By Donald Keene
Perhaps nobody is extra certified to write down approximately jap tradition than Donald Keene, thought of the prime interpreter of that nation's literature to the Western global. the writer, editor, or translator of approximately 3 dozen books of feedback and works of literature, Keene now bargains an stress-free and fantastically written advent to conventional jap tradition for the overall reader.
The ebook acquaints the reader with jap aesthetics, poetry, fiction, and theater, and provides Keene's appreciations of those themes. in accordance with lectures given on the ny Public Library, The Metropolitan Museum of paintings, and the college of California, la, the essays -though written by means of a well known student- presuppose no wisdom of eastern tradition. Keene's deep studying, actually, permits him to build an summary as pleasant to learn because it is informative.
His insights usually remove darkness from facets of conventional eastern tradition that suffer this day. this sort of is the appreciation of "perishability." this appreciation os visible in numerous little bits of jap existence: in temples made from wooden rather than sturdy fabrics; within the choice for items -such as pottery- which are worn, damaged, or used instead of new; and within the nationwide love of the fragile cherry blossom, which in general falls after a quick 3 days of flowering. Keene rates the fourteenth-century Buddhist monk Kenko, who wrote that "the most useful factor approximately existence is its uncertainty."
Throughout the amount, Keene demonstrates that the wealthy inventive and social traditions of Japan can certainly be understood by way of readers from our tradition. This ebook will enlighten someone attracted to eastern literature and culture.
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Extra info for The Pleasures of Japanese Literature
Example text
This body of mine alone Remains as it was before. Even as he composed this poem the sky gradually grew light and he left, weeping bitterly. In the poem Narihira seems to be asking rhetorically if the moon is the same one that he and his beloved saw the year before, and if the spring is the same spring. But if the questions are rhetorical, why does he claim that he alone remains unchanged? If the questions are not rhetorical, and JAPANESE FICTION he really is not sure whether it is the same moon and the same spring, his claim that he alone is unchanged is easier to follow, but it goes against common sense.
29-30 in chapter 2-it is difficult to question their authenticity. Hitomaro wrote a number of poems celebrating the travels to Yoshino and other places by the Empress Jito, who came to the throne in 686 after the death of her husband Temmu and ruled until her death in 702. Hitomaro's devotion to Jito and the imperial family was absolute; it cannot be doubted that he believed that the empress he served was . a goddess: 1 Our great Sovereign, a goddess, Of her sacred will Has reared a towering palace On Yoshino's shore, Encircled by its rapids; And, climbing, she surveys the land.
Like the water-weeds the two would bend Each towards the other, the princess and her consort. But now no longer can she sleep, With his fine smooth body clinging Close to hers like a guardian sword. Desolate must be her couch at night. (The Manyoshii, p. 36) Writing about people he did not know might have resulted in the hackneyed sentiments commonly voiced by poets 55 THE PLEASURES OF JAPANESE LITERATURE laureate when obliged to produce poems on matters that do not involve them personally, but Hitomaro seems not to have felt such sharp differences between the public and the private, the individual and the group, as later poets would feel; and the exactness of his images when describing the grief of a princess makes us feel, against reason perhaps, that he somehow shared her sorrow.