A hundred battles, a hundred losses

This month I begin with Ch'ae Man-Shik's short story "A Ready-Made Life" translated by Kim Chong-un and Bruce Fulton. It was first published in 1934 in the journal Shindonga. As for the writer, he is a novelist, an essayist, and a critic, often considered a satirist. His works are widely known.

As for the short story itself, I came across it as a follower of ktlit.com. A website dedicated to the translation and dissemination of Korean literature.

The story itself immediately opens with an interview. P is an unemployed, educated man being interviewed and denied by K. The context of the drama is within the early 20th century, the dawn of modernization, after the rise of intellectuals and a propagation of education, post-Japanese Imperial Period, during the evident domination of Japan over Korea. Now, from the rejection given to P proceeds a dejected summation of his living situation, the harsh condition in which he is forced to live, eating sparingly, not being able to pay his room rent, leading a meagerly existence, etc. I add that the description and the existential manner in which the character recounts his surroundings and his life has a touch of Dostoyevsky. P is also a divorced man with a son. Although his son does not live with him at the opening of the story, it is made clear that due to his family's inability to continue to care for him, they will be sending P's son over to him in Seoul. Yet they do not know that P is hardly able to support himself as he has not found a job.

Japanese woodblock print, The First Sino-Japanese War. Japan in Korea.
Source: http://www.japanfocus.org/-Wada-Haruki/2934

In the trajectory of the story there are very few characters presented, the two introduced after P, are also unemployed and hopeless, friends of the protagonist. Both have likewise been educated and are intellectual men. The dejection of all the characters is poignantly felt. And the irony is that being educated and an intellectual is a void endeavor leading to unemployment. The stark line between the country as a passing farming nation, and moving unto becoming modernized is evident. The job market is saturated, yet those that have been educated cannot make themselves nor even know how to go about retroceding and forming part of the farming population. The educated intellectuals are displaced.

"Ready-made commodities turned shopworn."

The story can be divided in two seamless parts, the first if the already described rejection during the interview and the description of P's existence, then, P's confrontation with a prostitute.

Drunk and in a bar, P and both of his friends go to a brothel. There P is thrown, by his two friends, towards a young prostitute. He panics and runs out when she is willing to sell her integrity, her sex, for a beggarly price. This leads to a digression on the worth of integrity, in which P spends a considerable time debating.

The story ends in an ambiguous manner. It is clear P does not want his son to be educated and fall into the same trap he himself fell and therefor, what becomes of P as he takes in his son is left open-ended.

Why do I recommend this short story by Ch'ae Man-Shik? Because the themes, albeit during a time that has passed, are still relevant today. The tone of P's hopelessness, the use of education during unstable economic times, the value of a person's integrity in regards to money, are all still current. How much is integrity and virtue worth?

"You can't put your heart into work if your stomach is empty." 

The story itself can be found here, in PDF form. It is well worth a read. 

