Yasunari Kawabata Quotes

Ο γερο-Εγκούτσι μπορούσε να δει, με τα μάτια της φαντασίας του, την απέραντη σκοτεινή θάλασσα και το χαλάζι να πέφτει και να λιώνει μέσα της. Ένα άγριο πουλί, κάτι σαν μεγάλος αετός πετούσε ξυστά στα κύματα, κρατώντας στο στόμα του κάτι που έσταζε αίμα. Μήπως ήταν ένα μωρό; Δεν μπορεί να ήταν. Ίσως ήταν το φάσμα της ανθρώπινης κακοήθειας.

Deoarece concepția imortalității sufletului exprimă probabil
faptul că oamenii țin la viață, precum și atașamentul față de
morții lor, a crede că pe lumea cealaltă sufletul își păstrează
caracterul de aici al persoanei e doar o tradiție iluzorie și
întristătoare; auzind că omul ia cu el pe lumea cealaltă nu numai
înfățișarea din timpul vieții, dar până și sentimentele de dragoste
și ură, că, deși separați de moarte, părinții și copiii ar rămâne
părinți și copii, iar frații ar trăi mai departe acolo în aceeași
relație, că spiritele morților în Occident descriu în general o lume
a umbrelor asemănătoare cu societatea de aici, mie, dimpotrivă,
mi se pare foarte tristă tradiția atașării de o existență care nu
respectă decât ființa umană.
Și în antichitate pitagoreicii credeau că sufletele celor răi vor
trebui să sufere pe lumea cealaltă, înghesuite în corpuri de
dobitoace sau păsări.
În a treia zi, când sângele nu se uscase încă bine pe cruce, Isus
Christos s-a urcat la Cer, iar trupul Domnului a dispărut. „…iată
doi bărbați au stat înaintea lor, în veșminte strălucitoare. Și
înfricoșându-se ele și plecându-și fețele la pământ, au zis aceia
către ele: De ce căutați pe Cel viu între cei morți? Nu este aici, ci
S-a sculat. Aduceți-vă aminte cum v-a vorbit, fiind încă în
Galileea, zicând că Fiul Omului trebuie să fie dat pe mâinile
oamenilor păcătoși și să fie răstignit, iar în a treia zi să învieze.”68
Când Raymond l-a întâlnit în Ceruri, Isus Christos purta o
haină de lumină, la fel cu cei doi. Și nu numai Christos, dar toți
oamenii în tărâmul spiritelor au veșminte țesute din lumină. Era
convins că sunt haine făcute de acele spirite din propriul suflet,cu alte cuvinte, că viața spirituală dusă pe Pământ devine
veșmântul lor după moarte. În relatarea lui se ascunde o
concepție morală din această lume. La fel ca în lumea de dincolo
buddhistă, și în cea descrisă de Raymond sunt șapte nivele, iar
sufletele, pe măsură ce evoluează, le urcă unul câte unul.

لا شيء أجمل من الوجه البارد لإمرأة شابة نائمة. أليس هو التعزية الكبرى التي يمكن أن يهبها العالم؟ حتى المرأة الأكثر جمالاً لا تقدر على إخفاء عمرها عندما تكون نائمة. أما الوجه الفتيّ فهو عذبٌ في حالة النوم، حتى ولو لم تكن صاحبته جميلة ص 86

They live in such noise and confusion that their feelings are broken to little bits.

When you're held by the dead, you begin to feel that you aren't in this world yourself.

oricat de bland si bun ar fi omul, tot are cugetul framantat dintr-o pricina sau alta.

Women are odd,” he said, to extricate himself. “Two or three of them have told me they’re sure I modeled one of my characters on them. And they were complete strangers, women I’d had nothing to do with. What kind of delusion could that be?” “Lots of women are unhappy, so they console themselves with delusions.

It was, with no attempt at covering itself, the naked heart of a woman calling out to her man.

"What I believe to be memories are probably daydreams. Still, my own sentimentality yearns for them as if they were the truth, suspect or twisted though they may be. I have forgotten that they were stories I heard from another and feel an intimacy with them as if they were my own direct memories"

-from "Oil"

Myōe exchanged poems with Saigyo and the two discussed poetry together. The following is from the biography of Myoe by his disciple Kikai: "Saigyo frequently came and talked of poetry. His own attitude towards poetry, he said, was far from the ordinary. Cherry blossoms, the cuckoo, the moon, snow: confronted with all the manifold forms of nature, his eyes and his ears were filled with emptiness. And were not all the words that came forth true words? When he sang of the blossoms the blossoms were not on his mind, when he sang of the moon he did not think of the moon. As the occasion presented itself, as the urge arose, he wrote poetry. The red rainbow across the sky was as the sky taking on color. The white sunlight was as the sky growing bright. Yet the empty sky, by its nature, was not something to become bright. It was not something to take on color. With a spirit like the empty sky he gives color to all the manifold scenes but not a trace remained. In such poetry was the Buddha, the manifestation of the ultimate truth." Here we have the emptiness, the nothingness, of the Orient. My own works have been described as works of emptiness, but it is not to be taken for the nihilism of the West. The spiritual foundation would seem to be quite different. Dogen entitled his poem about the seasons, "Innate Reality", and even as he sang of the beauty of the seasons he was deeply immersed in Zen.

The Tale of Genji in particular is the highest pinnacle of Japanese literature. Even down to our day there has not been a piece of fiction to compare with it. That such a modern work should have been written in the eleventh century is a miracle, and as a miracle the work is widely known abroad.

Wistaria sprays, as they trail in the breeze, suggest softness, gentleness, reticence. Disappearing and then appearing again in the early summer greenery, they have in them that feeling for the poignant beauty of things long characterized by the Japanese as mono no aware.

Ikenobo Sen'o remarked on another occasion (this too is in his Sayings) that "the mountains and strands should appear in their own forms". Bringing a new spirit into his school of flower arranging, therefore, he found "flowers" in broken vessels and withered branches, and in them too the enlightenment that comes from flowers. "The ancients arranged flowers and pursued enlightenment." Here we see awakening to the heart of the Japanese spirit, under the influence of Zen. And in it too, perhaps, is the heart of a man living in the devastation of long civil wars.

Among flower vases, the ware that is given the highest rank is old Iga, from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it commands the highest price. When old Iga has been dampened, its colors and its glow take on a beauty such as to awaken on afresh. Iga was fired at very high temperatures. The straw ash and the smoke from the fuel fell and flowed against the surface, and as the temperature dropped, became a sort of glaze. Because the colors were not fabricated but were rather the result of nature at work in the kiln, color patterns emerged in such varieties as to be called quirks and freaks of the kiln. The rough, austere, strong surfaces of old Iga take on a voluptuous glow when dampened. It breathes to the rhythm of the dew of the flowers.

The single flower contains more brightness than a hundred flowers. The great sixteenth-century master of the tea ceremony and flower arranging, Rikyu, taught that it was wrong to use fully opened flowers. Even in the tea ceremony today the general practice is to have in the alcove of the tea room but a single flower, and that a flower in bud. In winter a special flower of winter, let us say a camellia, bearing some such name as White Jewel or Wabisuke, which might be translated literally as "Helpmate in Solitude", is chosen, a camellia remarkable among camellias for its whiteness and the smallness of its blossoms; and but a single bud is set out in the alcove. White is the cleanest of colors, it contains in itself all the other colors. And there must always be dew on the bud. The bud is moistened with a few drops of water.