| Title | : | The Silent Cry |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1852426020 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781852426026 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1967 |
| Awards | : | Tanizaki Prize 谷崎潤一郎賞 (1967) |
The Silent Cry Reviews
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Kenzaburō Ōe uses an historical 1860 uprising as the basis for his dark novel of two bothers soul-searching, and enduring a personal crisis in post-war Japan, a world where existence and myth deliquesce to form a disturbing picture of the human predicament. With reverberating touches of Dostoevsky and Mishima, Ōe's powerful story concerns that of Mitsusaburo, the married older brother living and working out of Tokyo, and Takashi, young and confident returning from the United States after being involved in anti-American student protests. Both left their respectable remote home in the forested valley of Shikoku years before, but return to take part in the sale of their land and ancestral storehouse to a Korean supermarket boss, or emperor as he is viewed.
Both brothers get caught up in a rather distressing state of affairs, with locals, themselves more than anything, loved ones, and a past best left in the history books.
The story itself is multi-layered, driven forward with anguish and foreboding, but also with a lingering hope and sense of redemption. There are many bleak passages of writing that were fiercely alarming, but just so well written after a somewhat laboured opening, while the overall tone of the narrative felt like a cloak of darkness, with just a tiny opening for letting the sun of a morning horizon seduce your eyes, to witness a beauty through the engulfing chaos.
There is a significant subplot, mostly revealed through reminiscences, about the history of the village and the boys family during the past one hundred years or so, it's murky and unclear to grasp hold of this side of proceedings at first, and only becomes more apparent by the end, however for me at least, I still felt slightly unsure of the satisfactory answers. Linking the past with their present lives, themes of strong family loyalty and honour, personal responsibility, economic degradation, racism, and self-liberation are explored in an acute way, with Ōe not afraid to hold back with some truly shocking lines that were upsetting to read, but wholly necessary.
Under normal circumstances this novel may for some feel a little contrived, had it been set in a country other than Japan it would probably would be, I find with most Japanese literature there is something buried deep inside that's difficult to fully comprehend for an outsider, but that never falls into the category of monotony reading. I am not going to lie, it's harsh and sombre nature so nearly got the better of me,, but on a lighter level (not nearly enough) Ōe does portray rural Japan in fascinating clarity, and brings this world to life right in front of you. For me, I believe Oe's Nobel prize was fully justified for his insight and humanity, and there was enough in the meaning and quality of the writing here that tells me this undoubtedly is rightly viewed as a masterpiece of post-war Japanese fiction, tainted with an irreparably spirited notion of being written in ancestral blood. -
Una lectura densa, en algunos tramos sumamente escatológica, poblada por una galería de personajes enajenados y grotescos: el protagonista tuerto, el amigo suicida, la esposa alcohólica, la vecina obesa, el hermano con ínfulas de revolucionario. No fue una lectura placentera. Todavía estoy meditando sobre cuál es el significado de la novela, si es que tiene uno. Es una obra profundamente japonesa, de modo que probablemente para un extranjero que no conoce la idiosincracia de ese país es más difícil de comprender. Hay una dicotomía entre los dos hermanos: el protagonista Mitsusaburo, pasivo y cerrado, y su hermano Takashi recuerdan muchos eventos de manera diferente. Takashi se adhiere a una versión distorsionada del pasado: los antepasados siempre fueron buenos y heroicos, un tercer hermano de la familia también murió como un héroe, el gran empresario coreano del valle (conocido como el "Emperador de los supermercados" que a pesar de ser coreano, domina económicamente a la aldea japonesa con su supermercado) es un villano. En cambio Mitsusaburo recuerda la historia de manera más objetiva: la muerte del tercer hermano de la familia fue mucho menos épica, y tampoco odia al Emperador de los Supermercados: durante la guerra, fue uno de muchos esclavos coreanos llevados contra su voluntad al país para trabajar. Con el final de la guerra, se quedó y prosperó. Nadie en el valle se plantea esto: lo ven como el extranjero codicioso que oprime al pueblo japonés. El nacionalismo infantil e inmaduro de Takashi se contrapone con el pesimismo realista de Mitsusaburo. Esta es solo mi interpretación personal; creo que es una novela que admite más de una interpretación.
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This is a very difficult read, not as in 'dense' but as in 'unpleasant'. And made no easier by the author's resolve to lead the narrative to the most intentionally uncomfortable places he can imagine; there is to be no outlet or uplift at any point in the novel, and we can tell from the first few pages. For the rest of the book we will be encircled by fear, constraint, control, fate and deep mood swings.
We're led down the emotional plumbing along with a kind of numb / punchdrunk narrator, whose brief time describing his life to us comprises a chamber of horrors and an unending set of even-worse consequences. A list of same would be too much in a review, but pick a form of violence, a human failing, a deformity of nature, an offense against society, against family, incest, suicide-- it's here, but meant in a broader, umbrella sense. His concerns are the philosophical structures of the Japanese national persona, and the inherited national flaws he sees.
The Japanese in 1967 were still trying to make sense of the links between the hyperloyalist shogun tradition, the authoritarian cult of empire, and the cabin-fever shock and guilt that made the postwar era so unstable. We feel the infantilized shame and post-fascist surreality of Witold Gombrowicz in the proceedings. And maybe some Beckett, as well; there is a sleepwalker's logic to the course of the book, in fulfillment of what can only be said to be pre-ordained. The failures here, though, are the inability to balance the shock of the distasteful with the familiarity of the obvious, in the way that Beckett was able to do, at once deft and disarming. Mr. Ōe wants no such pretty 'balance' in his attack on the senses. ( Also on the negative side of the equation, there is plenty here that is kind of wifty-cosmic ala Vonnegut, or deliberately obtuse, grotesque in a way we'd now recognize as the tactic of director David Lynch.)