Every worm to his taste: Junichiro Tanizaki

http://booktrek.blogspot.com/2010/07/some-prefer-nettles-tanizaki-junichiro

I went to New York City. It was during thanksgiving and the weather was lovely. While there, as always, I bought quite a few books. On my last full day there I was walking down 4th ave. and I stumbled upon a bookseller with a nice selection of classics. Rummaging through the boxes I found a Junichiro Tanizaki novel and I knew I had to have it. At the moment I didn't have cash so I did the next best thing, I put the book back and walked away, hoping to find an atm. I did, a few blocks down. Money in hand, I hurried back to the bookseller, hoping to find the book still there. Thankfully, the gods were in my favor that day, or maybe there just isn't a surplus of Japanese literature aficionados. Whichever. I bought the book.
I read the novel as soon as I returned to this small island I currently live in, and it is beautiful.
"Some Prefer Nettles" is a book of contrasts. Traditions versus change and modernity. Old versus new. It presents these contrasts through the microscopic view on the demise of a marriage. An introspective panorama on the effects of disappearing traditions and the melancholic consequences these changes can have on a marriage. Misako and Kanama, the married couple, are worlds apart residing in the same house with a child in the middle. The interesting aspect of the narrative is that both are aware of their lost love and connection, both openly entertain outside lovers, yet neither of the two want to face the implications of a divorce. In the background of the story is staged the transcendental tradition of the puppet theatre, given as a backdrop to the underlying theme of the novel.
Tanizaki weaves a story of poetic nostalgia of things past, and the quality residing in those elements of traditional culture. He clearly reveals the effects a foreign culture has on a native culture. His perspective is clearly for the conservation of custom and the beauty of customs, but he presents his perspective in a non-biased manner, portraying the full spectrum of sides, the outside and the domestic. Customs as they are, sometimes gritty. There is also a very interesting comparison between the crumbling marriage and Misako's father and his mistress O-hisa, who is 30 years her senior.
Living in the globalized world we all reside it is important to grapple with these questions of what is native and what isn't. To be able to see and understand the full scope of implications of losing or conserving one's traditions as this world continues to strive for globalization. It is important to be able to know and appreciate one's indigenous historical background as well as to be able to sift through the mire of modernity that is thrown in one's way continually, so as to be able to retain the useful and discard the degenerative.
It is for all these reasons that I found Tanizaki's work beautiful and relevant besides that fact that the portrayal of the traditional Japanese puppet theatre is magnificent.

http://visualabstracts.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/some-prefer-nettles-junichiro-tanizaki-1955/

The Fire Sermon in The Waste Land

Here is the third part of Eliot's The Waste Land, The Fire Sermon (taken from a sermon preached by Buddha against the things of this world, all figured as consuming fires).

III. The Fire Sermon
The river's tent is broken: the last finger of leaf / Clutch and sink into te wet bank. The wind / Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed. / Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, / Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. the nymphs are departed. / And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors; / Departed, have left no addresses. / By the water of Leman I sat down and wept...
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, / Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud of long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear / The rattle of te bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear. / A rat crept softly through the vegetation / Dragging its slimy  belly on the bank / While I was fishing in the dull canal / On a winter evening round behind the gashouse / Musing upon the king my brother's wreck
And on the king my father's death before him. / White bodies naked on the low damp ground / And bones cast in a little low dry garret. / Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year. / But at my back from time to time I hear / The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring / Sweeny to Mrs' Porter in the spring. / O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter / And on her daughter / They wash their feet in soda water / Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole! / Twit twit twit / Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc'd / Tereu / Unreal City / Under the brown fog of a winter noon / Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant / Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants / C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French / To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel / Followed by a weeken at the Metropole. / At the violet hour, when the eyes and back / Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits / Like a taxi throbbing waiting, / I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see / At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea, / The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins. / Out of the window perolously spread / Her drying combinations touched by the sunn's last rays, / On the divan are piled (at night her bed) / Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays. / I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs / Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest- / I too awaited the expected guest. / He, the young man carbuncular, arrives. / A small hourse agen'ts clerk, with one bold stare, / One of the low no whom assurance sits / As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire. / The time is now propitious, as he guesses, / The meal is ended, she is bored and tires,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses / Which still are unreproved, if undesired. / Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; / Exploring hands encounter no defense; / His vanity requires no response, / And makes a welcome of indifference. / (And I Tiresias have foresuffered all / Enacted on this same divan or bed; / I who have sat by Thebes below the wall / And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows on final patronizing kiss, / And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit...
She turns and looks a moment in the glass, / Hardly aware of her departed lover; / Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass: / "Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over." / When lovely woman stoops to folly and / Paces about her room again, alone, / She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone. / "This music crept by me upon the waters" / And along the Strand, up Queen victoria Street. / O City, City, I can sometimes hear / Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, / The pleasant whining of a mandoline / And a clatter and a chatter from within / Where the fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls / Of Magnus Martyr hold / Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold. / The river sweats / Oil and tar / The barges drift / With the turning tide / Red sails / Wide / To leeward, swing on the heavy spar. / The barges wash / Drifting logs / Down Greenwech reach / Past the Isle of Dogs. / Weialala leia / Wallala leialala / Elizabeth and Leicester / Beating ours / The stern was formed  / A gilded shell / Red and gold / The brisk swell / Rippled both shores / Southwest wind / Carried down stream / The peal of bells / White towers / Weialala leia / Wallala leialala  / "Trams and dusty trees. / Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew / Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees / Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe." / "My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart  / Under my feet. After the event / He wept. He promised 'a new start.' / I made no comment. What should I resent?" / "On Margate Sands. / I can connect  / Nothing with nothing. / the broken fingernails of dirty hands. / My people humble people who expect / Nothing." / la la / To Carthage then I came / Burning Burning Burning Burning / O Lord Thou pluckest me out / O Lord Thou pluckest  / Burning

