Personally, I believe that the world's literary scholars are roughly divided into two categories, one is concerned with the field of personal private life and the inner world of the self, and the other is concerned with the wind and snow, insignificant and so on; the other is to turn their eyes to the outside world, in the spirit of intellectuals' keen insight, to criticize the shortcomings of the times, and to reflect on reality, society, and even to the whole of mankind.
Natsume Soseki undoubtedly belongs to the latter type.
Natsume Soseki is a multifaceted writer, of which the best achievements and the greatest influence in novels, "I Am a Cat" is one of his masterpieces, this novel has been called a "unique masculine literature full of irony and humor" in the history of Japanese literature.
This novel has a unique perspective, with a cat as the protagonist, living in a poor teacher's house, this is not a cat that has always been mediocre, it is a thoughtful, insightful, righteous cat who has never learned to catch mice. On the surface, this novel is about the world of cats, but in fact it unfolds the human world little by little from the perspective of this cat, explores the psychological state of intellectuals who are angry and confused, high and incompetent, and exposes and criticizes all kinds of hypocrisy, shamelessness and vulgarity in the "civilizationalization" advocated by the Meiji period.
Natsume Soseki uses the world of a thoughtful, insightful, righteous cat that does not catch mice to tell us what the world really is.
1. The historical background of the creation of "I Am a Cat" and the writing style of Natsume Soseki
Many times, writers will use words to express things and psychology that cannot be said bluntly, so every literary work is a reaction and refraction to the social reality of a certain historical period, and the same is true of "I Am a Cat".
Natsume's writing style is unique, and it has erected a monument to critical realist literature in the history of Japanese literature. "I Am a Cat" has attracted much attention in the Japanese literary world with its unique critical realism writing style. This novel strongly satirizes the inner world of Japanese intellectuals in the Meiji period without emptiness and wandering, sharply criticizes the extreme money-worshipping ideas of Japanese society at that time, and profoundly reflects the darkness and decay of Japanese capitalist society at that time. However, the formation of this novel comes from Natsume Soseki's real experience of the real world, which is a reaction and portrayal of a specific historical era.
Natsume Soseki was born in 1867, when Japan was in full swing with the meiji restoration movement of modernization, and the whole society and the whole people worked hard with great enthusiasm to learn advanced Western technology and Western civilization. Moreover, at the end of the 19th century, in order to actively promote the development of the capitalist economy, Japan began to launch wars of aggression, such as the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War.
"I Am a Cat" was published at this stage. Natsume Soseki experienced the path that many intellectuals walked after the Meiji Restoration, but he realized things that many intellectuals did not recognize.
At this time, although Japan had become an Asian power, the domestic social contradictions were very sharp, the rulers' cruel oppression of the people and the increasingly fierce resistance of the broad masses made Natsume Shushi soberly realize that the broad masses of the people, especially the petty and middle-bourgeois intellectuals, were cornered, did not want to join the reactionaries, and could not find a way out, and a wandering and depressed mood spread.
Natsume Soseki takes the laughter and anger of the generation of intellectuals after the Meiji Restoration as the object of narration, and describes their inner contradictions, pain, anger and confusion through the details of life, reflecting their upright and kind, but weak and incompetent, and inactive state of life.
2. Borrow a cat to show the integrity and kindness of Japanese Meiji intellectuals, but they are pretentious and unsophisticated
An abandoned kitten, fatherless and motherless, although fooled by poor students who belong to the "most brutal group of human beings", but fortunately adopted by the middle school teacher Tano Kusami, from then on, he has used the master's family as a base to show the world of cats and the world of humans. Natsume Soseki's writing about this cat, who has only thoughts, insights, and a sense of justice, but who can't learn how to catch mice, is actually writing about intellectuals who are honest and kind, but who are pretentious and unsophisticated.
Through what the cat hears, sees, and hears, Natsume describes the lives of a large number of intellectuals in Japan, and portrays the faces of intellectuals in the Meiji period, such as the fan pavilion obsessed with aesthetic research, the East Wind who is good at drama, the nerd Hanzuki, the philosopher Sugi Yang Duxian and so on. Although this group of intellectuals, although they are upright and kind, pretentious and high-minded, and disdain to collude with the dark forces of the world, they have their own weaknesses, such as being weak and incompetent, not understanding the world, showing off knowledge in the old style and elegance, and in the end they can only do nothing and do nothing.