The onslaught of intimidation and dread the narrator feels bounces back and forth from an internalization of events to the formation of a complex analogy of those same, or similar, outside occurrences. The string of disaster and violence our author observes from day to day becomes a kind of personal 'disgrace loop' for which he blames himself. And in analyzing and agonizing about that blame, the dishonorable flaws of the society are reflected. And in taking the blame, back around the loop again.
There are worlds within this novel that this reader can't claim to know about; the rebellions & disturbances in Japan in the 60's were different from other places, and so was the nation. It must also be noted that the author's own biography mirrors at least some of what goes on. A disabled child wasn't just a fiction for this book; the author was father to a similar case. Ōe knew Henry Miller and Sartre, and aspects of their viewpoints appear throughout. He met with Mao Tse Tung. A thorough study of the novel would include at least some familiarity with the author's intriguing biographical details.
There is a desolate sense here that the more reasonable the man, the worse and more relentless the nightmares he must internalize. And Hiroshima towers blackly above the entire conception here, mentioned only once or twice, but crackling like an electric current at the edges.
Closing the back cover on this book, emerging from the 'disgrace loop', feels like walking out of a prison. A prison of blunted, hurtful ambiguities.
Aaarrgh. -
R.I.P., Kenzaburo Oe! His publisher Kodansha announced hours ago that the Nobel Laureate passed away.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/202...
"The Silent Cry" is one of my favorite books ever. -
***I’ve tried to eliminate the spoilers; but be WARNED -- somewhat spoilery***
Early in the novel, the main character, Mitsu, finds himself in the pit where his septic tank will soon go. He goes into the pit to think. The position is symbolic, as everything is in this novel -- a graphic depiction of his psychological state and our place in the novel. The world has become a septic tank and Mitsu is looking for a way out of the pit.
Set in the early to mid-1960s, in a small town in Japan, the novel depicts the struggle of two brothers over the meaning of history and the future of their town. Each, it seems has been designated a role (by history and the natural, horrific flows of the universe) -- Mitsu, the role of the dispassionate establishment figure; Takashi, the role of the revolutionary figure and tragic martyr.
Without spoiling the novel, I’ll say that it’s perhaps one of the most poignant political novels you could read today (despite being written in the 60s). Relevant themes abound -- racism (toward Koreans), a popular uprising, the shunning of intellectuals, the populist leader who leads by his gut, the thrill of revolution.
In the figure of Takashi you can see shades of Trump or Dutertre -- over-stylized machismo, a fascination with violence and virility, and an intellectual vacuum in place of coherent ideology. In the figure of Mitsu, you see the opposite (but also Takashi’s enabler) -- a despondent “establishment” figure, a principled pacifism that is often equated with sterility, and an aloof rationalism with no coherent answer to the energy of Takashi’s movement.
The “revolution” itself is an absurd, intoxicating spectacle that has the power to entrance, compel, and mystify...but is also essentially empty.
The most compelling and touching aspect of the book is the relationship of the two brothers. The two often seem to have the power to save one another, but tragically are unable to because they inhabit worlds with irreconcilable worldviews.
The politics of the book are stylized with a macabre surrealism not unlike the work of HP Lovecraft. Terrible things lurk just out of vision and appear in unexpected places. Death. Suicide. Retardation. Venereal diseases. These things stick out like warts in the first few pages and highlight the monstrous conditions of modern life. The characters appear with monstrous deformities and the habits of creatures -- a hermit, a character with a deformed eye, and a fat blob. With all these everyday creatures, the mythical “chosokabe” of the Shikoku forests is the least terrifying one.
On a personal level, the book got me thinking about modernity and modern life. It seems all too often that modern life offers us up routines and functions in place of meaning. The book starts with the main character discovering that his friend has committed suicide by painting his face crimson, sticking a cucumber up his anus, and hanging himself. I’m pretty sure that if I did the same thing in my office my action would largely go unnoticed, until I was called upon to do something important. Then, when my unique problem needed to be “handled” the question of the day would be which department would handle my dead body and who would take care of the paperwork. The dry, corporate platitudes that would then follow would only highlight the fact that most people were barely aware of who I was or what I did.
Luckily, I have no such inclinations. Besides, the whole thing seems to me a waste of a perfectly good cucumber.
More than anything the book makes me thrilled that I lived to be an adult with a really bad literature addiction. -
A mesmerising read. Mesmerising not in a beautiful, sweetly lyrical sense but gripping, dark and brutally frank. Piercing, insightful metaphors and phrases abound. The opening chapter was so amazing, I thought I had found another 'Vegetarian'. Alas, the one drawback was that I found the plot, based on a present day uprising aimed at reenacting another which happened a hundred years before, not very interesting in and of itself. It would have been better if the middle part, which dwelled a bit too much on this, had been slightly shorter. Given the strength of the writing, I would have given this a 5.0 if the story had been more engaging. Still, the last third did pick up the pace again and contained a few unexpected revelations.
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Silent Cry, by Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburo Oe, takes place in Japan in the late 1960s, following Mitsusaburo, his wife Natsumi and his brother, Takashi as they return to the rural valley community where Mitsu's family has lived for over a century. Mitsu is an anti-hero of the lowest calibre -- weak-willed, ugly and inert -- and from the beginning of the novel there is a significant amount of tension in his marriage as Natsu has succumbed to alcoholism.
The opening of the novel sees Mitsu finding himself crouched at the bottom of a hollowed-out pit formed for a Septic Tank, ruminating on the recent suicide of his friend. Alone and pitiful, he tells of his infant son locked away in an institution after an operation to remove a tumour from his head left him a near vegetable. Like so much refuse, he has no job and no one in which he can confide. He is called a rat, and he adopts the persona, becoming rat like in his behaviour.
When his brother returns from America they travel, along with his brother's teenaged protégées, to the valley of their ancestors. Mitsu spurns Takashi for his juvenile behaviour, though Takashi is confident and charismatic, as his brother wants to follow in the footsteps of their great-great-uncle who, in 1860, started a rebellion in the village.
