| NOTA |
(★)(Titulo original : 鉱夫[Koofu]／ Translated by Jay Rubin／ ´The Miner´ is the most daringly experimental and least well-known novel of the great Meiji novelist Sooseki Natsume (1867-1916). Written in 1908, it is an absurdist novel about the indeterminate nature of human personality that in many respects anticipates the work of Joyce and Beckett.／ Focusing on a young man whose love life has fallen to pieces, ´The Miner´ follows him as he flees from Tokyo, is picked up by a procurer of cheap labor for a copper mine, and then travels toward --and finally burrows into the depths of-- the mine where he hopes to find oblivion. Instead of a tragedy of alienation, however, we find here an absurdist --truly absurd and comical-- allegory of descent into the psyche.／ ◆Sooseki Natsume, one of Japan´s most distinguished writers, was born in Tokyo in 1867. At an early age he studied the Chinese classics, and later entered Tokyo Imperial University to study English literature. In 1900 he was sent to England as a government student. He was not happy there, and returned to Japan in 1903 to succeed Lafcadio Hearn as lecturer in English at his old university.／ Sooseki´s first novel , ´I Am a Cat´, was well received, and in 1907 he decided to devote himself entirely to writing. He quit teaching and joined the staff of the Asahi Shimbun. During the time he worked at the newspaper, he wrote approximately one full-length novel a year, becoming the leading literary voice of the age. He died in 1916 at the age of forty-nine.／ Jay Rubin is Professor of Japanese Literature at the University of Washington and the translator of Sooseki´s ´Sanshiro´.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
印刷用ページ