Kusamakura (
草枕) .
| The Three Cornered World. | The Grass Pillow. After the release of some central texts of Japanese literature (
Sei Shonagon''s
The Pillow Book or
Iguchi Ichiyo''s
Dark Cherry), after exhaustive recovery of the work of Nobel Prize1968,
Yasunari Kawabata, it seems to come now
Natsume Soseki ''s deserved turn, the father of twentieth-century Japanese literature. Soseki''s life (1867-1916) coincided with the
Meiji period, from 1868 to 1912, marked by the downfall of the despotic regime in Japan and its definitive modernization. Born in Edo (one year later renamed Tokyo), Soseki studied from 1900 to 1902 in London and, in his return, he turned for a time into teaching in Matsuyama and at the University of Tokyo, where he succeeded Lafcadio Hearn in the chair of English literature. This activity inspired one of his most popular novels (
Botchan), but he achieved his greatest success in life in 1905 with
I am a cat (
吾輩は猫である /
Wagahai wa Neko dearu: there is translation into Spanish), satirical novel told through the eyes of an English teacher''s cat. Although these novels were endowed with vitality, Soseki tended over the years to more remembering or meditative books. Do not think of an old age work (he lived just 49 years), but perhaps, as it has been hinted, in a depressive personality. In his magnificent
Garasudo no uchi (
硝子戸の中 /
Inside My Glass Doors), a sort of testament written in 1915, Soseki recorded the most traumatic episode of his life when he learned that those who considered his grandparents were his real parents.
Kusamakura (The Grass Pillow), originally published in 1906 and now translated by Amalia Sato, relates to Soseki''s second stage, as well as the slim book where he noted down his dreams or "
To the Spring Equinox and Beyond" (
彼岸過迄 /
Higan Sugi Made: 1909), made of tiny details. "According to the author, it was a haiku novel---a novel with a primarily aesthetic purpose--- mode in which he made no further incursions", said Sato in a prologue that describes the book rightly: "The main character remains stationary while the events are happening around him, with an oscillation between the exercise of artistic commentary and the mystery story". The protagonist, a painter of poetic inclinations longs to "go off the world", travels to a remote village where there are hot springs. If compared to
Maupassant''s
Mont-Oriol, a novel where the discovery of a hot spring allows the painting of a multitude of characters, in this case the atmosphere is far from all worldliness. In contrast, the female character that captivates the narrator is almost ghostly. And the meditative sections, the memories or the lyrical digressions are as important as the thin plot. Unlike many writers who pose as thinkers, Soseki is that in a genuine way, without it weakening him as a narrator. Aesthetic discussions abound here ("an artist is a person living in the triangle which remains after the angle we call common sense has been removed from this world with four corners"), but also the views about the tea ceremony ("trivial mishmash of rules") or on railways, understood as the symbol of the twentieth century and "the dangers that abound in modern civilization".
Kusamakura first sentence is significant: "As I climbed the mountain path, I started thinking", that is, action and thought in equal parts. Something similar is detected if taken broadly the opening chapters. The first opens with seven paragraphs purely reflexive, followed by seven narrative paragraphs, three reflective, one narrative and five reflective. In the second chapter there are five poems interspersed. the author achieves this balance not only with lyricism and depth, but in more than one passage, he seems to allude consciously to his procedure. Thus, at least, they can be read the references to
Sterne''s
Tristram Shandy (novel which Soseki consecrates a long essay to) or, indeed, the theories of the narrator''s readings, who, instead of reading "from the beginning to the end", chooses parts at random, ignoring the plot. Speaking of sculpture in ancient Greece, Soseki says through his narrator that his ideal could be summed up as a kind of energy at rest, "Motion or rest? This burning question dominates the fate of artists". Motion or rest is precisely one of the fundamental tensions of this book that, between novel (movement) and haiku (still picture), explores the transience of things, makes the trip a metaphor for the search and meditates on the impossibility or the risks of escaping from reality.
Donanfer