A main notion in Silent Cry is that of truth and the consequences of it. Truth is hard to come by in the novel, with Taka and Mitsu often remembering their childhoods differently, correcting one another over and over as they relate their past experiences. In the same way, the truth about the affair in 1860 is revised constantly throughout the novel as more facts are revealed to the brothers. This is combined with an extensive use of dream imagery to deliberately mislead the reader, along with the main characters, so that the morality of their actions is never solidly identified. Gravely, Mitsu's entire view of history and his brother comes into question by the end of the novel, and the reader is brought into this upheaval in a very real way. Throughout the entire story, we are made, despite his imperfections, to sympathise with Mitsusaburo. Though pitiable, he is also the pillar of reason among the strange cult-like behavior of the other characters following his brother. In this way, not only do we blindly agree with his interpretation of the past, but we also spurn his brother -- both in action and in philosophy -- and consider him petulant, impulsive and ineffectual. By the end of the novel, however, this perspective is made to change. Just as Mitsu must re-evaluate his entire way of thinking about his brother, so too must we, as Mitsu's complicit followers, re-evaluate what we have read thus far, and how we feel about the characters.
In one sense, it is extremely effective as the reader is led to believe certain truths exactly as the characters. In another, however, it's frustrating because by the end of the novel we are so ingrained in our repulsion towards Takashi that to change our opinions is nearly impossible. Looking for Mitsu to succeed for such a long time only to be disappointed when his success is dependent on his brother's philosophies is tough to swallow.
More frustrating still is, aptly, the issue of the writing of the novel itself. Kenzaburo Oe writes exclusively in Japanese, and as such the novel is translated by a Western author. In a way that eerily parallels the passage of truth in the novel, we must read the text through the eyes and words of an interloper, an observer to the chaos we're reading. It is impossible to know what liberties have been taken -- what images are created by this third-party that are not, perhaps, what Oe intended. Due in part to the paranoid pursuit of truth demonstrated by Mitsu and Takashi, we also yearn for truth, both in the story and in its very construction. And yet, just as Mitsusaburo, we must place our faith in the words of another in order to do so.
Though chaotic and dense, the novel is well-written and the characters are lively and numerous. The setting of the quiet valley town torn apart by modernization and a new generation is fleshed out well, and throughout the novel the internal monologue of the self-described rat, Mitsu, provides a framework through which we can relive events in his life and the lives of his ancestors in a unique and effective way. -
I finished The Silent Cry right before the window of July shut for eternity. My reading of the book is locked away from me by an invisible wall that materialized overnight. I am glad of this because Oe’s book terrified me. In fact, The Silent Cry is the most frightening book I've ever read.
The Silent Cry is about a depressed intellectual who returns to his ancestral village with his younger brother who plans to incite the young men to overthrow a local Korean businessman, "The Emperor of the Supermarkets."
This book is a staple of hardcore Japanese literature. It's a densely written, philosophically loaded story that deals with the darkness of living in a personal hell. Suicide and shame continuously haunt the characters, punctuated by outbursts of raw violence. The danger extends beyond fiction through Oe's writing that refuses to leave the reader as a faraway bystander. We are faced with the naked suffering of every character, from all angles, until we become soiled.
Though The Silent Cry is disturbing, it communicates its message: Despite the worst humiliations and failures, we can generate the strength to begin again. Isn't this the story of Japan and the atomic bombs? The Silent Cry allegorized the shame of Imperial Japan’s defeat into a family that must face an existential horror akin to nuclear annihilation. The pain becomes communal. That is why this book turns so many people off.
Oe delivers a literary blow across the face that leaves us to solemnly reflect on our own personal hell and the will to start again, from nothing if need be.
(And now for some funny Japanese existentialism.)
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You can read Oe's books without visiting his hometown (obviously) but I'm still so ashamed that I visited his hometown without having read "Prize Stock", "Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids" or "The Silent Cry". What did I think I was doing?
"The Silent Cry" was brutal. Kenzaburo must be the most honest man on the planet. I have no idea how his friends and family can live with his writing. Yukio Mishima said something nice for the dust jacket, but I bet he winced his way through this. Ouch. It's like Oe knew.
I haven't found anything by Oe secondhand, so he's cost me a fortune and I can't afford anymore. It's probably best to have a break. But I really want to read "Seventeen"! I also really want to read all of "Seventeen", and that's impossible because the rightists won't let us. Tsk.
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"Escape from the Wasteland" introduced me to the Japanese title: 万延元年のフットボール (mannen gannen no futtoboru). But I've just realised that I don't know whether they are playing association football, which I thought Japan called "sakka" (soccer), or American football. Isn't John Nathan American ... so wouldn't he use "football" to mean American football? The Wikipedia article links to American football.
But I've just read: "The ball came rolling out of the circle of youths in my direction. I tried to kick it back", which doesn't sound like an American football does it? And Taka played American football at University? And he managed to buy loads of American footballs in Ehime in the 1960s? Can you even buy an American football in Ehime now?
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It's not John Nathan, it's John Bester! And he's English! So it must be soccer. Wikipedia's just wrong.
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Everything around me—the dark brown stretches of withered grassland where the snow had completely vanished, leaving the soil parched and powerless as yet to put forth new life, even the somber evergreen heights of the forest beyond the groves of great deciduous trees—had an air of indefinable loss, like the dead ruin of a human being, that awoke an obscure uneasiness in me as my gaze roved across the hollow.
This is one of those novels where all the characters are miserable and bad things are constantly happening to each of them. Meanwhile, the text is suffused with an oppressive foreboding that even worse events and/or revelations lurk in the distance. To complicate reading matters, the first third or so of the book moves at a glacial pace, smothering everything in its slow-moving wake. I almost abandoned it after about 100 pages but then I read reviews reporting that the action picks up later on. And so I heaved the yoke back up across my shoulders and trudged on, only to be rewarded with even more suffering and misery, but at least it started arriving faster.
