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(★)(Translated by Edward Seidensticker)(´NI-0114´ es mismo libro. Titulo original : 雪国 [Yukiguni]／ The theme of this remarkable novel is the possibility of love in an earthly paradise. Does the perfect fulfillment of sensory pleasure nourish love, or does hedonism defeat itself through satiation, the paralysis of desire, the ephemeral nature of all pleasure? Kawabata, one of the most distinguished of Japanese novelists, explores this theme with astonishing awareness and perception.／ The hero is a wealthy dilettante free of all worldly cares, an aesthete, an expert in pleasure --but quite incapable of love. There is no little irony in Kawabata´s characterization of Shimamura : He is an authority on the occidental ballet, but he has never seen a ballet. Indeed, we suspect he would close his eyes if a ballet were performed before him.／ The heroine, Komako, is a hot-spring geisha, overflowing with love, and in fact deeply in love with Shimamura. In Japan, the special delights of the hot springs are for the unaccompanied gentlemen. Shimamura likes to escape from his studies to one of these gemlike, exquisitely beautiful mountain resorts, where he has gradually been attracted to Komako. As is made brilliantly clear in an early scene, Komako is not a prostitute, although resort geishas are much more easygoing than their talented city counterparts.／ A heady sensuality is part of life in such a resort. The clatter of the inn, the earthiness of the servants, the languors of the hot baths, the pursuit of over-ripe pleasure, the beauty of the houses and of the landscape --all have their intoxication for Shimamura, the sensualist.／ Yet in the end all this fails him. Because the joy of the senses is not enough? Because Shimamura is too self-centered? Because he only half loves Komako, loves her for her gentleness and her little arts, but not for her person?／ Kawabata´s style communicates exquisitely, as the writing of no other country can, the joy of the knowing eye, of the sensitive skin, of the ear, the nose and the tongue. And the unfolding story of Shimamura and Komako stirs in the reader an ache of mingled excitement and pity ; their final, predestined parting is deeply moving.／ ◆Yasunari Kawabata was one of Japan´s most distinguished novelists. He is famous for adding to the once fashionable naturalism imported from France a sensual, more Japanese impressionism. He was born in Osaka in 1899. As a boy, he hoped to become a painter, an aspiration later reflected in his novels. But his first stories were published while he was still in high school, and he decided to become a writer.／ He was graduated from Tokyo Imperial University in 1924. His story ´The Izu Dancer´, first published in 1925, appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 1954. It captures the shy eroticism of adolescence, and thereafter Kawabata has devoted his novels largely to aspects of love.／ He was also a prominent literary critic and discovered and sponsored such remarkable young writers as Yukio Mishima. In 1948 he was appointed chairman of the Japanese Center of the P.E.N. Club. His death by suicide in April 1972 came as a tremendous shock to his admirers both in Japan and abroad.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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