(1) Kushami
The protagonist of the novel is Kusami, a poor middle school English teacher. To the cat who lives with his owner day and night and has developed his intellect, he is a good man, simple and frank, but he is a man of incompetence and stubbornness.
As soon as he returned from school, kushami often went into the study, pretending to be studying hard, but in fact just lying on the table and snoozing, "hiding himself in the shell like an oyster" lazy and depressed, pedantic and old-fashioned. He lives a monotonous life from home to class and from class to home every day, with slow speech, unsociable, and even some fear of communication. When his wife wanted him to accompany him to the outside to watch the play, he had an inexplicable illness, and when the play started and could not enter the theater, he was immediately fine.
He always had to do some new tricks at both ends of the three days, but no matter what he did, he didn't have a long time. For example, he always bought books that he didn't read at all, and went to bed after reading a few pages before going to bed; he used to like to paint watercolors and buy back large bags of materials, but within a few days, he was shelved; later, when he studied "The Theory of Giant Gravity", he still couldn't get it; later, when Dongfeng Jun persuaded him to join the recitation club, he was full of enthusiasm and devoted himself to it, but within a few days he abandoned it.
He was not very skilled, his knowledge was not deep, he did not even write an epitaph very fluently, he wrote a lot of errors in English, and he was smug. He was often stunned by the mitting and did not understand that the mitting was teasing him. He felt that it was boring to live, but he was afraid of death, and he most hoped to harm some diseases that were not fatal, so that he could live more leisurely.
As a middle school English teacher, life is not rich, even considered to be hard, but he has to live and be satisfied with the status quo. When suzuki, his old classmate, tried to tease him and ask if he had enough money, he didn't care: "It's still the same old way, tight." However, there is no hunger, no death, no fuss. When Suzuki advised him to take the initiative to cater to society and change his career to become an industrialist like Mr. Kaneda, he said: "If I am like a stream, I will never be in tune with society." ”
Because he refused to become inflamed and bent his waist for five buckets of rice, he scorned the industrialists such as Jintian and did not pay attention to them at all. When Mrs. Kaneda arrives, he reacts extremely coldly; when Suzuki comes to visit, he throws his business card into the toilet; when he learns that his protégé, Toda Ryo Mihei, wants to marry Miss Kaneda's family, he says that he will not attend his wedding. He regards Kaneda and his wife as villains in the city and never bows to money.
(2) Mikoto
Around Kushami are also some poor and sour literati, such as the cynical and teasing aesthete Mitsui. He wears a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, is well-read, knowledgeable and talented, but useless.
He often played pranks, making teasing people the only thing for fun. For example, when Kusami learned to paint, he teased: "The Italian painter Andrea once said: 'There is nothing more to paint than to depict nature.' There are stars in the sky and Dew in the earth; birds and beasts in the sky; goldfish in ponds, and jackdaws in dead wood. Nature is a huge picture album also. Kushami believed it to be true, but he made it up.
He has not yet been abroad, but he has said that he has already been there in the future, and even if the lie is finally debunked, he will argue or talk nonsense. For example, he boasted that he was full of poetry at all times, especially his achievements in making haiku, and even Mr. Masaoka Ziji praised it! When the frank Dongfeng Jun asked him if he had any contact with Mr. Zigui, he said unashamedly: "Alas, even if there is no communication, it is always reported to each other by radio." ”
For example, he once said that his uncle was a baron, but after saying it, he forgot about it. Later, a man asked him if he really had an uncle of a baron, and he could not answer, so he said, "Did I say that?" Hahahahaha, that's my lie! So the man criticized him: "Oh, you really have the ability, so if you tell such a lie in a serious way, you will really blow it."
Even though he is so casual, he is not a boring person, and he gets along well with kushami and others. He, like Kusami, was a man of knowledge, and he believed that "the abolition of individuality is the result of the destruction of mankind." In order to achieve the true meaning of life, one must maintain and develop one's own personality at any cost. He also despised the powerful. He mocked Mrs. Kaneda as a vulgar living specimen, and Old Man Kaneda as a circulation coupon.