The setting is a rural valley in post-WWII Japan where two brothers have returned to their family homestead, one from living abroad in America and the other, the narrator, from his middle-class life as a translator in Tokyo. Narrator is depressed, triggered by his best friend's ominous suicide, and his wife is descending into alcoholism following the birth of their genetically impaired child. The ghosts of dead siblings haunt the two brothers upon their return to the valley. What follows is borne out by the long-lasting effects of war and family history.
No star rating seems appropriate here. Ōe's style is more ornate than I typically prefer, but it fits the subject matter. Some books are not 'enjoyable reads' per se, but that does not necessarily mean they should not be read. This book delves deep into human nature and human experience, which for me provided reason enough not to look away. It's worth it alone for the rush of revelations that come in the final chapter. -
الرواية الوجودية (كامو وسارتر)...رواية تيار الوعي (فوكنر وجويس)..رواية التوثيق النفسي (لويس فرديناند سيلين)..كل هذا بنكهة يابانية خالصة تنفتح على الإنسان
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96th book of 2022.
3.5. Feels like a mishmash of Mishima, Faulkner and Dostoyevsky. Sweet, bleak nihilism. At times like a dystopian novel. At its core, it's about our ancestors, history and how we can lie to ourselves and others. It's filled with suicide, incest, rape, adultery and murder. The writing in my edition was Bible-sized which made the density of it far worse. There are a number of oddball characters, hermits, "Japan's Fattest Woman", the memory of the narrator's friend who hanged himself with his head painted red and a cucumber up his arse. The brother, Takashi, feels like Mishima's Isao, with his radicalised views and expectations. The memories of an 1860 uprising taint the present day for all the characters involved. Though not always enjoyable, Ōe has incredible command and authority on the page. This is considered his masterpiece. -
Acclaimed by the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature committee for its dealing "with people's relationships ... in a confusing world" (back cover), this novel is psychologically complex due to its context primarily related on "the clash between village life and modern culture in postwar Japan" (Paris Review: The Art of Fiction No. 195) as perceived and involved by the narrator temporarily living there with his wife, his brother and a few followers. One of the complex issues is that Oe has tried to explore such life and culture by means of ‘I’ called Mitsu as the key protagonist who duly observes and reacts. Moreover, writing a comment on this complex novel by a formidable Japanese author is demanding and could be controversial, therefore, I would like to share my views with my Goodreads friends on some good points so that we can understand more on why we should read him enjoyably, that is, any one of his works to which we incline.
First, reading this novel needs our concentration; it is observed by one of his translators that Oe has famously written his works in short sentences similar to those in foreign novels, presumably in English ones, so they are relatively convenient for translation. As far as I know, he accepts this comment and says it’s natural for him to write his novels with short Japanese sentences. This aspect of writing poses a problem to his readers since whenever they browse through some pages in his novels, they tend to assume that they seem readable and simple. However, that’s necessary for us to be aware of the first obstacle that we need to learn not to be trapped by their seeming simplicity.
Second, Mitsu portrayed as a man aged twenty-seven (p. 1) having a child born mentally handicapped (p. 34) with his no sight regarding his right eye (p. 2) is an ordinary, not god-like man who realizes his weaknesses and does his best to cope with his everyday life before meeting his brother called Taka while living in the village and after the unthinkably tragic incident. His wife named Natsumi (p. 274) having started her whiskey-drinking (p. 29) reads Soseki Natsume (p. 107) while he reads the Penguin books (p. 108), translates and has his English teaching job (p. 272). He is also unfairly looked upon by a youth who bluntly complains, “You’re not a bit like him. You’re just a rat. What did you come to meet Taka today?” (p. 29). With his dark humor, he simply says, "I'm ugly." (p. 2) These suggest his bitter tormented life deep inside and we wonder how he should manage such looming unpredictable problems.
Third, I think this novel is one among the few that require our rereading for more understanding and interpretation. One of the reasons is that we may find reading it quite simple, that is, understandable at face value. Indeed, Oe has written to expose Mitsue’s adversities in dealing with social/ethical issues adopted by Taka, his brother to commit such an abominable sin while living in the village till he can’t find any sensible solution and that’s why he’s still left some problems to other people to solve. However, we can notice that Mitsue’s wife has become more sober and sensible toward the end of the novel. This initiative wisely implies drinking whisky isn’t the good means in solving any problem and she’s told Mitsue about “bringing up the two babies together” (p. 272) and I found this excerpt moving:
“I was thinking about that for ages last night, Mitsue, and I began to feel that if only we have the courage we can make a start on it at least,” she said in a voice pathetic in its obvious physical and spiritual exhaustion. … Then, as I walked toward her, I heard a voice inside me reciting quite simply what Takashi’s bodyguards had said when they announced their plan to get married: “Now that we don’t have Taka, we’ll have to manage by ourselves” And I had no mind to squash the voice into silence.
… (p. 273)
Therefore, ‘courage’ is the key and we need to learn to keep going by ourselves, in other words, living by mostly depending on others is not wise, they may not be amused since everyone is busy working, QED.
In short, this novel is worth reading and rereading for reinterpretations for the sake of our fellow humans that, more or less, need compassion, resilience and wisdom. -
Something that's interesting to me about this novel in translation is the difference in titles. As far as I'm aware, there's only been a single English version, published in 1974 and translated by John Bester, titled "The Silent Cry." Subsequent translations adopted the title format, although there are a few outliers, such as the French (which I unfortunately couldn't find locally) "Le jeu du siècle," Russian "Футбол 1860 года," Polish "Futbol ery Manen," Estonian "Sajandi mäng," Swedish "Tid för fotboll," and so on. So what's the truth? Is it the silent cry, the time for football, the game of the century, football in the Man'en era, or football in the 1860s?
