![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
muckefuckDamn that flu really killed the head of steam I'd built up on my reading. Nothing worse than being so miserable you can't even bear to open a book. In any case, I finally reached the end of Sōseki's slim 草枕 (lit. "Grass pillow"; translated by Alan Turney as The three-cornered world). Ultimately there was more narrative tension than I expected from what is essentially a self-indulgent essay on aesthetics with characters and dialogue, but still this is the kind of work that demands to be read slowly. Although Sōseki (or at least his unnamed alter ego) comes off as quite insufferable in it, I find myself receptive to some of his ideas.
For instance, he has a bead on what makes nature so restorative, at least for monkey-minded busybodies like me. As much as I enjoy cityscapes, it's impossible to navigate them without getting caught up in the tangle of human relationships. I can't view human choices neutrally; I constantly have to judge them. Whenever I see a contretemps at a crosswalk, I'm always mentally reckoning Who was more at fault? The driver or the pedestrian? I gaze at gardens and I see neglect; I look in windows and see bad decor. In a sense it's stimulating, but it's also plain exhausting.
With nature, it's just much easier to take things where they are. It's not a question of whether a pine tree "should or shouldn't" be growing in a particular location; it is and that's that. Maybe it'd be a nicer view without it but nature doesn't give a damn what you consider a nice view. You're just lucky it lets you see anything at all instead of striking you down with river blindness or a sudden infarction. Of course, no landscape most of us has ready access to is purely "natural"; for all we know that pine tree could've very well been deliberately planted in a WPA reforesting effort. But in that case there's enough of a remove that the possibility doesn't occur to me, so there's no judgment triggered.
This notion is trotted out in the first chapter and becomes the underpinning for his thesis, which is the need for objectivity in order to create great art. I question that--some of the greatest artists ever have been anything but dispassionate--and it becomes a springboard to some more dubious pronouncements about the creative endeavour (and some mediocre poetry). But for all his sniffing about his own refined taste, it's at least a somewhat democratic view: We may not all have the capacity to create great art, but in theory we can all strive to achieve the mindset which is a prerequisite for it.
I'm not wild about Turney's translation. There are some obvious problems with it. For instance, in the passage "you would find yourself bemused by the knowledge of what this world can do to a man, and life would become unbearable", I can't imagine "bemused" accurate reflects the original. It's also pitched very generally, to the point of telling us how many syllables are in a haiku and footnoting "Noh" and "Kabuki" in order to clarify that these are "form[s] of traditional Japanese drama". Also (and here's my sniffiness showing), it's tough to take someone seriously as an Orientalist when they butcher Zhuge Liang's name, but I'll be generous and ascribe some of these decisions to a clumsy editor.
While reaching the end, I decided I needed a break and a change of pace so I started Su Tong's 河岸 (lit. "Riverbank" but translated by Howard Goldblatt under the title The boat to redemption). (It was either than or Mo Yan's Garlic ballads [天堂蒜薹之歌]; the Old Man tried to interest me for Dai Sijie, but he seemed like more of the same.) I wondered alloud to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
monshu why I was reading it since I have rather unlovely memories of the previous novel I read from him. But if there's lot of nasty people being nasty to each other in his work, at least stuff happens. After a spate of very cerebral Japanese novels, I could use a little incident, even if it is series of metaphorical kicks to the head.
For instance, he has a bead on what makes nature so restorative, at least for monkey-minded busybodies like me. As much as I enjoy cityscapes, it's impossible to navigate them without getting caught up in the tangle of human relationships. I can't view human choices neutrally; I constantly have to judge them. Whenever I see a contretemps at a crosswalk, I'm always mentally reckoning Who was more at fault? The driver or the pedestrian? I gaze at gardens and I see neglect; I look in windows and see bad decor. In a sense it's stimulating, but it's also plain exhausting.
With nature, it's just much easier to take things where they are. It's not a question of whether a pine tree "should or shouldn't" be growing in a particular location; it is and that's that. Maybe it'd be a nicer view without it but nature doesn't give a damn what you consider a nice view. You're just lucky it lets you see anything at all instead of striking you down with river blindness or a sudden infarction. Of course, no landscape most of us has ready access to is purely "natural"; for all we know that pine tree could've very well been deliberately planted in a WPA reforesting effort. But in that case there's enough of a remove that the possibility doesn't occur to me, so there's no judgment triggered.
This notion is trotted out in the first chapter and becomes the underpinning for his thesis, which is the need for objectivity in order to create great art. I question that--some of the greatest artists ever have been anything but dispassionate--and it becomes a springboard to some more dubious pronouncements about the creative endeavour (and some mediocre poetry). But for all his sniffing about his own refined taste, it's at least a somewhat democratic view: We may not all have the capacity to create great art, but in theory we can all strive to achieve the mindset which is a prerequisite for it.
I'm not wild about Turney's translation. There are some obvious problems with it. For instance, in the passage "you would find yourself bemused by the knowledge of what this world can do to a man, and life would become unbearable", I can't imagine "bemused" accurate reflects the original. It's also pitched very generally, to the point of telling us how many syllables are in a haiku and footnoting "Noh" and "Kabuki" in order to clarify that these are "form[s] of traditional Japanese drama". Also (and here's my sniffiness showing), it's tough to take someone seriously as an Orientalist when they butcher Zhuge Liang's name, but I'll be generous and ascribe some of these decisions to a clumsy editor.
While reaching the end, I decided I needed a break and a change of pace so I started Su Tong's 河岸 (lit. "Riverbank" but translated by Howard Goldblatt under the title The boat to redemption). (It was either than or Mo Yan's Garlic ballads [天堂蒜薹之歌]; the Old Man tried to interest me for Dai Sijie, but he seemed like more of the same.) I wondered alloud to
monshu why I was reading it since I have rather unlovely memories of the previous novel I read from him. But if there's lot of nasty people being nasty to each other in his work, at least stuff happens. After a spate of very cerebral Japanese novels, I could use a little incident, even if it is series of metaphorical kicks to the head.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject