| NOTA |
(★)(Translated by E. Dale Saunders)(Titulo original : 他人の顔 [Tanin no Kao, 1964]／ Kobo Abe´s ´The Face of Another´ is a psychological study in which the moment-to-moment eventfulness makes much of it read like melodrama. The protagonist is a scientist whose face is disfigured in a laboratory explosion. He feels cut off from the human community, alienated. When even his wife repulses him as he tries to make love to her, he resolves to create a mask so perfect as to be unrecognizable. He then realizes that he can acquire a new personality to go with the new face. Is this new personality his inner self, the invisible man? Or is it only a masquerade?／ The scientist conceives of the masked person as an adventurer and seducer, and he begins to act out the role. He tests the mask in many situations, then seduces his wife --with consequences astonishing to both him and the reader.／ ◆Kobo Abe [1924-1993] was born in Tokyo but spent his childhood in Manchuria, where his father was a doctor on the staff of a medical school. As a young man, Abe was interested in mathematics and collecting insects. He obtained a medical degree from Tokyo Imperial University in 1948, but never practiced medicine. Abe received Japan´s most important literary prize, the Akutagawa, in 1951 for his novel ´The Crimes of Mr. S. Karuma.´ Several of his novels have been made into films.) |
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