Shimamura looked at her and suddenly shrank his neck. The white flowers in the mirror were shining with snow. In the snow in the mirror appeared the woman's flushed cheeks. It is an indescribable purity of beauty. INTERVIEWER Snow Country
"Snow Country" is a beautiful existence in Japanese literature, and even in world literature. In this book, I found the Japanese nation's obsession with the beauty of the world, and Yasunari Kawabata used gentle and flexible words to knock on the smooth and rounded stones on the banks of the river of human innocence. As a result, I was lost in the flower path of "chasing beauty" and willingly sank.
Yasunari Kawabata
In 1968, Yasunari Kawabata won the Nobel Prize in Literature that year with three works, "Snow Country", "Ancient Capital" and "Thousand Cranes", and it seems that readers of the whole world were fascinated by Kawabata's beautiful words that year, and reading became an activity to interpret human art.
Love and death are the two major themes in Kawabata's works, but his love does not overplay tragedy and joy, nor deliberately creates fierce conflicts, but only focuses on creating a sentimental, nihilistic situation.
In his works, death is a frequent element, and he believes that death is the highest art, so the death plots he depicts are full of beautiful artistic conceptions.
The expression and pursuit of aesthetics in modern Japanese literature and even in Japanese culture as a whole are vividly reflected in Kawabata's works. Among them, "Snow Country" is the author's most accomplished work, and it is also the most cherished work in his life. From 1935 to 1947, after a long creative period, the 80,000-word novella was finally published in its entirety in 1948.
In fact, as long as you carefully look at the time of creation, you will find that this masterpiece runs through the entire Period of World War II, and some critics criticize Yasunari Kawabata: When the people of the world are deeply involved in war, Yasunari Kawabata created an anachronistic work.
I think this is Kawabata's ultimate pursuit of pure beauty, even if the smoke around him is haunted, he can still build a magnificent spiritual cabin in his heart, and enjoy the annihilation of the killing alone
Perhaps, putting Kawabata into the coordinates of history, he belongs to the "New Sensation School" of 1924 and 1928, of which the representative writers Areomitsu Yokomitsu and Yasunari Kawabata. To put it simply, the New Sensation School emphasizes the feeling of people in a moment, and this school is influenced by Western literature, while fermenting and precipitating the original things in the Japanese tradition, so it has formed an extreme and delicate aesthetic taste.
Japanese classical literature attaches importance to the portrayal of the psychology of the characters, attaches importance to the subjective feelings projected by the real world on the individual, and gradually forms a unique "material lament" aesthetic, as the name suggests, it is the lamentation of things. Therefore, with a sensitive and meticulous heart, the writer devotes himself to the world of joy, seasons, and impermanence, and captures such a kind of nothingness and sad beauty.
Yasunari Kawabata inherited this classical idea of material sorrow, but broke through the structural limitations of traditional novels in narrative, focusing only on the infinite extension at the level of beauty.
Therefore, the plot I see in "Snow Country" is single and vulgar, but his works can still flourish for a long time, also because it has no obvious characteristics of the times, has nothing to do with reality, and only focuses on people's delicate emotions, and emotions are the only things that can transcend time and history, forever circulate, and always inspire human inner resonance.
Perhaps, the paranoia about beauty is Kawabata's extreme to literature, but who can deny a writer with artistic beliefs, who used the unique aesthetic ideas of Asians to build a pure love world of flowers and herbs for human time, and the world's war was not extinguished, so the reader at that time found a place in Kawabata's text and took a nap in the fantasy.
Through the long tunnel of the county boundary, there is the snow country. The night sky is white. The train stopped in front of the signalhouse.
Kawabata opened the book with restrained and minimalist writing, and this sentence became a very classic beginning in the history of literature. This is the world that the protagonist Shimamura feels, a long tunnel that separates two spaces, one is distant Tokyo, where he actually lives, and the other is the snow country in front of him.
However, I think this tunnel is a crack in the heavenly gods, who divide the cruel reality from the beautiful Taoyuan, and the moment Shimamura walks from the train platform into the snow country, he steps into the illusory, but also let people wander into the utopia.
In fact, many readers define Shimamura as an image of a scumbag. What does a scumbag look like in modern society? One sentence can be a brilliant summary: no refusal, no initiative, no responsibility, Shimamura basically fully meets the definition of a scumbag. He was selfish, cowardly, evasive, and toyed with women, and today every woman is condemned.
However, in order to really understand the spiritual core in "Snow Country", we must first accurately recognize the image of Shimamura. Kawabata chose to see snow country from Shimamura's point of view, so Shimamura's worldview determined the basis of his understanding. Shimamura may have many personality defects, but he is highly consistent in his appreciation and pursuit of beauty.
When Shimamura first came to snow country, he wanted the people in the hotel to find a woman to sleep with, but as soon as Komako appeared, he didn't want to have a relationship with her. What a beautiful and clean girl, Shimamura thought to herself, this girl seemed to be clean even with her toes.
Yasukino Kawabata wrote:
The delicate and hanging bridge of the nose, although it is too thin, but the small tightly closed soft lips underneath are like a beautiful leech link, smooth and retractable, and there is also a feeling of movement in silence. If the lips are wrinkled or the color is not good, they will appear unclean. Her lips were not like this, but moist and shiny.
Shimamura longs for a relationship with Komako, and he envisions her physical beauty, but at the same time, the koma that Shimamura imagines in his mind is sacred and inviolable. There was an obsession in his heart, that flesh and spirit were a pair of contradictory bodies that could not coexist at the same time, and that once he possessed this woman's body, the glowing part of her body, the pure soul, would disappear.
