Wen | yu Sanpi'er
"Through the long tunnel of the county border, there is the snow country."
In 1935, Yasunari Kawabata began to publish short articles in magazines intermittently until the end of the last chapter of the story, and the original loose story was revised and integrated, and it was published 13 years later under the name of "Snow Country".
This "Snow Country", which took 13 years to finalize, has become one of the important masterpieces of Yasunari Kawabata.
In 1968, Yasunari Kawabata won the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the third person in Asia to receive this award, and "Snow Country" is one of the three representative works mentioned by the Nobel jury, which shows the importance of this work.
In the Nobel Prize in Literature's acceptance speech to Yasunari Kawabata, it reads:
"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."
In Yasunari Kawabata's works, beauty and sadness are constant themes, and using delicate brushstrokes, he can always perfectly integrate the two, and the same is true in "Snow Country", which can be said to be the highest representative of Yasunari Kawabata's aestheticism.
Today, Sanpi'er will take you into the realm of Yasunari Kawabata's "Snow Country".
The story of "Snow Country" is not complicated, and the beginning of the story takes place on the train to snow country.
In the middle of winter, idle dance artist Shimamura boards a train from Tokyo to Snow Country, his second trip to Snow Country, and his purpose of this trip is to meet a woman who once had a dewy relationship.
On the train, Shimamura can't help but be attracted by the beautiful and gentle leaves, who have been taking care of the sick men around them, which makes Shimamura guess that they are husband and wife.
Surprisingly, Shimamura and Leaf disembarked at the same stop in Snow Country, thus beginning the story between Shimamura and Komako and Leaf.
Shimamura, a wealthy second-generation man who lived in downtown Tokyo, studied the art of dance and occasionally published articles about dance, which he called him "barely a literati inker."
Although Shimamura's work does not bring him much wealth, but relying on the assets of his ancestors, Shimamura still lives a leisurely and comfortable life, with a virtuous wife at home to take care of him, and he often travels to collect style.
But it is this lazy life that makes Shimamura's spirit empty, and when a person is free of worldly money troubles, what awaits him will be more complex spiritual troubles.
Shimamura always treats things around him negatively, pessimistically looks at the people around him, he likes to immerse himself in his fantasies about the unknown, even the study of dance art is no exception, when he completely studied Japanese dance to the extreme, he resolutely gave up Japanese dance and suddenly changed his career to studyIng Western dance.
"Although the name of the study is actually arbitrary, it is not to appreciate the dancer's vivid flesh dance art, but to appreciate his own utopian dance apparitions."
This hypothetical work gave Shimamura a kind of comfort to his soul.
And his negative and pessimistic mood also doomed Shimamura's wavering treatment of feelings, and at the same time, doomed to the misfortune of the woman who really fell in love with him.
This woman is The Colt.
Originally a maiko in Tokyo, Komako was redeemed and brought to Snow Country, where she met Shimamura as a beautiful and cheerful woman.
"The woman gives the impression of being surprisingly clean, even reminiscent of her toes that she is probably clean in the crooks of her toes," and "clean" is Shimamura's first impression of Komako.
However, when Shimamura came to snow for the second time, Komako's identity changed significantly. The young master of Master Komako's family fell seriously ill and was treated in Tokyo, and in order to raise medical expenses for him, Komako became a geisha.
It is rumored that the young master and Komako are engaged, and Komako has no choice but to do it for the sake of her fiancé, but this statement has been refuted by Komako, "I am not going to be a geisha for anyone, but I still have to help."
Such a simple idea proves komagata's kindness and innocence, but it is a "futility" in Shimamura's eyes.
To be precise, Komako's life is a kind of "futility" in the eyes of Shimamura.
Komako's daily diary and novel notes are a kind of lonely futility; being a geisha for the young master is a kind of futility of life; even Komako's deep love for Shimamura is a futility of love in his eyes.
And Komako's extremely enthusiastic admiration for Shimamura makes Shimamura feel pitiful, when the flowers bloom, all the beautiful things that were once there will be nothingness, which is the fate of Komako and the destination of all things.
Compared with the futility of Komako, the leaf is a more poignant and mysterious existence in Shimamura's eyes.
On the train, Shimamura is deeply attracted by the beauty of the leaves, and what is even more impressive is the beautiful and almost tragic sound of the leaves, which invisibly foreshadows the tragic end of the leaves.
Because of the careful care of the men around him along the way, Shimamura mistakenly thought that Yezi and the man were husband and wife, until later he learned that the sick man was the young master of the Komako master's family, and Yezi's relationship with him was not a husband and wife, which made Yezi more mysterious.
Shimamura speculates about Leaf's relationship with the young master and Komako, while at the same time falling deeply into a fascination with Leaf.
In the whole book, although there are not many appearances of Leaf, each appearance touches the heart of Shimamura, she is beautiful and mysterious.
