The Three-Cornered World

by Natsume Sōseki, Alan Turney (Narrator)

„Rohupadi“ räägib maalikunstnikust, kes väsib modernse linnaelu vaimutühjast rähklemisest ja suundub kaugele mägikülla, et tüütutest inimsuhetest eemal imetleda kaunist loodust. Sest ühe kunstniku ellu ei kuulu argimaailma labasus ja tühisus. Tema eesmärk on tajuda ümbritsevat objektiivselt – vältida emotsioone ning kirjeldada ja analüüsida üksnes oma tähelepanekuid, ise sündmustes aktiivselt osalemata. Kuid hoolimata ettevaatusest kistakse ta siiski ohtlikkesse inimsuhetesse. Kummalised kokkupuuted mõistatusliku neiu ja teiste kohalikega viivad selleni, et reaalsus hakkab segunema unenägude ja fantaasiaga. Kunstnik püüab seda väljendada luulevormis, sest maalimiseks ei leia ta õiget motiivi. Kõrvalises kolkakülas kogetu paneb ta mõtlema inimsuhete tähendusele, aga ka kunsti ja luule olemusele.

Sōseki Natsume (1867–1916) on jaapani moodsa kirjanduse suurkuju, kes paigutatakse selliste tuntud kirjanike kõrvale nagu Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, Yasunari Kawabata ja Yukio Mishima. Tema loomingus naeruvääristab Sōseki sageli läänelikku vaimutühjust ja moodsat elukorraldust ning tunneb nostalgiat moderniseerimise-eelse Jaapani järele. Seetõttu leiab Sōseki teostest rohkesti viiteid traditsioonilisele Jaapani kunstile, kirjandusele ja esteetikale. Sōseki tuntuimad teosed on „Mina olen kass“ („Wagahai wa neko de aru“, 1905), „Noorsand“ („Botchan“, 1906), „Rohupadi“ („Kusamakura“, 1906), „Sanshirō“ (1908) ja „Meel“ („Kokoro“, 1914).

Genres: Japan, Fiction, Japanese Literature, Classics, Asia, Poetry, Novels

184 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1906

About the author

Natsume Sōseki (夏目 漱石), born Natsume Kinnosuke (夏目 金之助), was a Japanese novelist. He is best known for his novels Kokoro, Botchan, I Am a Cat and his unfinished work Light and Darkness. He was also a scholar of British literature and composer of haiku, kanshi, and fairy tales. From 1984 until 2004, his portrait appeared on the front of the Japanese 1000 yen note. In Japan, he is often considered the greatest writer in modern Japanese history. He has had a profound effect on almost all important Japanese writers since.

Reviews

[بثينة العيسى · Rating 3 out of 5]

هذه الراوية هي احتجاج الفنان على حتمية وجوده في الواقع؛ الواقع المبتذل، واقع الحروب، النمائم، الزيجات التعيسة والحوارات التي لا تفضي إلى أيّ مكان. إنها محاولة (بطولية وعابثة مثل دون كيخوته) لأن يوجد المرء في العالم الشعري طوال الوقت. كل شيءٍ ينظر إليه الراوي، وحتى العواطف الإنسانية، هي موضوع فني، الأمر الذي يجعله يقف دائمًا في موقف المتفرج، لا يتورط في الحدث، ويعيش في حالة من "اللا عاطفية" التي تسمح له دائمًا بالانسحاب من الواقع لممارسة الرسم وكتابة الشعر.

إن مشكلة الراوي مع الواقع تكمن في ابتذاله، والطريقة الوحيدة، للتعفف عن واقع مبتذل هي في دخول عالم الفن. يقول:

"ينبغي فقط من أجل استعادة المنظور الشعري.. أن أعرض مشاعري الخاصة أمام نفسي، ثم أبتعد عنها خطوة إلى الوراء، وأتقصى بهدوء وبتجرد عاطفي طبيعتها الحقيقية. إن الشاعر ملزمٌ بأن يكشف للعالم عن أعراض مرضه".

أحببت في الرواية أنها كتبت بعينِ رسام. العناية البالغة في وصف الطبيعة وتمازج الألوان وقسمات الوجوه؛ إنها متسقة تمامًا مع منطق الشخصية. كل تلك الصفحات التي يفردها الكاتب لمناقشة فكرة فنية أو نقدية. ناهيك عن تلك السمة التي أجدها في معظم الروايات اليابانية؛ أنها قادرة على إبطاء إيقاع عالمي، ومضاعفة حسيته.

[Praj · Rating 5 out of 5]

“And when its difficulties intensify, you find yourself longing to leave that world and dwell in some easier one- and then, when you understand at last the difficulties will dog you wherever you may live, this is when poetry and art are born...”

For the very first time on a murky morning, I saw a set of colours come alive on the wall of my living room. The orderly row of comatose crayons suddenly sprang like a newborn foal twirling on the pasty canvass. Amid the angry voices of my parents I giggled as I indulged in my very first act of vandalism. The fiery red miraculously transformed into a royal shade of purple with the touch of blue, the yellow gave birth to orange when it embraced the stylish red. I was captivated by this odd-looking rainbow and then from that day onward, I scribbled and drew on every empty space found on paper, walls and even on my bare palms. The razor sharp pencil became a tyrant and I a lawless anarchist, each forming and defying the norms on their own terms. Over the years, common sense shackled my fearlessness and creativity became another tomb in my life. Soseki’s words made me realize that until now I had failed to distinguish the art that always shaped in front of me. It is not mandatory to entrust one’s thoughts to paper; art is right in front of you. In the assorted colours of your world, let your eyes be the naked canvass in which an artist’s creates a masterpiece, as you conjure the beauty of the world the mouth will sing a poet’s song and let your heart be the camera that garners and captures every purest sentiment from this sullied world. Art begins and ends with life. Life imparts art and nature embraces both of these elements. So, don’t be a pampered child who throws tantrums when things don’t go as planned, find a way where your sorrows simply melt in the abyss of happiness. Happiness had always been a ruthless stranger, thus do not drive it away for it rarely knocks on the door without any sorrowful repercussions. And, when no words seem to emerge or the brush trembles on the sight of the ghostly canvass, one is still the wealthiest of person, as he can view the human life through the eye of an artist in the realm of magnificent purity. After all "human world is not an easy place to live in."

A young artist
Beauty flirts
On grass pillow………

The novel opens up in the midst of a philosophical exploration establishing an artist’s vocation in the quest to attain serenity and beauty in the evolving art. A young artist pointlessly walks into an isolated hot-spring village of Nakoi, to perceive a world that is detached from human sentiments that adulterates the purity of art. Soseki, stays true to the words of the artist when experiences are recorded first-handed and the magnetism of the attractive Nami-(the divorced daughter of the hot-spring inn establishment), somehow entices the young artist to evaluate his observations of life, art and its vulgarities.


“I’m a human and belong to the world of humans so for me the unhuman can last only so long no matter how much I enjoy it.”

Salvation from the vulgar world; it is actually possible? Will the mind ever obey the words of the mouth? As the young artist seeks salvation from the human world debating on ways to achieve a “non-emotional” and “unhuman” state that will not contaminate the pristine splendor of his art, Soseki carries out a literary experiment inferring that it is rather impossible to break away from the muddled emotions of humankind. Life eventually touches you irrespective to the resistance. The “smell of human” at end reeks from every pore of one’s body. Loneliness maybe an artist’s blessing, for the mind is more imaginative and powerful when silent, yet the darkness that follows the recluse may bring crudity in terms of excessiveness resulting in the death of beauty. Soseki emphasis how plays (Noh), poetry, novels, painting become alive with human feelings. A book is loved when its characters come alive in one’s room when every new sensation is attached to the dried ink making it flow through plethora of budding thoughts. A Noh drama has its own sensitivities emitting through the immense layers of make-up, amalgamating in to a perfect blend of raw human emotions and tranquility. For a solitary traveler, detachment from the human world could be blissful, but would this kind of non-attachment create an exquisiteness of an art. The painter who roamed the streets of the picturesque Nakoi desired to stray away from worldly emotions yet somehow the shadows never left him. To the artist’s surprise the echoes of the ongoing Russo-Japanese war was heard among the icy solitary mountains of the village. The air brought the metallic smell of the blood that was being spilled hundred miles away and the voices of guns being fired became stronger with the whistles of the steam engine, roaring to go, carrying one of its important passengers –Kyuichi, as he volunteered during the war. That is life and this very debate of detachment v/s attachment to human presence, portrayed Soseki’s melancholic quandary about changing times. Life had even touched Nami’s portrait and the cloistered Japanese culture.