Komako does have a shining soul, she grew up with a teacher to learn three strings, the teacher's son Xingnan fell seriously ill, in order to repay the favor, she is willing to go to the geisha to make money for the family. In this deserted village, Komako practiced seriously, he insisted on reading, keeping a diary, writing reading notes...
No one asked her to do this, but she was meticulous in her life. Innocence, beauty, pursuit, understanding of en tu bao, life interest, looking forward to changes in life, such a woman, it is difficult not to be liked.
Shimamura often speaks of the word "futile" when admiring Komako, and he almost looks down on this poor and lovely woman from the perspective of God, in this poor and remote land, all of Komako's pursuits are in vain, and the rebellion against life will only be suppressed by the powerful reality, and eventually perish in mediocrity.
The colt is a symbol of the beauty of the spirit and flesh, but the more beautiful and evil things are, the more they are lamented.
Indeed, Komako is appreciated by Shimamura, which makes her feel that she is valuable, but she cannot understand Shimamura's concept of love, so Komako tries to actively express her emotions. After Shimamura "issued the Good Man Card" several times, she was keenly aware that what Shimamura liked was not her real self.
Shimamura loves the illusory komako, and the komako only wants to be her true self.
The two played a circle of tai chi, or inevitably reduced to a physical relationship. At this time, Shimamura was disappointed, and he found that the spiritual side of Komako had disappeared and became a real vulgar person, so Shimamura had to leave with boredom, and the journey ended here.
Much of Shimamura's disappointment with Komako stems from his obsession, as he recognizes the beginning of a physical relationship as the end of a spiritual relationship. So Shimamura has been hovering between disappointment and hope, leaving again and again, and coming back again and again, for the reluctance in his heart.
Snow country has become a kite line that binds Shimamura, only wandering can realize the meaning of his pursuit of beauty, the moment of the line is the collapse of Shimamura's aesthetic world, the subjective living in his own philosophy of life, in the tunnel to and from the snow country, gradually towards the reality and illusion of the lost.
The second time he arrives in Snow Country, Shimamura encounters Leaf, a light after his disillusionment with Komako. The book spends an interrupted description of this first sight, extremely delicate. The leaves that Shimamura saw were reflections on the windows of the car.
The twilight scene 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.
In Shimamura's eyes, everything on the leaf is beautiful, but Shimamura has no direct contact with the leaf, so this beauty is distant. Kawabata deliberately created this unreality, so that Shimamura's already dead heart was rekindled, as if the appearance of a leaf had revived the spirit part of Komako's body. However, at this time, Shimamura did not realize that Leaf was the embodiment of Komako.
Yasunari Kawabata's writing of leaves is actually a kind of ingenuity, and at this time, Komako's spiritual beauty disappears due to her physical relationship with Shimamura. But Kawabata had to ask, where did the "spirit" go? My perception is that the spirit has not disappeared, it has come out of the body of the colt and becomes an entity, that is, the leaf.
In fact, Leaf gives Shimamura new expectations for snow country, he faces the pure "spirit", in the labyrinth of beauty, he has received the inspiration of the gods, through such a setting, we can clearly feel that Leaf is the true heroine of Kawabata Yasukasa's heart.
The beauty of the leaves was illusory from beginning to end, and what I saw was a beautiful translucent shadow. From the beginning of the encounter with Shimamura's Pingshui to the emotional separation between the two later, it is always difficult for Ye Zi to make me burst out of strong emotions, but the calm of this pulse also makes me want to stop.
Shimamura builds his imaginary leaves through sounds, rumors, and distant spectators, which is a purely one-way relationship. Through Shimamura's perspective, we see a pure, kind, silently dedicated female figure, which seems empty and hazy because of the distance, more like a legend.
However, during a conversation, Ye Zi wants Shimamura to take her to Tokyo. Shimamura felt a chill when he heard this. For Shimamura, Leaf's request destroys the distance between the two, which is equivalent to the first time he has a relationship with Komako, Komako's sense of sacredness in his heart collapses. Shimamura's illusions were shattered again.
Leaf is the embodiment of the spirit, and when the side of the spirit disappears from leaf, Kawabata should also use his ultimate aesthetic pursuit - death.
The final fire event, the leaves will leave this world in the most brilliant image:
That's how she fell. The woman's body, in a horizontal position in the air. Shimamura's heart was shocked, and he didn't seem to feel danger and fear at once, as if it were an illusion that was not real world. The stiff body fell in mid-air and became soft. However, she looked like a doll without resistance, and seemed free because she had lost her life. In this instant, life and death seemed to stop.
The colt holds the leaf to his chest, which is actually a mourning for the eternal loss of his spiritual side. Faced with such a sad situation, Shimamura finally found that Komako had completely become a mortal, Leaf had become the embodiment of eternity, Shimamura finally had a reason to leave the snow country, and everything about the snow country had disappeared into the emptiness of Shimamura's subjective grief, and the novel also came to an abrupt end here.
It is a pity to say that the ultimate beauty pursued by Yasunari Kawabata is always so sad, of course, it can also be understood that in the "new sense school" and the subtle aesthetics of material mourning, choosing an ethereal and sad emotion made me realize that the paradox of the beauty of spirit and flesh is not shared in the sky, and it is a piece of human individualistic aesthetics that will not stop.
Perhaps, in the overwhelmingly white world of "Snow Country", I am looking for a little blood-colored sadness, but also a little breathing in the mediocre reality.