| NOTA |
(★)(Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker)(Titulo original : 千羽鶴 [Sembazuru]／ ´Thousand Cranes´ is a story of love given and love withheld. Set against the backdrop of Japan´s traditional tea ceremony, it is a taut, highly dramatic novel gleaming with sudden passages of poetic beauty. In one of the book´s strongest scenes, the two characters are symbolized by the two fine old China bowls, one female and one male, that sit before them.／ The novel opens with Kikuji on his way to a tea ceremony given by Chikako, one of his father´s former mistresses. He is also on his way to act out the unfinished drama of his father´s life. Kikuji´s father had been a cultivated man, an art lover and a pleasure seeker. He had cast off one mistress, Chikako, but had loved another, Mrs. Ota, until his death. Kikuji, like his father, tries to escape from Chikako, now masculine and meddlesome. Like his father, too, he is drawn to Mrs. Ota, who has remained young, alluring and pliant even though her daughter, Fumiko, is only twenty years old. Kikuji´s guilty passion for Mrs. Ota and Fumiko´s efforts to alter the family fate lead to the novel´s stunning climax.／ ◆Yasunari Kawabata [1899-1972], the first Japanese writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1968, was born in Osaka. He was the son of a wealthy and prominent physician, but was raised in the country by his grandfather after his parents´ early deaths. Interested in both painting and writing from an early age, his rich visualization formed the heart of his writing. He published his first stories while he was still in high school. After graduating from Tokyo Imperial University in 1924, Kawabata quickly rose to the forefront of modern Japanese writing, and after the war built an immense international literary reputation.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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