Shunsho ikkoku atai senkin
(Un istante in una sera di primavera vale mille pepite d'oro)
(pagina 400)


...la più grande consapevolezza delle cose, il senso autentico della loro bellezza, emerge solo nella dolorosa presa di coscienza della transitorietà...
(pagina 38, introduzione di Ornella Civardi)


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Che anche leggere sia un modo per perdere se stessi insieme alle impurità del mondo?
Davide Brullo, in un articolo dedicato a Kawabata, scrive:
In un testo del 1933, 𝐆𝐥𝐢 𝐨𝐜𝐜𝐡𝐢 𝐧𝐞𝐠𝐥𝐢 𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐢 𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢, Kawabata si riferisce alla letteratura occidentale per dire la sua disciplina. “𝘓𝘢 𝘷𝘪𝘵𝘢 𝘥𝘪 𝘋𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘦, 𝘭’𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘢 𝘋𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘢 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘢, 𝘧𝘶 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘤𝘢. 𝘚𝘪 𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘢𝘭𝘵 𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘵𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘰 𝘢𝘪 𝘴𝘶𝘰𝘪 𝘰𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘵𝘪 𝘶𝘯 𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘦𝘭 𝘱𝘰𝘦𝘵𝘢 𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘦: ‘𝘌̀ 𝘪𝘭 𝘷𝘰𝘭𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘪 𝘶𝘯 𝘶𝘰𝘮𝘰 𝘤𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘪 𝘦̀ 𝘴𝘣𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘻𝘻𝘢𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘦 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘢̀ 𝘥𝘦𝘭 𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘰. 𝘗𝘦𝘳 𝘱𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘤𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘳𝘦 𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘭 𝘷𝘰𝘭𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘢 𝘰𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘶𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘰𝘭𝘵𝘰 𝘦 𝘩𝘢 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘥𝘶𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘶𝘵𝘵𝘰’“. Mi piace credere che l’episodio sia un’invenzione di Kawabata, che si vela dietro il poeta che ha visto gli altri mondi, Dante, e quello che ha cantato questo mondo, Whitman. Scrivere significa perdere tutto: se stessi insieme alle “impurità del mondo”.

La melagrana

premio Nobel de Literatura en 1968, Yasunari Kawabata es ampliamente conocido en Hispanoamérica por sus novelas incisivas, maravillosamente líricas y profundas. Pero según él mismo, la esencia de su arte debe ser buscada en la serie de historias cortas - a las que llamó "historias en la palma de la mano" - escrita a lo largo de su vida. Comenzó a experimentar con las formas breves en 1923 y retornó a ellas casa tanto. De hecho, el último de sus trabajos fue una reducción a la medida de la palma de la mano de una de sus obras mayores, País de nieve, escrita poco antes de su suicidio en 1972.

It feels very difficult to verbalize the experience of reading these short-stories. They at times border on the fantastical, but mostly describe some intricate psychological play, as if Kawabata has access to the deep labyrinths of thoughts and feelings inside a character’s head. Often the stories refer to dreams, and have themselves a dreamy quality, and they left me with the uneasiness of eavesdropping on people’s very inner feelings: the young sister who loves her older sister’s blind lover; the widow that loved his mistress only through the living actions of his now dead wife; or the anxiety of a crippled girl waiting to hear if her fiancé would return from the war.

But mostly the stories are riddles not easily understood, and I was left with the feeling that I missed something essential about it. As if Kawabata wrote of things that were beyond my grasp of feelings and understanding, yet I got a glimpse of it, a sparkle that fed my curiosity and empathy for those people.

Although Kawabata’s writing is very different from [a:Italo Calvino|155517|Italo Calvino|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1181521461p2/155517.jpg],[a:Karen Blixen|8147|Karen Blixen|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1200335489p2/8147.jpg] and [a:Jorge Luis Borges|500|Jorge Luis Borges|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1306036027p2/500.jpg] I perceive in his stories the same feeling that those authors have aroused in me, that of a reading experience that precedes intellectual understanding and transports me to some ancient time where stories carried archetypical meaning. The lover, the mother, the young/older sister, the crippled – all are aspects of me.

It is not a book that will be loved by all, and it may require a certain mood from the reader, but I highly recommend it.
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Kawabata wrote nearly 150 of these very short stories (most of them in the 250 - 1000 word range) over the course of his writing career. Some are complex, densely plotted tales that could be outlines for novels, others are impressionistic captures of single scenes — dialogues, dreams, things seen from the window of a train — and others again are more like conventional short stories. And just about all are fascinating, beautiful pieces of writing, even if it isn't always obvious on a first or second reading what Kawabata is trying to do. About half of those translated here come from the mid-1920s, when Kawabata was starting out as a writer and experimenting with style and form; the last piece in this collection is a pared-down reworking of the novel Snow country, written a few months before Kawabata's death in 1972.

Settings vary from the inevitable hot-springs inns to suburban railway stations, rented rooms and theatre backstages in the city, and the themes touched on cover the whole gamut from war, disease, death, adultery, first love, illegitimacy, poverty, blindness, and umbrella-envy to a deadly competition between rival proprietors of public toilets. Obviously, Kawabata took advantage of the form to try things out.

Very interesting, but probably a dangerous book to have on your desk if you're trying to write short stories yourself: you'll soon start thinking that there's nothing worthwhile you could write that hasn't already been done better, shorter and more subtly by Kawabata... ( )