Well... the Polish and Russian translations are closest. The Japanese title is [万延元年のフットボール], which can be broken down into 万延 (Man'en) 元年 (first year) の (of) フットボール (football). The Man'en era was a real 年号 (nengô) from 1860 to 1861. The title would literally be translated as something like, "Football in the First Year of Man'en."
Tradition is a tricky thing. Inertia is always easier, and being a salmon often ends in a bear's jaws. As Ôe Kenzaburô describes in [万延元年のフットボール], a relatively short novel in which the protagonist and his brother, each roughly representative of two extremes (I say "roughly" because they're really both representative of both extremes), return to their small rural hometown. The protagonist's brother has just returned from a trip to America; he's a political extremist, abusive, and incredibly difficult to like. The protagonist himself, on the other hand, is arrogant yet views himself as more reserved, more traditional. Neither of them is a good person, as is made increasingly evident as the novel confronts issue after issue, everything from fascism to suicide. The villagers themselves are also representative of this struggle between tradition and modernity: they're excited by the promises of cultural and technological advancement, which include the introductions of things like televisions and supermarkets, but still wary of what would ultimately turn out to be a justified fear of globalism. (It wasn't called that at the time, but that's what it would become.) And then there's the culturally specific element: written in 1967, set in the early- to mid-sixties, the book describes a culture still struggling to reconcile the authoritarian and loyalist imperial shôgunate with the rising tide of globalism and modernisation that would, consummately, efface Imperial Japan entirely. The post-war period was not exactly a time of great stability for Japan and the Japanese, and the blame could be placed solidly on America—the embodiment of all things modern and Western. But the peasant rebellion against the emperor, as described in the novel, is emblematic of both an international struggle and a uniquely Japanese conflict: society, tearing itself apart.
Or, y'know, something like that. -
1994 m. literatūros Nobelio premijos laureato Kenzaburo Oe romanas 'The Silent Cry' arba pažodžiui išvertus 'Football in the First Year of Man'en' pasakoja dviejų brolių, senos samurajų giminės palikuonių, istorija.
Romano veiksmas vyksta 1960-ųjų pradžioje, kai jaunesnysis brolis grįžta iš JAV ir kviečia pasakotoja - vyresnįjį, vienaakį universiteto profesorių, visiškai palūžusį po neįgalaus vaiko gimimo ir draugo savižudybės, žmogų ir jo alkoholikę žmoną vykti kartu į seną giminės dvarą, kuris yra kaime, vienoje iš salų. Dramatiški (ir net tragiški) įvykiai kaime, kurie seka po to ir kurių fone, seniai nesimatę broliai bando (dažnai nesėkmingai) atkurti seniai prarastą santykį, susišaukia su šimto metų senumo įvykiais tame pačiame kaime. 1860 metais ten įvyko kruvinas valstiečių maištas, kurio lyderiu buvo pagrindinių personažų prosenelio jaunesnysis brolis - pusiau mitinė asmenybė.
Romanas tai yra šeimos istorija vyresnio brolio akimis, Japonijos istorijos, politinio ir socialinio gyvenimo kvintesencija. Romane autorius taip pat analizuoja žmogaus tapatybės koncepciją, smurto ištakas ir žmogaus ryšį su gamta.
Man atrodo, kad tai yra viena iš knygų, kurios įsimena ir įstringa atmintyje dėl savo vizualumo (bent jau man). Matau ją kaip ryškių vaizdų seriją. Ir, žinoma, ši knyga padėjo man daugiau sužinoti apie tokią paslaptingą ir nesuprantamą šalį, kaip Japonija ir jos žmones, kurie, atrodo, kartais mąsto visai ne taip kaip mes.
P.S. Kaip supratau, į lietuvių kalbą išversta tik vienas Kenzaburo Oe romanas "Asmeninė patirtis". O gaila. -
Nov. 22: Y ahora, a buscar una verdad.
Nov. 21 (más tarde): JUEPUTAAAA!!!
Nov. 21: ¡AY, MARICA, SE CALENTÓ ESTE PARCHE!
Cuando un libro tiene el poder de hacer que uno grite llegada una sección queda poco que hacer aparte de gritar llegada esa sección. En esta novela siempre están pasando cosas.
Conforme progreso me doy cuenta de que este puede ser uno de los mejores libros que lea este año. Oē no sólo desnuda los artificios de la ficción a los que está acostumbrado el lector y se rehúsa a aplicarlos, además les niega esas salidas a sus personajes obligándolos a revisar sus comportamientos frente a nuestros ojos. La introspección que ocurre en este libro tiene tantos niveles de necesaria incomodidad que lo que más engancha en la obra es su honestidad.
Hasta ahora, y siendo la primera vez que leo a Oé en inglés, The Silent Cry tiene que ser uno de sus mejores libros. A la par de la 'novella' "El día que Él se digne enjugar nuestras lágrimas". -
رواية تغوص في أعماق النفس الإنسانية
صادمة في سوادويتها وتفاصيلها التي تنطلق من واقعة انتحار غريبة قبل أن يتضح أن محورها هو حياة شقيقين يعودان إلى قريتهما غربي اليابان
وهناك تنفتح جروح الماضي والحاضر معا
الرواية تحتاج صبراً ودأباً من القارئ، لكنها ممتعة وتفاجئك بتحولات شخصياتها وترسم لك ملامح يابان أخرى لا تعرفها. -
A novel infused with darkness and despair, Oe’s prose eschews the ethereal style which is so inherent in Japanese literary aesthetics in favour building a of a nightmarish and phantasmagorical atmosphere, dominated by darkness and shadows, of delirious russets and refulgent with death and despair. The style is disconcerting and unsettling, a collection of mirages beneath the half-light within which he disaffected and unreliable narrator presents the novel-some, such as this description of a snow-bound garden are surrealy beautiful;
“The lamp hanging from the eaves, aided by the reflection of the snow lying on the ground, roof and various small shrubs beneath the eaves, suffused the white garden with a luminescence that recreated the vague light of dusk”.
