The Flowers of Buffoonery

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It makes for a strange reading experience, and I don't think it necessarily would have worked if this wasn't such a short novel. But after reading a little bit on the novel and the author, I've come to the opinion that Dazai's interjections not only contribute to a contemporary, modern style, but that they are wholly natural. The "story" of the disillusioned young man who survives a dual drowning suicide was taken from Dazai's own tragic life. It's so personal he can't help but break through the artifice of the novel and interject. The novel itself is a flower, distracting from something more real. Shortly thereafter, feeling isolated from Hatsuyo and disapproval from his family, Dazai attempted double suicide with Shimeko Tanabe, a waitress. Dazai survived, but Shimeko did not. The following month, Dazai was allowed to marry Hatsuyo. [2] Undine is based on the eighteenth-century story "The Carp That Came to My Dream," by Ueda Akinari, in which a priest is transformed into a carp for three days before eventually being caught and killed by a fisherman. The priest then awakes and believes that the three days he lived as a fish were, in fact a dream. Ueda, however, asserts that the priest was indeed dead for those three days, and that the carp was indeed caught, just as described by the priest. In this way, the line between reality and fiction is blurred and uncertain. Undine contains similar themes, as well as some connection to events in Dazai's own life, such as his own suicide attempt by drowning. [4] Reception [ edit ] Keene, Donald (1971). Landscapes and Portraits, Appreciations of Japanese Culture. Kodansha International Limited. p.191.

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a b c d e f g h Lyons, Phyllis I. (1985). The saga of Dazai Osamu: a critical study with translations. 治(1909-1948) 太宰. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-1197-6. OCLC 11210872. Train (Japanese: 列車, Hepburn: Ressha) is the fourth story in The Final Years. [1] Chikyūzu [ edit ] The style and tone of the book have elicited various reactions. Donald Keene, a translator of Dazai's novels No Longer Human and The Setting Sun, praises The Flowers of Buffoonery as the first work in which "Dazai's mordant humor was a well-established part of his style." [8] Author and critic Takako Takahashi, who cites Dazai as an influence, [9] has dismissed as "unmanly" and "gratuitous" the asides in which the writer-narrator bemoans the quality of the story he is writing. [10] Dazai, Osamu (2005). 여자의 결투[ Woman's Duel] (in Korean). Translated by Roh, Jae-myung. Sky Pond. ISBN 8959020079.I desperately believe that Dazai may found solace even just a moment in writing this or perhaps its an outlet for his inner thoughts. This was written 13 years before No longer human thus showing how different he was in earlier year of his career than his later years

The Flowers of Buffoonery - Wikipedia

I’m honestly very lost most of the time because this is the first time I’m reading a book by this author. I was just unfamiliar by the writing style and I probably should have started with No Longer Human. But what makes up a lot to the book is the very poetic way it is written which the translator could also be given the credit. It was just so strangely beautiful which makes me want to continue reading until the end. The story has been described as a comment on the futility of taking one's own life, with some critics suggesting that Dazai's "focus on the comical, embarrassing, and grotesque aspects" of suicide make the prospect of killing oneself appear as "meaningless, bleak and absurd as life itself." [11] That's literally the hardest line from all his novels. Bro was ahead of his time. I know that's pretentious to say now, but what other author in the 1930s is breaking the fourth wall like that? Dazai was an aristocratic tramp, a self-described delinquent, yet he wrote with the forbearance of a fasting scribe." Patti Smith

The meta-autobiographical style found throughout several of the stories in The Final Years is a literary genre developed in Japan, known as the I-novel. Many of Dazai's later works, such as The Setting Sun were I-novels. Dazai is considered by many literary critics, such as Masao Miyoshi, to be the last great I-novelist. [4] Reading Dazai’s slim, ironic, plot-averse novels, I couldn’t help but notice parallels with the current popularity of so-called “alt-lit.” Dazai’s quotable emo clichés, simple grammar, and disillusioned twenty-something characters would be at home in anti-establishment magazines like Forever, Hobart, and Tao Lin’s Muumuu House, themselves indebted to Giancarlo DiTrapano’s Tyrant Books and his affection for first-person narrators and Lishian sentences. As Donald Keene wrote of No Longer Human, “There is nothing of the meandering reminiscer about Dazai; with him all is sharp, brief, and evocative.” The resemblance is not merely stylistic. Though he died long before the public fascination with Lee Harvey Oswald or the Unabomber, Dazai’s sensibility was ahead of its time: the post-modern, self-pitying zealot, a character recognizable from Scorsese’s Taxi Driver or a Houellebecq novel. Never mind his well-connected family and relative safety during the war; Dazai’s narrators are “victims of a transitional period of morality,” as Kazuko mourns in a letter to her beloved. Excuse me but I have to intervene. Otherwise I wont be able to continue. This novel is a total mess. Im making myself dizzy. Yozo is too much for me, and Kosuge is too much for me, and Hida is too much for me as well" Let's move on to the next scene. I'm a real-life artist, not a piece of art. If my odious confessions lend this work a modicum of nuance, all the better."