/ = lines breaks in the poem, the same applies for the capitalized words except the names of places. 

Hard Times

Now, I must rewind a bit and digress... I have recently been reminded of the gem that is Hard Times; I made a post reviewing it a few weeks ago.
Why I love this Dickens' piece:
It is a book that aside from all its defects, stands as a testament of the human condition. In the age we live in, but I wager at gesticulating that it has always been only now it is manifested more pronounced, everything is determined by time. Time is money. Numbers. How much can be gained. Profit and loss. Calculation and hard facts is king.

But what about imagination, what about verse, rhyme, creativity, the beauty of brush strokes on a canvas. Don't get me wrong I am not saying this has disappeared, but I am saying its appreciation has morphed into a different concept. Now, art is money. 

This book is a defense for the arts and humanities, all the studies that cannnot be condensed into a scientific or mathematical equation.

Poetry and prose, in this case, is an idle art, one that is enjoyed internally, it has no objective benefits be it for the edification of the soul. One enjoys this pastime when there is nothing to do; it doesn't require from us anything concrete, no precision, just a moment, and that moments can transform into a space where the concept of time and its passage disappears.

It is evident in the ever present surge of art, that the "arts" are a human necessity. It allows us to escape, to dream, to believe. And precisely this is what Hard Times proposes and in my opinion achieves. In this book we see two opposing spectrum, and these two ideas and beliefs play out in this book until the end. From its' pages I deduce that Charles Dickens was opposed to the stifling of the arts and it is this that shines brightly in this book: the point he conveys and case he places before the reader.

So, read, explore and learn, there is nothing more entertaining than to let the imagination soar.


Hard Times by Natalia L Forty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

A Dickensian excursion: Hard Times

A week ago, before reading Geisha a Life, I finished reading Hard Times, a Charles Dickens creation. I found the book to be educational and incisive and very good, albeit with a few acceptable flaws. Admittedly, it wasn’t up to par with his other works: Great Expectations, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities,  etc., but more than a work of prose, this books' intention is conveying a message, one that Mr. Dickens felt needed to be portrayed. 

In this book it was more important to him to get his point across than weave an intricate work of literature. It isn't filled with action, most of its pages are dedicated to character formation and exposure and this enables the reader to understand in depth how the writer, Charles Dickens, feels about the subject that underlines the entire book: the upbringing in a utilitarian mentality and the effect of the industrialization on the human psyche.  

One comes across two archetypes, those that abide by and are surrounded by the FACTS of the utilitarian mentality, prevalent during Dickens' time, and those that are the total opposite, mostly comprised of the working class. These two clash and change as the plot progresses, giving the reader a delightfully educational look into a topic that was and continues to hold relevancy in this day and age. 

What I felt deficient in this work is the extremes; the characters are defined in a such a way that the two archetypes described above contrast vividly leaving very little room for the evolution of the characters. Louisa undergoes changes but doesn't fully live up to her potential of breaking free from the prevalent mentality. One reason for this could be that Dickens wanted to highlight the lasting effects of being brought up in such a harsh and cold environment; as opposed to Sissy, Cecilia Jupe, who remains forever a simple woman and goes to live a life full of happiness and warmth.

Of course, me being a 21st century woman I cannot fully relate to Sissy nor Louisa, they both have qualities that shine and vice versa but I disagree with some of the aspects in their portrayal.

Nontheless, read the book, it is a good read.

Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. The Modern Library ed. New York: Random House, 2001. Print. 
325 pages