Yet even the apparent peace of this garden is hampered by the sight of the narrator’s half-mad brother, Takashi, running around naked beneath the gentle fall of snow-flakes, acting as a sharp blade cutting through the idyllic view. The characters are, largely, grotesque, from the narrator, Mitsusaburo, who suffers from various degrees of mental unrest, to his cynical, alcoholic wife Natsumi, with whom the narrator is unable to entertain any sexual relations following the birth of their mentally handicapped son. Various characters hover on the periphery, such as “The Emperor”, a Korean immigrant who has managed to become a successful businessman and holds the area tightly in his vice-like grip, or the many followers of the narrator’s brother Takashi. Yet the central relationsip in the novel is between Takashi and Mitusaburo, who act as the ying to one another’s yang; Mitsusaburo is cold and aloof, bogged down in intellectual musings, whilst there is something vital about Takashi, whose character is infused with a kind of mad-cap energy and a desire to re-create a conflict which took place between their great-grandfather and his brother, who led a peasant rebellion. Takashi’s desire to ferment rebellion is a mix of this sense of fatalism and his ebullience and desire to overthrow social norms and conventions, which Takashi, despite his cynicism and sense of alienation, strives to hold onto.
The novel can-at times-grate on the reader-in particular the constant monologues and dialogues discussing increasingly bizarre aspects of human nature, and Ōe is perhaps less accessible than the other great Japanese novelists, yet his works remain and important part of the Japanese cannon, as an exploration of the darker elements of Japanese society. -
Wow. I definitely need a very light book to read after this. It is very heavy, dense and dark. A look into dysfunctionality of human personalities, relationships and society.
Set in a Japanese village some time after WW2 with a lot of look-backs to the events in 1860 relating their family that affect the current events and and brother's lives it involves a lot of history and attitudes that are foreign to me but were very interesting to read. There is so much in this book that make it pretty heavy and outstanding. Suicide, alcoholism, revolutions, mentally disabled kids, guilt, shame etc. Not much of it is a good thing which makes this book so exhausting and depressing. As I said one really needs something to relax after. But the complexity of the main character's world and the slow but very detailed build up to the very late climax make this book really powerful and special. -
Hacía cuatro años que no leía nada de Kenzaburo Oé y no recordaba lo agotador que puede resultar su pesimismo entrópico, antropológico, a veces cabezonamente nihilista. Si se entienden sus intenciones, se puede comprender que no es un simple quejica, sencillamente quiere representar una sociedad que surge después de una época calamitosamente retrógrada, que luego es derrotada por culpa de esa visión política y finalmente es castigada de una forma cruel e inhumana (es decir, con dos bombas atómicas). Por eso en El Grito Silencioso y otras de sus primeras obras se nos representa el pasado como una fuente envenenada de la que sólo se sedimentan males, visiones erróneas y deja una sociedad que crea seres contrahechos.
Por supuesto esa visión tan dramática es fruto de las lecturas modernistas de Oé, cosa que a la vez implicada que el lector deberá esforzarse en hallar los signos ocultos en el magma narrativo, que se verá puesto a prueba en su paciencia y aguante. De la mano de Oé nos adentramos en el mundo de una familia a la que todo lo malo le ocurre. Revolucionarios del siglo XIX que emprenden revueltas desastrosas, hijos que mueren en la guerra, otros que mueren a causa de altercados racistas contra los coreanos (alusión a La presa), el hijo deforme del narrador (otra alusión a otro libro del autor Un asunto personal) y finalmente los dos hermanos que a la vez ocultan un pasado personal turbulento, turbador, y que con cierta frecuencia caen en destructivas crisis personales. ¿Verdad que suena alegre?
Todo lo anterior compone una visión que contradice a la visión romántica y embellecedora que por ejemplo tenía Mishima del Japón tradicional, de sus pequeños y entrañables pueblecitos y su pasado glorioso, con estudiantes idealistas que emprendían revueltas para salvaguardar los valores del Japón imperial. Oé digamos que contradice punto por punto el decálogo que Mishima propone. La gente de los pueblos puede ser en ocasiones retorcida y es tan impresionable como cualquier habitante de la ciudad. El idealismo tiene trampa y cartón, en ocasiones es una herramientas de distracción que los poderosos canalizan desde las trastienda para desfogar el malestar social.
Además, también se crea una narración en la que la verdad resulta doloroso, que cuando queda al descubierto todo lo revuelve y resulta destructiva. Pienso en el pasado personal que encierra la hermana fallecida del narrador o en su relación con su mujer, también sombría y transgresora. ¿En qué momento se jodió el Japón? Tanto vinagre sólo se puede premiar con un Nobel. -
A man named Mitsusaburo is married to Natsumi, they have a newborn son who is mentally disabled. She is coping with alcohol. Then Mitsu's friend commits suicide (it involves a cucumber) which only further sends the two of them spiraling into uncertainty. Mitsusaburo's brother Takashi returns from America and convinces them to go back with him to their childhood home. Here we learn about the brothers' great grandfather and his brother, the latter a major figure in an 1860 peasant uprising. Takashi wants to inspire a similar uprising and, after creating a football team, slowly builds an army which loots the local supermarket owned by a Korean...
I'd go into more detail (and there is a lot more to go into) but I suspect you've already switched off a little. The fact is the book is very good, wonderfully written (and translated), and delves into as many dark and painful recesses of the human mind that you can imagine (fascinatingly so). But it's very convoluted, very dense, and very oppressive at times. After a while, I felt like I had a bag of stones around my neck. Which is a shame because the writing is indeed great. It just feels like he's put far too much into this (did I mention that Takashi seduces Mitsu's wife Natsumi, that there's a murder, an obese gargoyle, an attempted rape, incest, more suicide, a cucumber��).
