![]() ![]() The young man goes home in the second section and lives with his parents for a while, considering his future and reckoning with the potential death of this father. But as this first section comes to a close, the young man has long conversations with the sensei’s wife, and begins to understand there’s more under the surface than just placid isolation. As they talk about love, and marriage, and death, the young man seems to consider his own future. Through his persistence, they do in fact become friends and he realizes that this older friend experiences a kind of profound loneliness and isolation in the world, despite their friendship and despite the sensei’s marriage. ![]() ![]() He decides to befriend him, not out of sympathy or pity, but out of a kind of respect and intended emulation. We begin with a young college “senior” glomming onto a master or sensei character, seeing a life well-lived full of pensiveness, thoughtfulness, simplicity in action and complexity in thought. This is a more complex novel than I thought I was dealing with when I found myself halfway through. ![]() So I read a few of his novels, and I realize that he’s constantly referencing his predecessors in the same way that I found his name often referenced in later Japanese novels. Natsume Soseki is not an author I know much about but according to brief research he’s often regarded as a transitional author who helped bring the Japanese novel into the 20th century (I feel like almost every literature has a figure like this - Maugham, James, Wharton, etc). ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |