Douban: Beauty and Sadness

The winner of 1968 Nobel Prize for Literature Yasunari Kawatabata draws on, in the eloquent and lyrical novel Beauty and Sadness, classical Japanese literature, a long tradition of Japanese poetry and painting to elucidate numerous passionate and intense motifs and themes.

The timeless prose of Beauty and Sadness alludes to a motif, the strange and nihilistic self love of the character Otoko. Otoko, a successful painter and lesbian who gave birth to stillborn child at the age of sixteen, from a forbidden love affair, manag ed to escape the mental hospital after her suicide attempt because of her unrequited love for the lover who shamed her, Oki Toshio. The character Oki, a thirty year old married man, used his affair with Otoko to write his first novel, A Portrait of a Girl of Sixteen. The novel brought humiliation to Otoko and wealth to Oki. The nihilism of Otoko perhaps prophesying Kawabata's actual death; an act of ritual suicide. Otoko's heartfelt infatuation with herself is succinctly clear in an intense homosexual rel ationship with her young protégé, Keiko. At one moment Otoko is a passionate lover; the next an imagining lover with a razor at her lover's slender neck.

Vengeance and the immense sadness brought about by such a perversity is a another significant theme of Beauty and Sadness. The dangerously beautiful Keiko and her frighteningly perverse quality, hatred for all men, is portrayed with eloquence and vivid i mages. The revenge which Keiko plans is all to predictable and thus even more disturbing.

The clear description of quaint scenes, beginning in a silent reality, progressing delicately to a world of vivid imagery and dream-like eroticism create, in conjunction with the ambiguities which emerge through the passionate characters' dialogue, a nov el of great extremity an beauty. In fact everything in this novel is either sad or beautiful (with the exception of the magic couch). There are tiny beautiful unpicked lapis-blue flowers, beautiful sunsets over the ocean, a beautiful red peony painted on silk, and the most beautiful creature of all is the young girl "with an evil fascination": Keiko. Keiko's evil fascination was handling a three year old baby in some inappropriate way.

Every character who comes to endure sadness is aflame for Keiko; every character is afflicted with the ambiguous desire for youth or a virgin. Oki was thirty when he seduced fifteen year old Otoko for the first time; even Otoko was the first to see Keiko in her nakedness.

Kawabata is a great prose writer, his narrative is clear and unique. He was surprised to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, for he felt much of the wordplay and allusive imagery would not survive translation and the majority of judges read Kawabata's no vels in translation. Beauty and Sadness is definitely worthwhile reading.

Book description:

Frequently used tags (out of 2):

Those who like this book also like:

Rate this book/all ratings

Who read this book?

Break