As much as I enjoyed the book, I could have done without being so utterly overwhelmed by so much heavy and stolid language (often when addressing the most mundane aspects of the story). Had the book been half as long (with significantly shorter chapters) I might have embraced it as a masterpiece. But it drags on a little and I never felt any sense of redemption or hope. And when I start to dread reading the next chapter because it just won't let me breathe, I have to take that into account when reviewing the piece (even when, as was the case here, I predominantly enjoyed it and acknowledged the writer's craft).
It was wonderful. But somehow it was also too much. Very Japanese. -
مجدداً يثبت اليابانيون قدرتهم العجيبة في خوض سبر النفس البشرية وأغوارها الدفينة عند كتابة الرواية بطريقة تجعل من الأدب الياباني الأكثر عمقاً والأقل تقديراً على الإطلاق، كما لاحظت ذلك في مؤلفي فترة الانحطاط اليابانية – أوساموا دازاي وناتسومي سوسكي -، لم يختلف كاتب الحقبة الجديدة كينزابورو اوي، يتضح لي أن الياباني لا يكتب إلا علة الروح.
لا أنكر شعوري بالملل عند بعض المواضع، السبب في ذلك هو عنصر الكوميديا السوداء الذي كان باهتاً للغاية بسبب الترجمة - والتي كانت جيدة – فبدت الحوارات بشكل ما غير منطقية ومزعجة، إلا أن الرواية قائمة على اللامنطقية فلا لوم هنا، من بداية الانتحار المازوشي غريب تعلم أنك في رواية غريبة الأطوار خارجة عن التصانيف الاعتيادية.
رحلة أسرة ينقلنا فيها أوي إلى مخاوفه الشخصية – كعادة المؤلفين اليابانيين لا تخلو كتاباتهم من صراعاتهم الذاتية- يتضح ذلك من قراءة السيرة الذاتية للمؤلف، إلا أنه أيضاً نقل مخاوف مجتمع بأسره، مجتمع أنغلق على ذاته فترة طويلة تلتها صراعات وحروب نالت بالأرواح قبيل الأجساد وعندما توقفت الحروب عجزت تلك الأشلاء الهالكة عن الشعور بالسلام.
يصعب تفسير فلسفة الرواية فهي أشد عمقاً مما تكفيه الكلمات ولا عجب أن هذه الرواية كانت السبب الرئيسي في نيل كينازبورو أوي لنوبل الأدبية، من أكثر الروايات عمقاً.
الغريب في الرواية هو التشابه في الفحوى مع رواية " نادي القتال " الشهيرة لتشاك بولانيك مما يجعلني أشك في أصلية العمل الأخير لاختلاف الفترة الزمنية، رغم أن التشابه قد لا يبدو جلياً حد التطابق، فلسفة "العنف البشري والنزوع للعنف" هي أكثر النقاط التي تجعل الروايتين متشابهتين، اختلفت المعالجة فقط.
تجربة سوداوية رائعة للغاية. -
Στο τέλος του "Μια προσωπική υπόθεση" ο ήρωας βρίσκει την ελπίδα για να συνεχίσει τη ζωή του με τη γυναίκα και το νεογέννητο μωρό τους. Στο δεύτερο μυθιστόρημα του Κ. Όε, η ιστορία είναι σαν να ξεκινάει από αυτό το σημείο μόνο που η ελπίδα για ζωή χάνεται από τις πρώτες γραμμές ανάγνωσης. Τα γεγονότα εξελίσσονται μέσα από μια μεθυσμένη γραφή σα το φτηνό ουίσκι που καταναλώνει ο πρωταγωνιστής. Το ονειρικό και λυρικό εναλλάσσονται συνεχώς με το εφιαλτικό και το γκροτέσκο. Η έντση κλιμακώνεται αργά και σταδιακά μέχρι την κορύφωση των γεγονότων όπου οι ανατροπές ακολουθούν η μια την άλλη με πολύ γρήγορους ρυθμούς. Στο τέλος, η αίσθηση της λύτρωσης είναι πικρή.
Αν γινόταν κινηματογραφική ταινία ο Κιμ Κι Ντουκ θα κονταροχτυπιόταν με τον Λαρς Φον Τρίερ. -
هى قصة أخوين يعودان إلى وطنهم الأصلي، وهي قرية في غرب اليابان , يحاول احد الاخوين ميتسو تخطى احزانه بعد انتحار اعز أصدقاءه وولادة ابن متخلف عقليا بينما ،تاكاشي الاخ الاصغر يسعى لتحقيق بطولة وهمية ، من خلال تحريضه الشباب. للقيام بعمليات من النهب و السلب لتاجر كوري يسمى بالإمبراطور فى محاوله منه لإحياء روح الانتفاضة الإقطاعية لعام 1860
هذا بعدما استامنه هذا التاجر على بضاعته و تعهد هو بشرف اسرته ان يحافظ عليها -
Dark book. Told through comparisons to a Japanese uprising 100 years prior, the characters struggle to find meaning and make their way forward in a small village. The influence of existentialism and especially Sartre on the telling of the story is very apparent. Using the theme of connecting to similar people in the past, the search for a life that is worthwhile eludes the characters as much as it eludes us.
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بالاخره همه یک روزی می میرند و صد سال که بگذرد ، دیگر هیچکس دربارهء این که دیگران که بودند و چطور مردند سوال نمیکند. پس بهتر است همانطور که دلت میخواهد زندگی کنی و همانطور که دوست داری بمیری...
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Un libro depresivo y denso. Creo que merece un mejor review. Será para otro día.
