flowers as beauties, but many beauties are named after natural flowers and trees.
It's no wonder that Kawabata sees Kaoru as "a little sycamore" in "The Dancing Girl of Izu." It is no wonder that a Japanese scholar pointed out: "Japanese cultural form is supported by the aesthetics of plants." ...... For the Japanese, nature is God, and life without God, there is no nature, and it cannot become life. It can also be said that there is no history of Japan. ”
"The Beauty of Mourning"
The so-called love, whether it is for things or people, must contain certain painful components. The existence of pain has become a way for the masters of Japanese literature in the 20th century to prove the skin of love.
Ryunosuke Wasagawa wrote in his love letter to Tsuka: "What's even more wonderful is that whenever I sketch your appearance in my mind, the same face always appears. I imagine you smiling, even though I can't describe the exact shape... I always think of the way you look, and sometimes it hurts to think about it. But in times like this, pain is also a kind of happiness. ”
In a love letter to his lover Shizuko Ota, Dazaiji wrote: "Letter from Hondo. I'm always thinking about something, and as strange as it is to say that, I'm really always thinking about it. I really want to talk to you about it. When I heard that your mother passed away, I know this pain... Aomori is cold and cramped, and it's nerve-wracking. Originally thinking that falling in love might be the way out, I quietly thought of a person in my heart. However, after only ten days, the love faded, and I began to worry again. ”
Junichiro Tanizaki wrote in a love letter to Nezu Matsuko: "Please feel free to harass me." In order to teach you satisfaction, I will do my best... When you are unhappy, it is okay to abuse me. All I fear is that you perceive my uselessness and allow me freedom. ”
If love can really be transformed into an art of self-torture, then the most confusing and mysterious quality of this art lies in its "lack of regret".
This is the proper meaning of "the beauty of mourning" in traditional Japanese aesthetics. From the 8th-century "ManyoShu" to the 11th century "The Tale of Genji", it fully reflects the Japanese culture's pursuit of the "material mourning" style. At the end of the Edo period, Motoju Nobunaga, a major scholar of the Kokugaku period, first proposed the literary concept of "もののののあはれ" (物哀) in his annotated book "The Tale of Genji Monogatari". Honju Nobunaga believes that "many of the situations of life are present in love, such as bitterness, sadness, resentment, anger, fun, and joy." If you give up love, it is difficult to show the many depths of human feelings and the true essence of material sorrow. "In the multi-layered structure of material grief, the love between men and women is the core content, and mourning is its high realm. No pain, no love, it seems to be a foregone conclusion.
And when Faust shouted at the moment, "Stop! You're so beautiful" when he died. This may also be Kawabata's prediction and ultimate setting for his own death fate-
The world I live in today is a world as transparent as ice and as neurotic as pathological. ...... When will I be able to commit suicide? This is a question. Only nature is more beautiful than me in this view, and perhaps you will laugh at me, since you love the beauty of nature and want to commit suicide, which is a contradiction. However, the so-called beauty of nature is reflected in my 'dying eyes'.
On April 16, 1972, 17 months after Yukio Mishima committed suicide, Yasunari Kawabata committed suicide. As he said in 1962, "Suicide without a suicide note is the best thing to do." A wordless death is an infinite life. Yasunari Kawabata completed the Japanese interpretation of the beauty of death through a farewell to suicide with a blank-style silence.
When the Chinese writer Yu Hua first read "The Dancing Girl of Izu", he was surprised that Kawabata's depiction of "scars" could be written instead of "indictive way", but instead in a "very warm" way. To some extent, the post-war Japanese writers represented by Kawabata were stubborn in expressing their desires, and there was also a passivity of the world. To this day, this cultural character can still find a realistic projection, and fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto described himself as "gentle and meaningless." No, it's gentle and useless. I don't know if this strong and weak, weak strong has been precipitated into the national genes of "chrysanthemum" and "sword" in the Japanese cultural character.
(This article was originally published in the 2016 Love Magazine of Sanlian Life Weekly)
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