In short, he is like the "wheat bran fed to goldfish", floating on the surface, without roots, and drifting with the waves.
(3) Mizushima Cold Moon
Mizushima Hanzuki was once a former disciple of Kusami, similar to his personality. Hanyue is versatile and knowledgeable, and is called the Mobile Library by the Ryu pavilion. He also often went to Kushami's house to talk with a group of friends, and also complained about the unfair things in his heart.
He studied the earth's magnetism in college, doing nothing all day, always saying things that were not marginal and unrealistic. For example, the title of his speech is "On the Mechanics of the Hanging Neck", tracing back to the ancient sources and exploring the exact original meaning of the so-called 'hanging neck'; the title of his doctoral dissertation is "The Influence of Ultraviolet Light on the Electric Effect of the Frog's Eyeball", in order to experiment, he grinds glass balls all day long, so how long can it be polished? Han Yue herself said, "Ten years, it is still fast, if you don't get it right, it may take twenty years." ”
In addition, there is the uninterpreted philosopher Du Xianjun, who has not changed much from ten years ago to the present, advocating a passive and retreating attitude toward social contradictions. There is also the East Wind who is intoxicated with poetry recitation, likes to write so-called new poems that do not make sense, and boasts of being a new poet who is anti-trend.
This group of people is in the era of the replacement of new and old cultures, "like loofahs, swaying with the wind, pretentious and detached, but in fact there are still dust hearts and desires", on the surface of a cloud is light and light, but on the inside it seems to be wandering and depressed, and on the whole it is in the dilemma of life.
3. The intellectuals of the Meiji period in Japan became the anachronistic "superfluous man", which was the cat
Natsume Soseki's style of works is unique, unfolding through a cat with insight, behavior, and thinking ability, seeing what people can't see, saying what people can't say, and hearing what people can't hear, showing the anger, confusion, and inner bitterness of some intellectuals with a sense of justice, who represent the vast majority of petty-bourgeois intellectuals in Japan in the Meiji period.
They are upright and kind, pretentious and high-minded, dissatisfied with reality, but they can't find a way to change the status quo, so when faced with new trends of thought, they conform to the same time, but also denigrate, helpless, panic and overwhelmed, only rely on gags, cynicism to kill time, in the wandering and boredom of time, nothing to do. And Natsume Soseki used them to express his predicament and inescapable loneliness at that time.
The image of Kusami in the novel has the shadow of Natsume Soseki. He studied traditional culture from an early age, inheriting the quaint style of the Tokugawa period; as an adult, Natsume Soseki was sent to England to "study English" as one of the first batch of students with the official fee of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and the liberal spirit of foreign countries deeply influenced him and was influenced by Western Enlightenment ideas.
After returning to China, Natsume Washi was greeted by a so-called "civilized" society in which the bourgeoisie ran rampant and money worship prevailed. Natsume sighed from the cat's mouth, "What makes everything in the world move is indeed money." There are no other figures who can fully understand the function of money and can flexibly exert the power of money, except for the capitalists and princes. The bourgeois democracy he envisioned had come to naught, and his heart was extremely bitter and wandering.
In his bones, he still has traditional moral concepts, but on the surface he is gradually Westernized, like many other intellectuals, on the surface he seems to be a transcendent world like a "prosperous and easy people", but in fact he is just a group of "superfluous people" who are becoming more and more out of date and in an increasingly passive situation in Japanese society during the Meiji period.
Natsume Soseki once wrote: "No matter where the whole of Japan goes, there is not an inch of light in sight, just darkness in front of you." I am alone in such an environment, what can I say and do? ”
He himself is pessimistic about the future, disappointed in the future, and disgusted with reality, but he is powerless to change, so he has to appeal to the end of his inner misery and seek his inner home in the unreal world. This leads to the production of "I Am a Cat". In 1906, he said in a letter to Takahama that he was "pouring out" his depression and resentment when he created "Cats" and so on.
"I Am a Cat" fully reveals the hegemony and arrogance of the capitalists, the roughness and vulgarity of the entire social atmosphere under the impact of money worship, and the helplessness and bitterness of modern Japanese intellectuals. This work has not only become a unique masterpiece in the history of modern Japanese literature, but also a classic in the history of world literature.