“The artists is the one who lives in a “three cornered world” in which the corner that the average person would call “common sense” has been sheared off from the ordinary four-square world that the normally inhabit.”

Soseki asserts that artists are madder and foolish as they romanticize nature with human affairs. Art mellows the severity of the human world. Soseki illustrates the paradigm of a heartbreak becoming the subject of an art. For an average man, Soseki asserts, heartbreak brings nothing but skepticism and agony, but for an artist who forgets the soreness and perceive the objectiveness of the heartbreak, encompasses the moments of empathy and wretchedness through literature and art. Thus, bringing a sort of emancipation to the heart that is suffering. Similarly, the process of penning a ‘haiku’ brings a sense of enlightenment. The 17-syllable marvel may look uncomplicated and dainty, yet it withholds the clandestine stories of several tears and pleasure. Fascinatingly, Soseki compares writing a poem or rather a haiku, to the tedious process of mixing the arrowroot gruel by chopsticks. Initially when the gruel is a mere liquid, the circular strokes of mixing seem rather effortless , but as the stirring continues and the two substances become viscous with each movement , the gruel transforms into a thick glue that ends up sticking the chopsticks together. That is how a poem is formed. Numerous loose emotions, thousands of blurry images stringing together, glues compactly the syllables into one solid picture. Isn't Soseki a magnificent artist? He certainly speaks the language as his prose talks about every form of art, be it poems, prose, painting or music. Soseki questions the true obligation of a poet; he refers to Greek sculptures, the works of Oscar Wilde, compares the faces of old women to the mountain crone of Nagasawa Rosetsu’s painting, the prose of Tristram Shandy and the poems of the Orient to conclude that the obligation of an poet (or artist in general) is “to dissect his own corpse and reveal the symptoms of its illness to the world.” In a world where an artist is classified by their subjective and objective approach towards art, imparting life and translating the external mood onto the canvass, which is then designated as a “true artist”? Is it a person who resembling the Abbot of Kankaji views life without hindrance and fetches beauty from the most trivial situations in life or is it someone akin to the protagonist who has to take refuge in an isolated land where his poetry can sing the song of a skylark without fearing the deep crimson strokes of the camellia oozing out from the painting like blood on an icy wintry slope. Is it possible to be artist in a true sense without being subjected to the menace of detectives who tend to count people’s “farts”?

Why do we always read books from beginning to end? Why must the prologue always be read first? Why can’t the story begin from the middle and instead of comprehending the plot first, we appreciate the characters and then revolve the narrative around them? Art is formed in this haphazard way. It never begins with a preamble, it just needs one perfect emotion, one stroke, one note or one word and a whole world is build around it. Art is formed when the artist can ultimately say, “Ah, here it is! This is myself!” Art has always freely flown in the narrow lanes of the mind and heart that is the place where creativity flourishes in its embryonic stage. Nonetheless, as the world modernizes eradicating human slavery, the art in turn becomes a slave to prejudicial judgments, defending its freedom at every step in the society. If creativity has to be justified at every corner then is the artistic community committing a crime by exposing art to political scavengers? If every brush stroke, every poetic syllable, every written word is interrogated, then will art succumb to being a mere regulated display behind the glass door forever waiting for a stamp of approval? Soseki was troubled as his melancholy viewed the changing world through a glass door questioning whether Japanese traditions will be lost in the chaos of modernization, and true art will be lost among the malodorous farts.


“The world where falling in love requires marrying is a world where novels require reading from beginning to end.”

Life changes, old familiarity bring new lonesomeness as beauty is transient. If our shadows can bear the pain of its disappearance as the night falls only to find joy the next morning, why does man fear change and prefers to dwell in the shadows of an haunting past rather than embrace the joy of future? Although, Natsume Soseki spent several of his studying years abroad (London), his heart belonged to Japan and it’s embedded culture. Soseki came from a world where books were read from the middle and random passages. Akin to the novel’s protagonist, Soseki was apprehensive about the onset of the 20th century. The author’s derision to modernity can be unmistakably seen with his dismissal of nude art for lack of dreamy innocence that is perceived in the artistic depth of the Geishas and the annoyance for the train describing it to be “a serpent of civilization that comes slowly writhing along the glittering tracks, belching black smoke from its jaws.”

Reading these thoughts of the author, I infer that more than the advent of modernization (since Soseki did bring in quite a Western influence in his prose), he was skeptical about the state of the preservation of Japanese traditional art. I wonder what Soseki would think in today’s world where artists are thrown in jail or labour camps (Ai WeiWei) or have to resort to clandestine Banksy performances. Were Soseki’s inferences accurate when he concluded that “modern civilization gives each person his little patch of earth and tells him he may wake and sleep as he pleases on it, only to build iron railings around it and threaten us with dire consequences if we should put a foot outside this barrier?”. Has the modern world shackled the essence of art? Is a pure emotion of ‘pitying love’ susceptible of being exposed to the vulgarity of its world? Has art become so vulnerable that it can only sustain pristinely in a secluded atmosphere without being tainted by the human world? In the chaos of modernization and the ambivalent relationship to aged traditions, where does Soseki’s literary naturalist grass pillow stand among the terrains of human entanglement and realism? At a time when Japan was tumbling into a new world whilst being haunted by it traditional past, Natsume Soseki expressively penned the quandary of a country and its people trying to find a concrete place in between the two worlds.


“My aim on this journey is to leave behind the world of common emotions and achieve the transcendent state of an artist’s....”

In Japanese, the word ‘Kusa’ = grass and ‘Makura’ = pillow; resting on the aesthetics of nature in this haiku-style philosophical zephyr, Soseki’s prose(which he wrote in a week’s time) embodies a journey that not only encapsulates beauty of a timeless past but also an memorable experience of appreciating modernity and traditional complexities of art that stood on the periphery two entirely different centuries along with its artist.



Shadows of life
Three-cornered world
Soseki dreams.....

[Rowena · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Yes, a poem, a painting, can draw the story of troubles from a troubled world and lay in its place a blessed realm before our grateful eyes.”- Natsume Soseki, Kusamakura

Natsume Soseki might soon be a new favourite of mine. This is a book I read after reading Praj's wonderful review.

Kusamakura tells the story of an unnamed artist looking for artistic inspiration while walking through the Japanese mountains, and his encounters at the on-sen (Japanese hotspring) where he encounters the beautiful Nami.

Kusamakura is one of the most beautiful books I’ve read all year, one that hooked me from the first sentence. This book was a philosophical look at poetry, nature, beauty and art from a Japanese perspective, often contrasting that perspective a lot more favourably than with other perspectives. Though not an artist myself, as an art-lover I could appreciate the opportunity of looking into the mind of an artist, and viewing his thought process.

As trite as this may sound I realize that Japanese literature speaks to my soul on a deeper level. I really think it has a lot to do with my introvertism. Authors like Soseki, Tanizaki and Mishima have a very introspective way of looking at things, beauty in particular, and it’s something I can really relate to.

Several adjectives came to mind while I read this. Delicate was one,calming and elegant were others.

I didn’t agree with Soseki’s negative critique of Chinese art and European literature though:

“All such Chinese household furnishings, indeed, have the same rather dull and unimaginative quality. One is forced to the conclusion that they’re the inventions of a race of patient and slightly slow-witted people.”

And this is just conjecture here, but as this book was written in the same year as Okakura’s "The Book of Tea", it does seem to me that both authors were worried about foreign influence on Japanese culture and were looking at ways to show the superiority of Japanese art. I can’t side with one form over the other as I believe all art forms are valid and carry different energies and emotions. It's a pity Soseki didn't look at it in this way.

Apart from that little gripe this book was wonderful. I’m really looking forward to reading more Soseki.

[Araz Goran · Rating 4 out of 5]

رواية تأملية شاعرية في غاية العذوبة، يصحبنا ناتسومي سوسيكي في تجوال ورحلة فنية باذخة الجمال في ظل طبيعة خلابة وخيال طري لفنان يحاول أن يتلاشى مع فن العالم وفنه الخاص ، مزيج من تأملات، من حساسية معقدة ينشأها الفنان مع ما حوله من طبيعة ومن أناس ، يأخذنا حتى أعماق التأمل الإنساني المرتبك أمام حضرة الجمال وبواعث الحب والنشوة التأمل في الطبيعة ..


إمتزاج روح الفنان مع الطبيعة البكر هو شيء من سحر، من رغبة في التجدد، إنسجام تأملي تام ما كل من شأنه أن يجعل روح الإنسان خفيفة وتحلق فوق تأملات منفلتة من قبضة العقل والمنطق والاشياء، الرواية هذه ليست للاشياء ولا للروح أيضاً بل لتعلق بسيط وهش، حالة من الوجد مع الطبيعة والفن والفضاء والحب والقلق والضمير والإنتماء واللامعقول والشغف والعاطفة ، هروب من الإبتذال، سخط عالٍ من حياة معاصرة تبدو كالسجن للروح القادرة على التحليق بعيداً، يأخذنا الكاتب إلى عوالم بدائية غير ملموسة، عوالم ضبابية، حيث الوعي الإنساني في صفاءه ويقينه المشتت، إلى نهايات الاشياء الأكثر تشبعاً بالفن ، إلى الفن نفسه، إلى غرفة العالم السفلية الموشحة بالقصائد والفن والتأمل، بعيداً عن الضجيج اليومي للحياة، كم مرة تمنيت العيش هنا، حيث عالم سوسيكي الذي يفضح الجمال ويربت على قلب المحبين للحياة الأكثر حزناً وشاعرية، حيث مازال في وسع الفنان أن يعيش، ما زال في أبسط إنسان أن يصبح فناناً مادام يمتلك روحاً صافية، حساسة، متمردة، أن لكل منا في داخله وعي فنان، ريشة طائر، فرشاة وقلم، قصيدة وحب، وضجر يومي يجعلنا نفر من قسوة هذا العالم نحو أحضان الجمال والتأمل، التأمل بهدوء وبدون تعجيل لوصول الاشياء ..


رواية جميلة ودافئة وحميمية للغاية، وروائي أتقن سرد معالم الجمال بخفة رسام بارع، رواية لكل عاشق للفن والجمال والطبيعة..

[Ola Al-Najres · Rating 4 out of 5]

كل مُبدع هو عظيم القيمة ، لأنه يخفف من قسوة عالم البشر ، و يُثري قلوبهم ..


لم تكن وسادة من عشب و كلمات غضّة ، بل دثاراً محاكاً من عديد المقطوعات الشعرية والتأملّات اليانعة ، ليمنح دفء اللحظات الحالمة والصفاء الفريد ، و هناءة الإلهام حين يحلّ في الفنان محلّ الروح من الجسد .


حين يتعاظم شعورك بقلق الحياة ، ستتملكك الرغبة في العثور على مكان وادع تستقر فيه ، لكنك ستدرك أن الحياة شاقة حيثما حللت ، وعندها يولد فيك الشعر و الفن ..

بطل الرواية فنان يجمع بين رهافة الرسّام و حساسية الشاعر ، ينأى بنفسه لقرية جبلية بحثاً عن سكينة وادعة تقوده لإنجاز عمله الفني الذي يؤرق مخيلته و يحلم بتجسيده في البُعد الماديّ .





كانت سعادتي لا توصف بأن أُسجل في ذاكرتي جمال ما هو جميل حقاً ..

من يبحث عن أحداث درامية وحبكة صاخبة عليه بالابتعاد عن هذه الرواية ، فالسرد هنا شاعري حالم يستمد جاذبيته من تدفقه الهادئ في مجرى الحكاية الغارقة في الغرابة ، و كما تتحرك الأعشاب المائية في أحضان بحيرة صافية ، تداعب التأملات والفلسفة الناعمة ذهنك و تتركك في حالة استرخاء روحي كامل .


رواية للتذوق ، لا للالتهام ، تُقرأ برويّة ، أخذت مني وقتها كاملاً ولم أُجهد نفسي في إتمامها ، سُعدت بها لأنها عرّفتني على ناتسومي سوسيكي الذي قيل فيه :

اذا كان الروس خرجوا من معطف (غوغول) ، فإن اليابانيين خرجوا من وسادة ناتسومي سُوسيكي ..

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this book is the perfect example of a “very good book that is simply not for me.” The writing is beautiful, the language poetic. I must heap praise upon the translator as this must have been quite a challenge. Every line is seemingly trying to evoke a sense of awed beauty and the translator does an admirable job… and yet almost every page I wished the book would just end and let me be done with it. I only finished it out of stubbornness and because it is only 146 pages… and they seemed like some of the longest 146 pages I’ve ever read.

The book is about an artist. He seeks artistic “nonemotion” to view the world like a painting, though of course that only works so much for him. Our unnamed narrator expresses his views of art quite frequently, often going on for full chapters about his theories on aesthetics and declares them all as the proper way of viewing art. Frankly I’ve known people like him in real life and I can’t stand them. They are the sort who declare all their opinions as fact and sneer at anyone who voices otherwise (a great example comes of this in the novel where the owner of the inn he is staying at shows him some art pieces, and he can’t help but show his disgust at a piece deemed too plain and then too gaudy once its origin is told). All is to be viewed in the name of their art, and I personally found it grating.

As I said, entire chapters could be said to just be (definitive in the character’s mind) statements about art, theory and aesthetics. Though the book is short, I’d say over 70 pages could be summed up as just the narrator talking art. At one point I stopped mid-chapter where a page began with the line “But what does theory matter?” and had I been the praying sort, I would have prayed to every deity that he wouldn’t answer that question.

He did.

If this is the sort of book you’re looking for, by all means, I think you will enjoy it. Everyone I’ve seen/talked to has loved it, and it seems the reviews on Goodreads are almost all positive. Indeed as I said it is well written and it gets an extra star because of it, but I personally took no enjoyment from reading it.

As a brief aside, I find it interesting that it was published the same year as the only other book I have read by the author; “Botchan”. These books are practically polar opposites, as our lead in Botchan is very definitely not an artist and that book is more about plot and humor than the prose. Also, they are curiously opposites in terms of translation, as I will praise Kusamukra’s translator despite disliking the book, whereas I really enjoyed Botchan, but felt its translation flawed.

[Y · Rating 4 out of 5]

If The Gate reminds me of the evanescence of autumn, Kusamakura reminds me of the drowsiness of spring: the presence of the soul is forgotten, and the human spirit is forged into nature and elevated to be the realm of pure poetry. Unlike The Gate which is so full of weariness and melancholy, Kusamakura has abundant elements of sarcasm and humor which makes it sound like the inner voice of an adolescent boy who is still trying to imagine the immortal beauty of his own self. Adolescent years, still unconvinced of "common sense" and, knowing nothing about weariness, always poised for action like a Classical Greek sculpture.

I can see the transition of Soseki from his early sarcasm to his late melancholy in this novel. The narrator starts with an energetic searching for poetry but gradually slips into inaction. During the past eleven days I spent in Japan, I see a culture of both confidence and inaction. It is a country satisfied with itself and not so much interested in others; it is a country that dares not accept the guilt of its past, that dares not change and assimilate. Already past adolescence, but where exactly does it lead from there?

[Stephen P(who no longer can participate due to illness) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thirst for the purity of an openness that eschews all restrictions of internal will or external codes. The rare locale of an artist. A place of imagination and dreaming existing apart from the vulgarity of movement-the world. Seeking it removes any chance of finding it. The locale is something which arrives. A splendor of reverie for those patient enough to wait. A book that replenishes the inspiration of awaiting.

We travel with the narrator, a 30 year old Japanese artist. His steps takes him into a valley, an Inn where he is the only visitor. What is to be sought in this quiet splendor is, what is an artist? How is this manifested within a person, how is this manifested within a person's response to the world.

Residing within his mind , his thoughts which exist between the breaths of prose, verse carrying pearls of metaphor, we live through his travails, temptations, experiences, and experiences of experience. A dedicated pilgrim of the mind he has that unique gift to express the ephemeral in, beautific language while carrying out a plot not inserted but grown from seed and carefully tended.

My only complaint, a small one, there was a couple of time the descriptive language slid over the borderline into overuse and slowed the narrative. A loss of a 0/5 stars.

However, due to the reading of this slender novel-memoir-autobiographical interlude-travelogue, I understand rather than know, one may be an accomplished artist without painting, composing, writing, playing a musical instrument. Living within each moment invites us to live within the world of art as opposed to the contrast of living within the taint of the disquieted world.

Please do not take my review as alluding to that this quiet writing is instructive. The author is filled with grace and gracefulness in the practice of his craft. The book was difficult to put down. During the day it proved a burdensome task to close its covers within my mind. It is difficult now to be in ANY situation as I had been before. Anything new is uncomfortable for me at first. There are riches here though. Many more than meets the eye.

4.5/5

[Inderjit Sanghera · Rating 5 out of 5]

A meditation on life and beauty beneath a kaleidoscope of colours and images, a paean to beauty set against a harlequin shimmer of colours, from the reflections of a sun-light on a the leaves of a tree or the bucolic blooming on the whimsically white flower petals beneath the inky blue night sky. The incandescence of the night-sky, the warbling of the sky-lark beneath leaves of a tree leaden with rain, the pale, indescribable iridescence of sun-light on a mountain slope, the poetry-leaden atmosphere of Japan, these are the images which dominate Kusamakura, a kind of homage to the Chinese poetry and haiku, which were more concerned with the natural world than human psychology; as the narrator states, beneath the indifference of nature lies an acceptance which is not possible in the human world, a freedom from the endless restrictions of society.

“As I get back to my feet, my eyes take in the distant scene. To the left of the path soars a mountain peak, in shape rather like an inverted bucket. From foot to summit it is entirely covered in what could either by cypress or cedar, whose blue-black mass is stippled with the pale pink of swathes of blossoming cherry. The distance is so hazy that all appears as a single wash of blurred shapes and colours.”

The story follows an intinerate artist as he traverses various parts of Japan. As well as his appreciation of the natural world, the artist ponders the meaning of art; art is the vehicle by which people can recognise beauty, art is the tool with which the human mind can comprehend the inner luminescence of the world, art is the medium by which the human mind can rise above the mediocrity which besets the world, the artist, lachrymose, lugubrious and misunderstood, yet the sole individual who can comprehend the mellifluous melancholy or the world, who can use art to to overcome the impermanence life and gain immortality;

“We owe our humble gratitude to all the practitioners of the arts, for they mellow the harshness of the human world and enrich the human heart. Yes, a poem, a painting, can draw the sting of troubles from a troubled world and lay in its place a blessed realm before our grateful eyes. You only have to conjure the world up before you, and there you will find a living poem, a fount of song. No need to stand before your easel and limn with brush and paint-the world’s vast array of forms and colours and sparkles with the inner eye.”

A wonderfully innovative and deeply imagined celebration of life, ‘Kusamakura’ is the ultimate textbook on beauty, on life, on the gentle shimmers of sun-beams or the dazzling colours of a camelia flower.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful book which takes place a metaphorical and physical mountain climb. I would consider it Soseki's more interior-facing work and one of incredible zen-like wisdom and imagery. Again, do not expect laughing geisha and dancing no actors but rather the mature musings of a Japanese master writer grappling with middle age at 39.
Here is an example of his irony-laden highly reflective pose chosen at random:

I eased my law-abiding buttocks down on the cushioning grass. One could remain in such a place as this for five or six days without the fear of anybody making a complaint. That is the beauty of Nature. It is true that if forced Nature can act ruthlessness and without remorse, but on the other
hand she is free from all perfidy, since her attitude is the same towards everyone who harasses her.

The story does include some other characters and a little bit of shadow theatre and is delightful in that melancholic Soseki kind of way.
The narrator is able to articulate his ideas near the end of the book in a highly evocative poem, here are the closing lines:

Although yet thirty, my thoughts are those of age,
But Spring retains her former glory.
Wandering here and there I am as one who with everything in turn,
And 'midst the perfumed blossoms, peace is mine.

I certainly hope Soseki died with that peace and that I myself one day may attain it.

[Odai Al-Saeed · Rating 3 out of 5]

هذه الرواية تستمد لغتها السردية من شاعريتها التي تخللتها تساؤلات طرحت بشكل متهكم لشخص يبحث عن ذاته في العزلة ساخطاً من قسوة البشر
الهامات قصصية تتوسع بعمق الفكر الأدبي والفني يحدثنا بها الكاتب الياباني بطريقة بعيدة عن النمطية
لمن يبحث عن رواية حدث واثارة لن تروق له هذه الرواية التي غلبت عليها الروح التأملية والنشيج الدامع بفلسفة هادئة... مرضية لحد كبير

[Flo · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you work by reason, you grow rough-edged; if you choose to dip your oar into sentiment’s stream, it will sweep you away. Demanding your own way only serves to constrain you. However you look at it, the human world is not an easy place to live.
And when its difficulties intensify, you find yourself longing to leave that world and dwell in some easier one—and then, when you understand at last that difficulties will dog you wherever you may live, this is when poetry and art are born.

Control yourself, you just found another possible 5-star book, which connects so perfectly with the experience you just had with The Penguin Book of Zen Poetry that the result is this year's most harmonic sequence. Don't share every line you're highlighting; it's bad form.

April 6, 19

*

I'm having no problem with controlling myself at the moment. How sad. It's also sad to think I wrote the above paragraph last year, when life, oddly enough, was normal.

Oct. 17, 20

[Katia N · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think, this little gem of a book would be even better on a second reading. One has to slow down to appreciate it. And that was the hardest challenge for me. It is a book about contemplation of beauty in its different forms. In general, it conforms to my good stereotypes, or should I say "ideals" about Japan: composing of haiku, tea ceremonies, exploring the colours of food, buddhist priests and a mysterious beautiful woman... It is stubbornly and refreshingly moves away from the plot. In fact, in one scene, the narrator picks up a novel in English and reads it from the middle. He does not need a story arc. In art, he searches how to convey a certain feeling rather than a certain story or a certain likeness...

However, the modernity looms from the shadows. And the trains, "the serpents of civilisations", take young people away to fight a war.

My first Soseki and I am quite enchanted.

[Mariel · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Clearly I am thinking about nothing. I am most certainly looking at nothing. Since nothing is present to my consciousness to beguile me with its color and movement, I have not become one with anything. Yet I am in motion: motion neither within the world nor outside it- simply motion. Neither motion as flower, nor as bird, nor motion in relation to another human, just ecstatic emotion."
To me, that is the "nonemotion" from Kusamakura of life as nature as art as life as poetry. In my own hazed definitions I tell myself that it's my human naturism, as well as outside naturism (like normal people would call it). Walking outside after a storm and the senses pick up the clean smells of the earth and sky. No one else is around so things don't "matter" in the way of consequences. I feel cheesey trying to name it. Haikus! Kusamakura is Soseki's "haiku novel". Nature! It is what Robert Bresson said about not chasing poetry and letting it slip in your walking joints as ellipises (he said it better than that, I'm paraphrasing). That's it. Ellipsis motion... Kusamakura is my ellipsis motion novel.

"I simply gaze at it with pleasure. The word "gaze" is perhaps a little strong. Rather say that the phantom slips easily in under my closed eyelids. It comes gliding into the room, traveling soundlessly over the matting like a spirit lady walking on water."
This! The unnamed protagonist sets off into the other corners of his world to forget the self-interest found in identifying in emotions of life as stage. I don't think I could go anywhere and not make more of that. Stories are my life, and I read it into everything. But I think I need the painting kind of naturism/haiku... Life as thousands of years ago or a thousand years away. It can't touch you and you cannot touch it. Is that kind of love capable of burning as fire? Probably not. But it can be an image made whole. It might not do a damned thing about loneliness but a painting is unbroken hearted. I think I get why it was good for him to go in search of his nonemotion artistic life.

"When a thing finishes abruptly, you register the abruptness of its ending, and the loss is not deeply moving to you. A voice that breaks off decisively will produce a decisive feeling of completion in the listener. But when a phenomenon fades naturally away toward nothing with no real pause or break, the listening heart shrinks with each dwindling minute and each waning second to a thinner forlornness. Like the beloved dying who yet does not die, the guttering flame that still flickers on, this song racks my heart with ancticipation of its end and holds within its melody all the bitter sorrows of the world's transient springs."

I read this edition of Soseki's work, translated by Meredith McKinney under the title "Kusamakura" rather than "The Three-Cornered World" (translated by [I have to look this up! Translators have never had this level of attention from me before goodreads, unless the work is a particular favorite] Alan Turney). It was a new translation (by Jay Rubin. Him I don't have to rescue from the tip of my tongue) of Sanshiro too. I'm not sure why there were new translations done. McKinney's introduction talks about how impossible it is to capture the simplicity of Soseki's Japanese into English. She chose an old fashioned style of English writing to reflect the losing to times style of the Japanese. I was at the least in McKinney's touch, if not her hands, because I cannot read the Japanese. The old-fashioned style is like a "Do" telling kind of thought. "One must..." instructions. If I were on this walk I think I'd want to close the eyelids a bit more and not chase with the "Musts". McKinney is all I've got. Maybe it is the scholarly bent of the philosophy, not to mention her "How I did it" introduction, that made me feel it was bent that way. I know I'm convoluted at best trying to define any of this stuff... (Well, isn't everyone alone in their naturist moments?) Maybe McKinney's instructional method works better than my inner describing it to myself stuff.

"The Three-Cornered World" is a great way of explaining the disregard of "reality" in a make believe world of art. I have no way of knowing what the literal translation is. I'm going to refer to "Kusamakura" in this review all the same, because that's what my copy was called. [Useless Mariel trivia: I refer to foriegn films to the title it was packaged as when I saw it. Some French titles, some in English.]

"If you see something frightening simply as what it is, there's poetry in it; if you step back from your reactions and view something uncanny on its own terms, simply as an uncanny thing, there's a painting there. It's precisely the same if you choose to take heartbreak as the subject for art. You must forget the pain of your own broken heart and simply visualize in objective terms the tender moments, the moments of empathy or unhappiness, even the moments most redolent with the pain of heartbreak. These will then become the stuff of literature or art. Some will manufacture an impossible heartbreak, put themselves through its agonies, and crave its pleasures. The average man considers this to be sheer folly and madness. But someone who willfully creates the lineaments of unhappiness and chooses to dwell in this construction has, it must be said, gained precisely the vantage point as the artist who can create from his own being some supernatural landscape and then proceed to delight in his self-created magical realm."

[I'm going to betray my every day idiotic ramblings now. It is good to sit quietly in nature to escape myself, you know? The cover is a portrait of a woman in a kimono. Okay, that is left open to reveal breasts. I've been getting a lot of used Japanese classics that have covers like this. Why are covers for classics so unoriginal? I suspect I'll start seeing the same covers used for Japanese classics just like those chinless girls or cottages on English classics from the eighteenth century. "I've already read this! No, wait, I haven't. Her dress had puffed sleeves! This kimono reveals a bit more cleavage than that other one! I mean, the peach cleft hairline thingy... Um....."]

Soseki is said to have written Kusamakura in a week! Fuuuuck. This is only my third Soseki and I'm already convinced he was something of a genius. I feel like he could be one of those long ago puzzle peices that makes my whole painting. I know, the Kusamakura protagonist didn't believe in "detective" work. It isn't a complete fit. I don't want it to be. What I love about detective work is figuring out the differences and the sameness. I DO care about the hows and the whys.

"What we call pleasure in fact contains all suffering, since it arises from attachment. Only thanks to the existence of the poet and the painter are we able to imbibe the essence of this dualistic world, to taste the purity of its very bones and marrow. The artist feasts on mists, he sips the dew, appraising this hue and assessing that, and he does not lament the moment of death. The delight of artists lies not in attachment to objects but in taking the object into the self, become one with it. Once he has become the object, no space can be found on this vast earth of ours where he might stand firmly as himself. He has cast off the dust of the sullied self and become a traveler clad in tattered robes, drinking down the infinities of pure mountain winds."

Yukio Mishima said about Kawabata that he was the "eternal traveler". That might be a more appropriate description of Soseki. The traveling as ellipsis! Yeah!

"The fact of the matter is that the realms of poetry and art are already amply present in each one of us. Our years may pass unheeded until we find ourselves in groaning decrepitude, but when we turn to recollect our life and enumerate the vicissitudes of our history and experience, then surely we will be able to call up with delight some moment when we have forgotten our sullied selves, a moment that lingers still, just as even a rotting corpse will yet emit a faint glow. Anyone who cannot do so cannot call his life worth living."
This! I know I said it borders on a self-help style too much to underly the true meaning of beneath the gaze... But moments like this? This is the true definition of natures. Does anyone else like to watch making ofs about their favorite films? Kusamakura feels a bit like that. I remember my mouth hanging open in astonishment over one behind the scenes story about Klaus Kinski from Werner Herzog. I don't need the behind the scenes to feel anything about Klaus Kinski (I really do. Feel something), but knowing how Kinski would keep his feet planted and rotate the rest of his body for the camera to pick up how he entered the frame larger than life? I was impressed. First wall, second wall, third wall... I love it when they don't have to break and exist at the same time. Kusamakura is that kinda behind the scenes rather than just the story. No matter what the "pure" artistic aim was in its construction to exist outside of emotion... The construction of the painting was not without spirit. Emotion is spirit, as far as I'm concerned. I loved Kusamakura for being about this because I'm going to need more stuff like this to explain how one goes about building this life.

P.s. This review is crazy, isn't it?

[Ben Winch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. Joyous. Sharp, clear, precise. Soseki’s best, I think, for its freedom, for its glow. True, from here on near everything he wrote had the magic, but like Kafka’s his characters were hemmed in, in darkness. Here, from when the unnamed “I” appears on a mountain path until he disappears at a train station as the world calls from down the tracks, all is glittering. I couldn’t read this when I was down; it demanded I engage with it, bring heart to it, enjoy it. I know not everyone (few people, even) will feel this. The 150-page mountain idyll of a painter who never paints. A “haiku novel” preoccupied with stillness. A cod-philosophic essay on alienation, the artist’s role in society, Japan versus the west, the “nonemotional”. Not that it’s plotless (the plot, though simple, is taut, engaging) or experimental (it is, but subtly; not for Soseki vulgar flash and histrionics), but it’s quiet, thirst-quenchingly so. For Soseki, anything less (anything louder, brasher, less disciplined) would be a failure. But where in The Gate or Light and Darkness this reserve might constrain him, here it sets him free. Where The Gate takes place (until its pained Zen-temple denouement) in a virtual burrow – wintry Tokyo unseen outside – Kusamakura is spring, mountains and sea, a wide chessboard on which his proud sharp-carved characters (which, as Eddie Watkins says, are always chess-pieces) move with full-extended ease. Where Light and Darkness follows its ailing protagonist through successive contortions in the name of duty, Kusamakura’s “I” moves unhindered, able to see all from its lucent mountain height. Without it, Soseki’s fame would be assured. With it, we have a picture of his first steps into maturity, newly aware of his mastery but unenslaved by it, not yet the professional writer (Japan’s first) hemmed by deadlines and reputation.

Re the new translation, at first I was suspicious:

As I climb the mountain path I ponder –

If you work by reason, you grow rough-edged; if you choose to dip your oar into sentiment’s stream, it will sweep you away. Demanding your own way only serves to constrain you. However you look at it, the human world is not an easy place to live.

In the old translation (The Three-Cornered World by Alan Turney):

Going up a mountain track, I fell to thinking.

Approach everything rationally, and you become harsh. Pole along in the stream of emotions, and you will be swept away by the current. Give free reign to your desires, and you become uncomfortably confined. It is not a very agreable place to live, this world of ours.

Nor did I buy the line that “English, unlike Japanese, cannot sustain occasional shifts to past-tense narration”. (See Sverre Lyngstad’s Hamsun translations for a deliberate muddling of the tenses, or – the first name that occurs to me – Michael Ondaatje for a native-speaking equivalent.) But by the end, and having kept Turney’s translation beside me throughout, I came to trust and at times delight in Meredith McKinney’s work.

And so from him I learn the fate of this young man, who is destined to leave for the Manchurian front in a matter of days. I’ve been mistaken to assume that in this little village in the spring, so like a dream or a poem, life is a matter only of the singing birds, the falling blossoms, and the bubbling springs. The real world has crossed the mountains and seas and is bearing down even on this isolated village, whose inhabitants have doubtless lived here in peace down the long stretch of years ever since they fled as defeated warriors from the great clan wars of the twelfth century. Perhaps a millionth part of the blood that will dye the wide Manchurian plains will gush from this young man’s arteries, or seethe forth at the point of the long sword that hangs at his waist. Yet here this young man sits, beside an artist for whom the sole value of human life lies in dreaming. If I listen carefully, I can even hear the beating of his heart, so close are we. And perhaps even now, within that beat reverberates the beating of the great tide that is sweeping across the hundreds of miles of that far battlefield. Fate has for a brief and unexpected moment brought us together in this room, but beyond that it speaks no more.

In another register:

Nor do I exert myself in climbing the temple steps; indeed, if I found that the climb caused me any real effort, I would immediately give up. Pasing after I take the first step, I register a certain pleasure and so take a second. With the second step, the urge to compose a poem comes upon me. I stare in silent contemplation at my shadow, noting how strange it looks, blocked and cut short by the angle of the next stone riser, and this strangeness leads me to climb a further step. Here I look up at the sky. Tiny stars twinkle in its drowsy depths. There’s a poem here, I think, and so to the next step – and in this manner I eventually reach the top.

That Soseki wrote (or published) this in the same year as the youthful Botchan seems incredible. If, as he claimed, he wrote it in a week I’m stunned. With the refinement of the calligraphist or woodblock-printmaker, in a single bound, he joins the masters. That he’d never write like this again makes it all the more precious. As I said, this time around, there were days on which I didn’t quite feel up to this. Ask me after my third reading and I might tell you it’s an all-time favourite.

[itselv]

”إن أنتَ ركنت إلى العقل ستكبر فظَّ الحواس، وإن أنتَ أبحرت في مياه العاطفة سيجرفك تيّارها، أمّا إن غلّبت إرادتك فسينتهي بكَ الأمر إلى التضييق على نفسك، وكيفما قلّبت الأمر ستجدُّ في النهاية أنَّ الحياة في عالم البشر ليست بالأمرَ الهينِّ.“

في البداية أحب أن أعبر عن امتناني للمترجم "السويركي"، وأن تبدأ مراجعتك بشكر المترجم لهو يوضح مدى براعته وقوة تأثيره. قد قرأت سابقًا أنا قط لنفس المؤلف بترجمة شديدة الضعف، مما أدى تلقائيًا إلى ارتباط مشاعر سلبية بـ"سوسيكي" نفسه -وإن لم يكن الخطأ خطأه- وأتى هذا الكتاب بهذه الترجمة العذبة ليعيد ترتيب مشاعري وأفكاري تجاهه.

الكتاب مليء بالأسئلة والأفكار والاعتراضات التأملية الفلسفية، مغلفة بشاعرية عذبة للغاية. بنائها السردي مثير للإعجاب، حيث يشرح الراوي -وهو رسام- مايدور بعقله ومايراه بعينيه من وجهة نظر فنان حقيقية وليست مبتذلة، بالإضافة لاقتباسات مناسبة بشكلٍ مبهر، تدل على تثقف الراوي(والمؤلف "سوسيكي") فيما يحب. أحببت كيف أنّ الحوارات لا تفيد في شيء، وأن سرد ما تأمله الفنان هو وحده الذي يحرك الرواية هنا، قد تكون تفصيلة صغيرة لكنها جميلة جدًا وداعمة لهدف الرواية، وهو الصوم عن المشتتات والمُلهِيات والانشغال بتأمل المخلوقات والمشاهد ورؤيتها من زاوية جمالية عذبة. للرواية مغزى عميق، وأشعر أني لم اتشرّبه كاملًا، لذلك سأعود لقراءتها مرة أخرى يومًا ما -بإذن الله- وحينها سأحاول قراءتها بتأنٍ وبجوٍ مناسب، لعلّ ذلك يكون كافيًا لتلقي الفكرة بالرهافة والشاعرية المطلوبة.

”نتطلّع للأمام، ونلتفت إلى الوراء،
نتوق إلى ما لن يكون.
أصدقُ ضحكاتنا يشوبها الألم،
وأعذب أغنياتنا تلكَ التي
تروي أمرّ الأحزان.“

[Emilio Berra · Rating 4 out of 5]

"... nel paese delle candide nuvole"
La trama del romanzo non è di per sé molto rilevante : si tratta del percorso di un viandante, durante il quale incontra luoghi e persone, storie suggestive, ma soprattutto l'ambiente naturale nelle sue varie forme e meraviglie. La voce narrante è quella di un artista, poeta e pittore, capace di posare lo sguardo sulla bellezza ovunque sia.
Nel libro, oltre a questo tema e profondamente legato a esso, emerge la piena e serena accettazione della caducità delle cose e della vita stessa. Aspetti strettamente connessi alla cultura giapponese, ma estendibili all'intera umanità.
C'è la consapevolezza che "in tutti i piaceri è insita la sofferenza, perché traggono la loro origine dall'attaccamento alle cose" ; gli artisti invece "si nutrono di nebbia, bevono la rugiada (...) , nel loro copricapo squarciato penetra l'infinita, azzurra tempesta".

Questo approccio 'innocente' alla natura può ricordare la poetica del Fanciullino di Pascoli, di cui Soseki era contemporaneo (il libro è del 1906), anche se spazialmente e culturalmente c'è tutta la distanza che separava l'Italia dal Giappone ad inizio '900. Ma la coincidenza , fra i due scrittori, sulla funzione del poeta e dell'arte stessa è evidente : "dove il volgo guarderebbe cieco, l'artista scopre innumerevoli gemme, infiniti tesori".

Ciò che pure colpisce leggendo il testo è ciò che I. Calvino, in "Lezioni americane", chiama "leggerezza" ; qui infatti prevale un uso straordinario e bellissimo di un linguaggio spesso metaforico fatto di immagini lievi, 'senza nulla che pesi o che posi' , nella convinzione che, "se si tenta affannosamente di rendere la bellezza ancor più attraente, si ottiene al contrario il risultato di sminuirla. Come dice il proverbio : 'Completare è diminuire' ".
C'è quindi qualcosa di antico e, nel contempo, di straordinariamente moderno in questo elogio della semplicità e dell'essenzialità.
Ecco dunque la contemplazione della 'bellezza delle cose fragili' che quasi paiono esistere momentaneamente per destare il nostro stupore. Si coglie "nell'aria un presagio di pioggia". "La pioggia è tanto tenue che sembra aspergere segretamente la primavera".
" In quale luogo sostare ?
Lontano nel paese delle candide nuvole ".

[Zak · Rating 5 out of 5]

If there were such a thing as 'reading meditation', this book would be it. Its languid pace takes the reader on an introspective journey filled with acute observations and insight. With vivid imagery, every sentence was a delight to read. In truth, nothing much happens but it is a welcome departure from the usual hustle and bustle of most contemporary literature.

Final rating: 4.5*

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pure simple enchantment, with a healthy helping of farts. Soseki set out to write a “haiku-novel” and Kusamakura does bear many resemblances to Basho’s haiku travel book, The Narrow Road to the Deep North; but it is less a novel than a treatise on “aesthetic living”, which in the context of this book is akin to a path to enlightenment. So it is filled with asides, with brief discourses on how to live “non-emotionally”, free from petty social entanglements, so to clear the way for reaching the “heart of things”.

The nameless narrator, who is a painter on a journey through the mountains, realizes the heart of things on occasion throughout the book, and these moments are described exquisitely. Many of these moments occur in the natural world amid flowers and trees and streams, but the true heart of things is embodied by a woman he encounters at a hot spring. This woman, Nami (whose name means “beauty”), is considered mad or loopy by some, but to the narrator she embodies spontaneity and enlightened aesthetic living (without the need to even practice an art). She has lived her life with a crazy innocence upon returning to her small village after a disastrous marriage. Throughout the book she haunts and teases the narrator, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally, goading him to refine his quest for non-emotional living. There is no real hint of sexual attraction, though at times I suspected that just by being herself she would dismantle his carefully cultivated and refined way of life. Instead he ponders how to paint her, but there’s always something missing in her expressions, some vital component. He doesn’t figure out this missing piece until the very end when her cousin is heading to Manchuria for the Russo-Japanese war, and she looks at him with a look of “pitying love”. The war itself has acted as a distant but ominous shadow throughout the book.

The narrator never completes a painting in the book, though he writes quite a few poems, but in his philosophy being an artist is not an end in itself, it is a practice that can help one perceive the heart of things, so to paint or not to paint is of no consequence. In the end he feels a sense of deep completion when he completes Nami’s portrait inside his own mind with this expression of pitying love.

I mentioned farts because one of the chapters is positively fixated on them. The narrator is griping about city living where people “count your farts”. I don’t know if this is a Japanese idiom or whether it was coined by Soseki, but it reminded me of another highly refined Japanese artist, Yasujiro Ozu, who was also fixated on farts in one of his last movies, Good Morning.

[Afaf Ammar · Rating 3 out of 5]

"كل شيء يتوهج في الضوء،
أصغي إلى غناء العنادل العذب،
وأمام عيني يسّاقط مطرٌ من أزهار الكرز،
إوزةٌ برية تعبر السماء نحو موطنها،
أي رقة تلك التي تسكن قلبي الصغير!
بدت لي كأنها تأملات أكثر من كونها رواية...،
تأملات رسام وشاعر يتوق إلى مكان وادع هادئ ويخلو من كل انفعال عاطفي، وبمنأى عن البشر، يستطيع فيه أن يؤلف قصيدة هايكو مثالية تعبر عن كل ما يشعر به، أو يرسم لوحة مثالية في داخله، فيذهب في رحلة ربيعية عبر دروب جبلية، حتى يصل إلى قرية ناكوي؛ التي أخطأ حين ظن أن في ربيع القرية الجبلية المنعزلة التي تشبه حلمًا أو قصيدة، فالحياة فيها لا تعني سوى تغريد العندليب العذب، وأزهار الكرز المتساقطة المنثورة في ممراتها،
لكنه وجدها أيضًا ككل الأماكن مرتبطة بالعالم الواقعي بكل انفعالاته العاطفية...،
ولكن هذه الحقيقة لم تقف عائقًا أمامه لاستمرار المحاولة؛ محاولة الوصول إلى قصيدته ولوحته.
"لا حاجة إلى أن تخط أفكارك على الورق، فصوت البلّور يرن أصلًا في القلب، ولا حاجة إلى أن تسكب ألوانك على قماش اللوحة، فأطياف العالم وألوانه الكثيرة تلمع أصلًا في عينك الباطنية. "
الرواية تجربة جديدة ولطيفة، تمثل الفن والفنان المتأمل والحساس لكل ما حوله، بسرد هادئ تمتزج فيه الأحداث مع التأملات وقصائد الهايكو؛ أكثر الأشكال الشعرية بساطة وعذوبة...،
وتتناغم مع صور وأصوات الطبيعة الخلابة؛
من طقطقة المواقد ولهيبها القرمزي الباعث للدفء، وجلسات الشاي، وحكايا العجائز، والمطر الربيعي،
إلى حفيف ورائحة أشجار اليوسفي والخوخ والتوت، وظلال أشجار الصفصاف والسرو، وبتلات الكاميليا وأزهار الكرز المتساقطة، وتغريد العندليب والسنونو، وخفقات أجنحة الإوز البري.
"تهزُّ نجومَ
ليلة الربيع، فتسقط
وترتديها لامعة في شعرها..."

04.06.2020

[Smiley · Rating 4 out of 5]

DEAR FRIENDS,

PLEASE DO NOT VOTE 'LIKE' FOR THIS REVIEW BECAUSE IT IS IN FACT FOR 'KUSAMAKURA' (PENGUIN, 2008): IF YOU LIKE IT, VISIT THIS PAGE AND VOTE THERE:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

AS FOR THE FOLLOWING 6 WELL-WISHERS: Sonja, Ben, Aubrey, *Bar*, Garima, and Aziz, please move your 'Like' by reclicking your 'Like' on this review (for 'Unlike') then click 'Like' on this one for the right book review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... thanks for your kind help. However, I have to resend my request to notify your 'Like' needed, so that I would delete this page.

I'm sorry for the inconvenience caused due to such a persisting technical problem.

Translated in a previous edition entitled "The Three-Cornered World" by Alan Turney, this is another edition by another translator. Reading this compact novel by Natsume Soseki was similar to reading a haiku-like one that requires literary interpretations according to, I think, one's interests, backgrounds and appreciation. The more we read it farther from Chapter 1 onward, we'd gradually realize why Soseki has rightly been acclaimed as " the father of modern Japanese literature" and in his own words, Kusamakura is " a haiku-style novel that lives through beauty." (back cover)

First, his readers will never know the name of "I" as the events proceed, in other words, we'll know him as a male narrator in his 30s who has traveled alone from Tokyo in search of somewhere to paint or to write his haiku poems in a remote rural town in the mountains near the sea. Eventualy, this mysterious protagonist literally intensifies his readers' curiosity and perplexity. However, it's our relief to know the name of the lovely daughter who has her own mysterious ways in taking care of him as her guest arriving at night and during his stay with the family there. Her name 'Nami' meaning beauty is appropriate in the fairly-romatic plot since, I think, it induces us to keep reading to know more.

Second, some readers may find this novel boring at first due to the author's lengthy descriptions with few dialogs, for instance, in Chapters 1, 3, 6, etc. However, I understand he's tried to describe the contexts, the characters, the natural settings, etc, as related to the novel's theme. I found reading Chapter 3 (pp. 35-39) so entrancing that I scribbled 'one of the great chapters' at the end. Moreover, another unthinkable chapter keeps haunting and challenging me for my vision, that is, its subtlety is nearly beyond my imagination and this is one of the reasons why Soseki's superbly-written works have since been admired. The chapter in question is Chapter 7, I think we may find it a bit hard to visualize such illusive description.

Finally, I liked its fine translation by Dr Meredith McKinney and I noticed the adjective 'shimmering' has been used in two sentences (p. 60) and in another (p. 115). Therefore, I think this word suggests partly or nearly all of its key theme, that is, it focuses on its shimmering romantic (or semiromantic if we don't take the affairs between Nami and 'I' seriously) story between two strangers who happen to meet each other somewhere in the mountains in rural, seaside Japan.

In conclusion, the novel has its own way in ending the story and allows its reader to ponder happily, neutrally or unhappily I'm not sure. That remains mysterious and challenging to its readers to try reading it as one of the most shimmering Japanese novels I've ever read. Find a copy and enjoy!

[Smiley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Formerly translated in an edition entitled "The Three-Cornered World" by Alan Turney, this is a new translation by Meredith McKinney. Reading this compact novel by Natsume Soseki was similar to reading a haiku-like one that requires literary interpretations according to, I think, one's interests, backgrounds and appreciation. The more we read it farther from Chapter 1 onwards, we'd gradually realize why Soseki has rightly been acclaimed as " the father of modern Japanese literature" and in his own words, Kusamakura is "a haiku-style novel that lives through beauty." (back cover)

First, his readers will never know the name of "I" as the events proceed, in other words, we'll know him as a male narrator in his 30s who has traveled alone from Tokyo in search of somewhere to paint or to write his haiku poems in a remote rural town in the mountains near the sea. Eventually, this mysterious protagonist literally intensifies his readers' curiosity and perplexity. However, it's our relief to know the name of the lovely daughter who has her own mysterious ways in taking care of him as her guest arriving at night and during his stay with the family there. Her name 'Nami' meaning beauty is appropriate in the fairly-romantic plot since, I think, it induces us to keep reading to know more.

Second, some readers may find this novel boring at first due to the author's lengthy descriptions with few dialogs, for instance, in Chapters 1, 3, 6, etc. However, I understand he's tried to describe the contexts, the characters, the natural settings, etc. as related to the novel's theme. I found reading Chapter 3 (pp. 35-39) so entrancing that I scribbled 'one of the this word suggests partly or nearly all of its key theme, that is, it focuses on its shimmering great chapters' at the end. Moreover, another unthinkable chapter keeps haunting and challenging me for my vision, that is, its subtlety is nearly beyond my imagination and this is one of the reasons why Soseki's superbly-written works have since been admired. The chapter in question is Chapter 7, I think we may find it a bit hard to visualize such illusive description.

Finally, I liked its fine translation by Dr Meredith McKinney and I noticed the adjective 'shimmering' has been used in two sentences (p. 60) and in another (p. 115). Therefore, I think romantic (or semi-romantic if we don't take the affairs between Nami and 'I' seriously) story between two strangers who happen to meet each other somewhere in the mountains in rural, seaside Japan.

In conclusion, the novel has its own way in ending the story and allows its reader to ponder happily, neutrally or unhappily I'm not sure. That remains mysterious and challenging to its readers to try reading it as one of the most shimmering Japanese novels I've ever read. Find a copy and enjoy!

[Fatima Mohamady.. · Rating 5 out of 5]

أووووه..أدب ياباني؟! على الرحب والسعة..

رأيت في البداية أنه ربما كان الإسم لافتاً لكن كون العمل من الأدب الياباني فهو في كل الأحوال سبب أكثر من كافٍ لخوض المغامرة، وما لطف العنوان إلا زيادة في الحظ..
في أغلب النصوص اليابانية التي وقعت عليها، وخاصة القديم منها، تبرز مسحة ضبابية تموه بنية الحكاية بشكل يجعل الصورة المتكونة أمامي تكاد تكون متبخرة، ونص ناتسومي سوسيكي هذا لا يخالف كثيراً هذه الصورة، لكنه أكثر تبلوراً ، كمشهد لحديقة في صبيحة يوم شتوي هادئ...
ما يميزه حقاً هو اللغة اللطيفة والشاعرية التي وصف بها الطبيعة والأفكار والبشر والفن، بدءاً من العنوان وحتى آخر كلمات الختام.. وأنا هائمة بوصفه الذي لم يكن ليكون أكثر رقة ورهافة، كنت أضع يدي على قلبي أحياناً حيث تتسلل عباراته الناعمة وتغمرني بشعور في غاية الروعة، مزيج من الألفة واللطف والجمال في أنقى تجلياته..
شاهدت في أحد المسلسلات الكورية حواراً سعدت بمفاجأة أنه عن كاتب العمل الذي انتهيت لتوي من قراءته، قيل فيه أن الكاتب في أحد المواضع أشار على تلاميذه بترجمة جملة "أنا أحبك" إلى اليابانية بما يقارب: القمر جميل.. يعبر عن الحب بالإشارة لجمال القمر!!.. حسناً، يبدو أن انبهاري بحساسيته المرهفة لم يكن، لحسن الحظ، مبالغة لحظية..
أنا مغرمة حقاً بهكذا كتب، القادرة على احتضاننا ومواساتنا، التي تغادر بياض الصفحات لتحيا في تنهداتنا وأنفاسنا المنسية على أعتابها..

[Hulyacln · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Sadece aklın istikametinde hareket edersen insanlardan uzaklaşırsın. Duygularınla hareket edersen sürüklenirsin. Ruhunu açarsan ve dilediğin gibi yaşamazsan sıkışırsın.Nasıl bakarsan bak, insanlarla yaşamak zordur.
Bu zorluk arttıkça dünyadan uzaklaşmak ve sakin bir yerlere gitmek istersin. Nereye gidersen git bu zorluğun seninle geleceğini anladığın zamansa şiir doğar , resim can bulur.”
.
Sağduyuyu çıkar ve dört köşeli dünyayı üç köşesiyle bırak. Tuvaline sarıl, kelimelerine bürün ve güneşin doğuşunu başka bir manzaradan izle..
.
Soseki bu sefer yola koyulan şair ve ressam olan birinin peşine katıyor bizi. Biraz Dazai’nin ‘mor bir serserinin gezi notları’nı anımsatıyor. Ancak daha renklisi..
Ağır akan, olay örgüsü çok sade bir kitap olmasına rağmen, yolda olmanın- dizeler ve renklerle o yolu bezemenin güzelliğine varıyoruz.
.
Sevdiğim çeviride Burcu Erol yer alırken; kapak tasarımı Barış Şehri çalışması.

[Kamakana · Rating 4 out of 5]

220913: this is not a novel. this is not an essay. this is somewhere in between, and possibly requires certain knowledge of history and society and aesthetics, all from 1906 japan, depending on what your ideas are, about art, about literature, about how these are changing through contacts with europeans. this can be frustrating, or boring, when the author follows tangents, describes moments b.ut not plot, moments of other encounters with nature or emblematic others, priest, barber, innkeeper, young woman...

this is noted as significant in development of the 'i' novel, and though well-read in european or western art and literature, this is definitely japanese... the 'i-novel' (autobiographical) and the 'true novel' (invented characters, plot etc). i have read a lot of japanese authors but only translations so it is only much later- after reading this book
A True Novel
by Minae Mizumura
i learn prevalence of the i-novel form in Japanese is because in this language "personal pronouns are elusive, constantly shifting, often absent"...

do not expect to like or admire the narrator, whose sense of art suffuses everything, judging, dismissing, or even rarely taken out of his critical appraisal, every moment. which he does not paint, but perhaps obsessively ventures haiku at inspired moments. do not expect to agree with his voice. read at your peril. read with a receptive mind...

[Raul · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thirty year old artist travels from the city to the country, reflecting on art, poetry and nature during his trip. He strives to reduce other human beings to figures in a landscape while stifling emotions to observe objectively. This book's prose is placid, sensuous and elegant. The ruminations the protagonist makes were interesting. And yet it makes me wonder whether I should have gone with a different book as the first Natsume book, because to put it simply, I was bored. The references to Japanese and Chinese artists and poets were informative and enriching, but the plot was too tenuous and the constant (wonderful) descriptions of landscape and beauty became tiresome at some point. Still interested to read more by the writer.

[Bookish Dervish · Rating 5 out of 5]

نص راق إلى أبعد الحدود، أي نعم إنها رواية، و لكنها ليست كغيرها. أحداثها القليلة جدا لن تقودك إلى أي عقدة و بالمقابل فلا تتوقع أي حل.
ولم قد أقرأ رواية من هذا الصنف؟ لا بد أنها مملة!
أبدا، ناتسومي سوسيكي يأسرك منذ البداية بلغة شعرية مرهفة للغاية دون أن يخرج عن نطاق السرد النثري.
الهايكو في قالب روائي يحتفي بكل ما هو جميل. وصف للريف الياباني و للثقافة اليابنية بدون- أو مع القليل جدا من- التأثيرات الأجنبية.
لم استمتع كهكذا منذ مدة. أنصح بها بعد قراءة شاقة، جدية.


إن أنت ركنت إلى العقل، ستكبر فظّ الحواس ،وإن أنت أبحرت في مياه العاطفة،سيجرفك تيارها، أما إن غلبت إرادتك،فسيتنهي بك الأمر إلى التضييق على نفسك، وكيف قلّبت الأمر ستجد في النّهاية أن الحياة في عالم البشر ليست بالأمر الهيّن.

[Savasandir · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Gli artisti sono preziosi perché rasserenano questo mondo e arricchiscono il cuore degli uomini"

[Smiley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Translated from Natsume Soseki's “Kusamakura” by Alan Turney, “The Three-Cornered World” itself first published in 1965 has once confused me since some years ago when I first came across and read another copy published in 2008 because Meredith McKinney has transliterated its Japanese title into English; therefore, we read this novel from two translators whose expertise we may compare from its 43-year gap.

I have found reading this book more enjoyable and understandable than the one by Dr McKinney since, it seemed to me, its narrations and dialogues are given in more detail (I think I should find “Kusamakura” to reread, compare and see if what I found is true). Furthermore, those Soseki fans should find a copy to read and see how brilliant his prose and poems are. Some paragraphs might be a bit lengthy but it’s his style, just keep reading and you’d be amazed at his descriptions/dialogues on ‘I’ (an artist) and O-Nami, an enigmatic, strange and beautiful lady in a nearly deserted inn where the artist decides to stay to meditate in the mountains.

[Mohammed Zaitoun · Rating 4 out of 5]

هذا كتاب في وصف الجمال على هيئة رواية قصيرة
كل احداثها تخدم وصف الجمال من وجهة نظر رسام وشاعر ياباني هرب من المدينة الى اجواء الريف الياباني الباهية
الكتاب ذكرني بجولات رسو واحلام يقظته في الغابات الساحرة وطبيعتها الخلابة بطل الرواية يبحث عن الجمال في كل صوره في وجه امرأة عجوز ووجه شابة حائرة العقل في الازهار وضوء القمر في البحيرات والاشجار من حوله وفي الطيور

جو صاف من الجمال بين دفتي هذا الكتاب مع ازدراء للتقدم وما جلبه على الانسان وهدم فرديته وخصوصيته