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This is a very complex, very messed up and very japanese book. It can be seen as a response to Kawabata's "Snow country". Just like in that novel, the narrator and his family travel to an isolated valley and spend an entire winter there. Almost in stark contrast to "Snow country", where everything is beautiful, quiet, melancholic, subtle... here everything here is ugly, fucked up, dead, dying, explosive and bloated. Every similie is designed to be as contrived as possible to relate the fucked up state of the narrator. People are messed up like in those Japanese horror movies. The novel can also be seen as an allegory with the main character serving as humiliated Japan, the retarded kid the dead culture and... I don't wanna spoil it but the plot lends itself to various interpretations.
The prose is alright. Oe's signature style is supposedly untranslatable so what we have here reads more or less like a self aware but serious literary thriller. It's quite a page turner especially after the 180 page mark (the edition I have has 400 pages). The characters are mostly mouthpieces. Oe uses an uprising that happened in the 1860s to show the pitfalls of communism, anarchism, capitalism... he seems like he hates everything. It's really very pessimistic. However, as with all Oe novels written after "A personal matter", it ends on a positive (as much as possible) note.
What I disliked was the artificality of all the violence and the characters' psyche. No normal person thinks like the characters presented here. It just feels like a bunch of Oe's alter egos fighting with each other. Which really... is all of his work. It just feels like he writes to come to terms with being alive. Every story he writes has a lot of autobiography in it. I respect that he's sincere but there really is no need to repeat that the narrator's friend hanged himself after painting his face red and sticking a cucumber up his anus. He repeats this 15 times in the book. He really goes pretty far to shock the reader. He adds in incest, pedophilia, rape, murder and it is all very graphic. The main character is ugly, fat and has one eye missing.
It is overall a good novel. Here's a passage that is particularly relatable.
“Yes, Taka would have leaped at the offer. But I realize now that you’re the type who’d never, deliberately at least, choose any work that might involve constant risks. You leave those jobs to other people. Then, when they’ve survived the dangers, got over their exhaustion, and written a book about their experiences, you step in and translate it.”
She might have been making an objective appraisal of some complete stranger. But dismayed though I was to find such dispassionate powers of observation in her, I reflected that she was probably right. I was the type who, rather than discover a new life for himself, rather than build a thatched hut of his own, would choose to live as a lecturer in English literature, without a single student who pinned any serious hopes on his classes, fated to be disliked by them all unless he missed at least one lecture every week or so, living in seedy bachelorhood (for there was point in going on with this marriage) and labeled “Rat” by his students, like that philosopher whom Takashi had met in New York. Set, in short, on a course in which the only changes remaining were old age and death. -
This was a pretty hard one, might have to read it again to let everything settle clearer. Think Japanese Dostoyevsky- familial 'curses', unspoken shame and pain and it's eventual tear in the fibres of being. Totally brutal.
On top of that, add the eerie layer of social upheaval that is acutely relevant today.
The Korean/Japanese conflict reflects a lot of the frustrating fear-racist thought that we're still dealing with today- which only adds to the frustration that Mitsu has (and looking further, that Kenzaburo Oe being a pacifist has as well) when looking at the seemingly futile effort of the Japanese banding together 'everyone's disgraced themselves equally' to revenge themselves on the 'outsider' -the Koreans (who unwillingly were forced into labour camps and prospered amid their adversity). It is a hard balance to weigh- the uprising and new awareness in the locals of their history- is it worth the disruption and prejudice it further spurs? Is that upheaval necessary to become equals within the valley or does it only widen the gap?
The two brothers also deal with their own personal pains- both identifying with relatives they have limited understanding about- and in turn trying to live and act upon those ideals. Both dealing with personal destructive inner forces in their own ways, different but kindred in their isolation.
Oe does a brilliant job of trying to always throw you off your perspective...
'I have to get rid of my preconceived ideas about Great Grandfather's brother and Takahashi... To understand them correctly may be meaningless to them now that they're dead but for me it's essential'
This is how I felt through the whole book in general- throughout the book you are taking apart characters, looking inside and reassembling them, this made the book quite hard to get through.
I feel like this quote provides even greater insight to the struggle. If only we could all find it essential to look deep into history to look into the people and reasons that cause cultural regress, separatist fear and senseless violence and stop it from doing further damage as we see happening on a regular basis today.
On another note, the translation is electric and vivid- I enjoyed his thoughtful style. -
A novel in the most inexplicable sense. Totally sui generis.
Oe feels like a master of tone, because this novel is somehow a dream, a horror novel, a political treatise, a fascist allegory, a pacifistic representation of violence, a post-nuclear bomb banshee shriek, and a glacial narrative that constantly upends the foundations you stand on. There are so many themes that are given enough space without distorting the novel into an essay.
Our lives are but echoes of our forefathers', and our struggle to become our own people becomes a struggle to escape history, which happens to seem to be an implausible impossibility. The Silent Cry feels like the most brutal and direct (and yet indirect?) handling of the postwar Japanese consciousness I've ever read. This novel is relentlessly honest about Japan's imperialist history and the Japanese military's horrifying WWII tactics. His leftist, anti-nuclear perspective leads him down a narrative path that attempts to untangle the consciousness of those that are passive to humanitarian atrocities alongside those that actively believe in an artificial heroism that fosters more and more suffering for all. The domestic becomes the political and the political infects the domestic. Everyone is embroiled in a metaphysical battle between the self and the fractured reality of contemporary life, because how can someone live knowing that we are all residing on bone-ridden earth. How can a person or a culture hold themself/itself accountable? How can you hold yourself accountable when the idea of "truth" is crumbling at the seems? In doing so, Oe adopts an uncanny tone that is, at once, both Lynchian and French existentialist, utterly surreal yet oh so heartbreakingly, viscerally otherwise.
Totally incredible work that it feels like no one else has ever been able to conceive and execute except Kenzaburo Oe, and no one will craft a book like this one ever again. Essential reading.