Until Shimamura came to the snow country for the third time, the young master had died of illness, and Shimamura and Yezi had more opportunities to meet, but this short encounter was also like a flash in the pan, in a fire, Yezi unfortunately died, and the whole story came to an abrupt end.
The story of "Snow Country" begins with the leaves and finally the leaves, the importance of the leaves is obvious, but the number of times she appears in the book is countless, and even the explanation of the background of the characters is pitiful.
Compared with Yezi, Komako can be called the "absolute heroine", and her description and portrayal are very comprehensive, but the reader can still read Yasunari Kawabata's preference for Yezi in the book.
So, who does Shimamura, as the male protagonist of the book, prefer?
Shimamura is obsessed with komako, but he is also obsessed with leaves, because koma and leaves are two sides of human beings, just like the relationship between flesh and spirit.
Two completely different women, in completely different circumstances, but they are inextricably linked, and in the book, Yasunari Kawabata not only uses symbolic depictions to metaphorically describe the relationship between Komako and Yezi, but also proves this through the story of what happened between them and Shimamura.
In the opening chapter, Shimamura's first appearance attracts Shimamura, her face reflected in the glass window of the train in the twilight is still unforgettable, and Komako's equally impressive scene is the appearance of the mirror reflected in the snow on the mountain in the morning.
Yasunari Kawabata uses metaphorical contrasts to write them as one virtual and one real, one dark and one bright, independent of each other but unable to separate, and the different attitudes of Komako and Yezi towards Shimamura also mean a person's inner contradictions.
Komako loves Shimamura, and she looks forward to Shimamura coming to see her in the snow country, whether she is sober or drunk, Komako will always find various reasons to come to Shimamura's residence, even if it is a short chat, she will be very happy.
However, Komako never said the words to make Shimamura responsible or retain, and Leaf said Komako's voice, and Leaf made Shimamura treat Koma better, which was Leaf's kindness, but it was also the truest thought in Komako's heart.
As for the young master of the master's family, Komako is willing to do geisha to raise medical expenses for the young master, but her attitude towards the young master is very indifferent, even if the young master wants to see the last side of the young master when he is dying, she refuses to go and chooses to send Shimamura at the train station.
On the other hand, The colt, Ye Zi always accompanied and took care of the young master, once making others think that Ye Zi and the young master were husband and wife, until the end, she accompanied the young master, and even after the young master's death, she would often go to visit his grave.
If the colt represents reality and materiality, then the leaf represents the beautiful and the spiritual, the colt is bound by the unfortunate reality, and the leaf has a beauty that does not care about the world, and even the final death is beautiful.
For some reason, Shimamura always felt that Leaf was not dead. Her inner life was deforming into something else. ”
Death does not really end leaf's life, but allows her to appear in another form, in other words, leaf is free from the shackles of the flesh and truly free and beautiful.
"When Shimamura stood firm and looked up, the Milky Way seemed to clatter and tilted towards his heart."
At this point, the full text of "Snow Country" ends, leaving the reader with unlimited reverie.
The reason why "Snow Country" has become Yasunari Kawabata's masterpiece is not only the author's aesthetic words and symbolic language, but also because of the beauty of Japan's "material mourning culture" expressed by it.
Japanese mourning culture is divided into three levels, one is people, the second is the world, the third is nature, touching or sad, for the emotional contemplation of all things in the universe, so that Japanese literature is full of a faint sadness, which is also the characteristic of Yasunari Kawabata's works.
In particular, the natural scenes depicted in "Snow Country", whether it is a cold northern village, a quiet ancient capital town, or a moth insect that has died in autumn, are full of a sense of natural hurt in Kawabata Yasunari's pen.
As the autumn cooled, insects died every day on the tatami mats in his room. Hard-winged insects, once turned over, could no longer fly. Bees can also climb and fall, and then fall down to not get up. Naturally dying due to the change of seasons, at first glance it seems to be dying quietly, but when you look closely, you can see them twitching their legs, feet and tentacles, struggling desperately in pain. These eight large tatami mats as the place where they die may seem too wide. ”
The death of an insect was recorded by Yasunari Kawabata in such a delicate text, which made people have mixed feelings and thoughts after reading it.
In fact, death often appears in the works of Yasunari Kawabata, this is because of Yasunari Kawabata's real-life experience, he has witnessed the death of his relatives since he was a child, which has made him form a melancholy and sentimental personality, and Yasunari Kawabata is also known as "a celebrity who attended the funeral".
Yasunari Kawabata has a deep understanding of death and life, so he also permeates this insight into his works and lives.
In 1972, Yasunari Kawabata, who had already achieved fame, suddenly committed suicide and died, leaving no words, shocking everyone.
Si Ren has been dead for many years, but his works are still in the world, as he said, "a wordless death is an infinite life." Sometimes death is not terrible, the terrible thing is that the person who is left behind will eventually live the opposite.
If you haven't read Yasunari Kawabata's works, you might as well walk into his literary world from Snow Country.
"Snow Country" Yasunari Kawabata ¥39 purchase
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