Kusamakura
草枕
夏目漱石 · Japanese
Sōseki's Kusamakura follows a young painter who walks into the mountains determined to feel nothing, hoping that a life stripped of emotional…
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Pagera Editor's Note
Sōseki's Kusamakura follows a young painter who walks into the mountains determined to feel nothing, hoping that a life stripped of emotional entanglement will let him see the world as art. At a nearly empty hot spring inn he meets Nami, a divorced woman the villagers call mad, and his theory of detachment begins to fray. Little happens by design: the novel is built from long passages on painting, Chinese poetry and the trouble with being human, and Sōseki himself called it a haiku novel.
Author
夏目漱石
Natsume Sōseki (1867-1916) is widely regarded as the foremost Japanese novelist of the modern era. A scholar of English literature who studied in London, he left academia to write full time for the Asahi Shimbun. His works, among them Kokoro, I Am a Cat and Botchan, examine loneliness, self-interest and the strain of a society modernising faster than the people inside it.
Kusamakura
草枕
夏目漱石 · Japanese
Sōseki's Kusamakura follows a young painter who walks into the mountains determined to feel nothing, hoping that a life stripped of emotional…
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Original (Japanese)
山路を登りながら、こう考えた。 智に働けば角が立つ。情に棹させば流される。意地を通せば窮屈だ。とかくに人の世は住みにくい。 住みにくさが高じると、安い所へ引き越したくなる。どこへ越しても住みにくいと悟った時、詩が生れて、画が出来る。 人の世を作ったものは神でもなければ鬼でもない。やはり向う三軒両隣りにちらちらするただの人である。ただの人が作った人の世が住みにくいからとて、越す国はあるまい。あれば人でなしの国へ行くばかりだ。人でなしの国は人の世よりもなお住みにくかろう。 越す事のならぬ世が住みにくければ、住みにくい所をどれほどか、寛容て、束の間の命を、束の間でも住みよくせねばならぬ。ここに詩人という天職が出来て、ここに画家という使命が降る。あらゆる芸術の士は人の世を長閑にし、人の心を豊かにするが故に尊とい。 住みにくき世から、住みにくき煩いを引き抜いて、ありがたい世界をまのあたりに写すのが詩である、画である。あるは音楽と彫刻である。こまかに云えば写さないでもよい。ただまのあたりに見れば、そこに詩も生き、歌も湧く。着想を紙に落さぬとも鏘の音は胸裏に起る。丹青は画架に向って塗抹せんでも五彩の
English translation (Pagera AI)
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Pagera Editor's Note
Sōseki's Kusamakura follows a young painter who walks into the mountains determined to feel nothing, hoping that a life stripped of emotional entanglement will let him see the world as art. At a nearly empty hot spring inn he meets Nami, a divorced woman the villagers call mad, and his theory of detachment begins to fray. Little happens by design: the novel is built from long passages on painting, Chinese poetry and the trouble with being human, and Sōseki himself called it a haiku novel.
Author
夏目漱石
Natsume Sōseki (1867-1916) is widely regarded as the foremost Japanese novelist of the modern era. A scholar of English literature who studied in London, he left academia to write full time for the Asahi Shimbun. His works, among them Kokoro, I Am a Cat and Botchan, examine loneliness, self-interest and the strain of a society modernising faster than the people inside it.
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