Cette nouvelle m'a fait penser à la citation de Maupassant : La vie, voyez-vous, ça n'est jamais si bon ni si mauvais qu'on croit.
Cet ouvrage me propulse dans l'univers d'Osamu Dazai, une sorte d'écrivain du désespoir et de la déprime. Ce n'est pas qu'une posture puisque la courte vie de l'auteur, ponctuée de nombreuses tentatives de suicide a nourrit son œuvre jusqu'à l'issue tragique.
Ici on le devine dans le mari alcoolique qui ne se soucie ni de sa femme, ni de son enfant. Et ne montre aucun remords. La femme ne sachant pas quoi faire fini par devenir serveuse dans le bar où va boire son mari. Les personnages son décrits avec réalisme mais sans sentimentalisme.
La fin était partie pour être douce amère, mais à la fin, c'est surtout l'amertume qui l'emporte. 226805280X 3.5/5 226805280X “I must seem a horrible character to you, but the fact is that I want to die so badly I can’t stand it. Ever since I was born I have been thinking of nothing but dying. It would be better for everyone concerned if I were dead, that’s certain. And yet I can’t seem to die. There’s something strange and frightening, like God, which won’t let me die.”
Too emotional for a short story. It hurts to get involved with the absentee husband and father, too familiar. 226805280X I'm officially in love with Japanese literature. 226805280X 15:57 — 4.5 ☆
“I must seem a horrible character to you, but the fact is that I want to die so badly I can’t stand it. Ever since I was born I have been thinking of nothing but dying. It would be better for everyone concerned if I were dead, that’s certain. And yet I can’t seem to die. There’s something strange and frightening, like God, which won’t let me die.”
“That’s because you have your work.”
“My work doesn’t mean a thing. I don’t write either masterpieces or failures. If people say something is good, it becomes good. If they say it’s bad, it becomes bad. But what frightens me is that somewhere in the world there is a God. There is, isn’t there?”
“I haven’t any idea.”
“And I see now that not only the customers but everyone you meet walking in the streets is hiding some crime”
“Look! It says here that I’m a monster. That’s not true, is it? It’s a little late, but I’ll tell you now why I took the five thousand yen. It was so that I might give you and the boy the first happy New Year in a long time. That proves I’m not a monster, doesn’t it?”
His words didn’t make me especially glad. I said, “There’s nothing wrong with being a monster, is there? As long as we can stay alive.”
226805280X
Osamu Dazai ï 6 Read
Mme Otani est mariée à un écrivain alcoolique. Il passe son temps dans un bar et a accumulé une ardoise considérable. Pour éviter le scandale, sa femme se fait embaucher comme serveuse afin de rembourser la dette. Malgré leurs difficultés pour survivre, et comme tous deux fréquentent désormais le même bar, ils se rapprochent. Mais Mme Otani est trop sollicitée par des clients. La Femme de Villon
A newsfeed comment got me started reading about self-destructive Japanese writer Osamu Dazai. Not sure I wanted to start his longer, darker books, I looked at available short stories, and this one appealed to me most. (It turned out the Kindle version, though labelled as English, was actually in Japanese, so I returned it and after some scrabbling about online, read the story on Questia in Modern Japanese Literature: From 1868 to the Present Day.)
Dazai is here effectively narrating from the viewpoint of his own wife. (His Mary-Sue, Mr Otani, has just published a story named Francois Villon, after the late medieval Frenchman described by Paul Verlaine as the first poète maudit.) The cover of this French edition is a little unrepresentative to show her crying. Whilst she does shed tears at one point, much of the narrative is fairly unemotional as Mrs Otani sets out to try and find out a way of paying off her alcoholic husband's debts and then finding some more focus through her new work - even if it is in a bar he sometimes frequents. I can imagine some saying this means he's unempathic with her situation, though I found the approach quite right as a portrayal of one of the types of people who is accepting of such a partner. ... Then he disappears and doesn't return for three or four nights... This sort of thing reminded me of when I was younger and quite often involved with such people: their particular randomness itself became reliable after a while; I usually benefited from the space and wanted inspiration rather than someone constantly there being eloquently opinionated, implying - without ever meaning it, I was just terribly sensitive in certain ways, they thought I was interesting to debate with - that I should do anything differently or think differently about the few things we disagreed on; someone I semi-worshipped who would manifest with hits of intermittent variable reward. (Although the men I was involved with, unlike her Mr Otani, never ever wanted money from me and were adept at living on very little.)
The standard inspirational narrative would see her moving steadily further away from him, but that gigantic (non)literary cliche is not here. Also I cannot quite decide whether the treatment (or rather mention) of a rape by an acquaintance could be better or if it is more that writing about such things is expected to contain certain formulae. And that there is an idea somewhere that even if someone tends to react to trauma in a very delayed way (and what's more comes from a notably stoic culture) they ought still to be describing an aftermath in particular terms to specifically convey that. I am inclined to give the benefit of the doubt, given one article which mentions some sort of complex trauma experienced by Dazai himself + my unfamiliarity with the culture + my readiness to questioning standardised correct portrayals of difficult issues especially when there is evidently more than ignorance at work.
I have really read so little Japanese literature that I don't really know what translations should feel like. This one was a good enough story though and it did give a sense of a subtly different cultural response to some themes which are not uncommon in European writing.
226805280X https://comaujapon.wordpress.com/2016...
Une nouvelle qui se lit plutôt bien et qui est intéressante grâce à cette jeune femme, qui ne va pas se laisser abattre par le caractère de son mari et qui va trouver une façon à elle de lui venir en aide… ou de trouver le bonheur. 226805280X “I must seem a horrible character to you, but the fact is that I want to die so badly I can’t stand it. Ever since I was born I have been thinking of nothing but dying. It would be better for everyone concerned if I were dead, that’s certain. And yet I can’t seem to die. There’s something strange and frightening, like God, which won’t let me die.”
For a short story it had so many emotions. 226805280X
[...] There's something strange and frightening, like God, which won't let me die.
That's because you have your work.
My work doesn't mean a thing. I don't write either masterpieces or failures. If people say something is good, it becomes good. If they say it's bad, it becomes bad. But what frightens me is that somewhere in the world there is a God. There is, isn't it?
I haven't any idea.
There's a 2009 Japanese drama film directed by Kichitaro Negishi and based on this semi-autobiographical short story.
Jan 05, 18
* Also on my blog. 226805280X Yine, henüz Türkçeye çevrilmemiş bir Osamu Dazai ile karşınızdayım. ‘Villon’s Wife’ Kichitaro Negishi tarafından 2009 senesinde sinemaya uyarlandığından beri aklımdaydı. Hikayeyi okumadan filmi izlemek istemediğimden İngilizce çevirisine denk gelince okuyayım dedim. ‘Villon’s Wife’ Osamu Dazai’nin ‘Batan Güneş’ten hemen önce kaleme aldığı, 1947 tarihli bir uzun öyküsü. Alışık olduğumuzdan çok farklı bir Osamu Dazai olduğunu söylemem lazım öyküde. Bu sefer felsefi sorgulamalar daha geride, hikaye anlatma çabası ve olay örgüsü çok daha ön planda. Dazai bu öyküsünde de tıpkı 'Schoolgirl' romanında olduğu gibi kadın bir karakterin içinden seslenmeyi tercih etmiş. Baş karakterimiz olan Villon’un karısı, kocasının bir gece eve, peşinde borçlu olduğu restoran sahibi insanlarla gelmesiyle bir değişim yaşamaya başlıyor. Hasbelkader evlendiği bir adam olan kocası, yoksulluk içinde geçen hayatı, yetersiz beslenmeden gelişme gösteremeyen zavallı çocuğuyla yüzleşiyor ve kocasının alacaklılara borcunu ödemesi için dolaylı yoldan doğaçlama bir plan yapıyor. Kendisi de farkında değil aslında planının varlığından. Fakat başvurduğu yöntemle hem kocasının borcunu ödemesini sağlıyor hem de kendini farklı bir hayatın içinde buluyor. O noktadan sonra hayatını yozlaştıran bir debinin içinde tüm tepkisizliğiyle, içi boşalarak yaşıyor. Olaylar II. Dünya Savaşı'nın hemen sonrasında yaşanıyor. Bu dönemde sosyal hayatın uğradığı tüm tahribat arka planda izlenebiliyor. Diğer yandan öyküye ismini veren ‘koca’ Dazai'nin kendisinden başkası değil. Umutsuz, mutsuz, kendinden vazgeçmiş, yazdıklarıyla barışamayan, sorumsuz yazar karakter tam olarak bütün eserlerinde tanık olduğumuz Dazai. Yazarın sürekli otobiyografik ayrıntılar kullandığı göz önünde bulundurulursa eserin anlatmaya çalıştığı şey de tamamen anlaşılabilir. Neyse, şimdi sıra filmi izlemekte. Herkese iyi okumalar diliyorum. 226805280X