Natsume Soseki

The novel is set in the early twentieth century, at the close of the Meiji Restoration or Renovation: the prolonged era between 1867 and 1912 that began with the reassertion of imperial power over the Tokugawa Shogunate. This historical anchor serves not only to contextualize the narrative—centered on the ambiguous and complex relationship between two generations—but also to underscore its contemporary relevance; much like today, we find ourselves in a period of transition in political and social structures, as well as in consciousness and sensibilities. A young student meets an older man, identified only by the appellation of "master." He is captivated by him—drawn to his taciturn, gruff demeanor, his solitary lifestyle detached from society and fellow human beings, and his ever-cryptic musings on love, honor, and money. In an ambiguous fashion, the master exerts a kind of blackmail over the young man: the foreboding expectation of betrayal. > I am a lonely man, but in a sense, aren't you as well? (...) In meeting me, you probably feel a certain loneliness. But because I lack the strength to help you break free from it, you will now turn elsewhere and no longer come to see me. (...) "You may think I might drift away," (the young man replies). (...) The master seemed not to be listening to me. "Yet you must be careful, for there is guilt in love. If you stay with me, you will find no satisfaction, but neither will you run any danger." Few clues offer a glimpse into what lies behind the master’s misanthropy: he regularly visits the grave of a friend whose death reportedly transformed the man’s character, without the reasons or background of this change being disclosed. Following his graduation, the young man returns to his parents’ home while waiting to find employment. His father is gravely ill, already nearing the end. > My melancholy tended to shift alongside the shifting shrill of the cicadas, as though the destiny enveloping me were moving by degrees through a vast cycle of different existences. The young man is torn between filial affection and duty, which urge him to remain at his father's bedside, and the longing not to sever ties with the master. > To me, the master was a shadowed figure, and I would not have been satisfied until he revealed himself entirely. A lengthy letter, preceded by urgent telegrams, drives the young man to commit an unforgivable act: he abandons his dying father to rush to Tokyo to the master. What does the master write in this sort of ethical testament? It is as though the young man had fulfilled a hermeneutic function. > I would rather see my past erased along with my life than offer it to someone who does not desire it. In truth, had it not been for someone like you, my past would never have been known to anyone, even indirectly. To you alone, then, among millions of Japanese, do I intend to recount my past, because you are sincere. There is no need to delve into the master's expansive confession, which unburdens his guilt onto the young man’s fragile shoulders. Suffice it to say that he acted dishonorably—he who considered himself steeped in virtue. He drove a friend to suicide by laying bare the contradictions between the friend's spiritual aspirations for an ascetic life and his romantic longing for a young woman, who was also loved by the master. > And so, despite my earnest desire to pursue an honest life, I strayed from it. I was a fool, if you will, a cunning and arrogant man. (...) Inside me arose, like a vortex, the feeling that I had won by cheating, and that I had been defeated as a human being. In the fine preface, expressively titled "Soseki: Solitude as Art," Gian Carlo Calza retraces the author's personal and literary biography, defining *Kokoro* (*Il cuore delle cose*) as "a faithful account of the author's own life or destiny." When one considers that none of the novel's protagonists bears a name, and that already in a 1905 work (*I Am a Cat*, see review on this site) Sōseki had played upon two characters (the feline narrator and the tedious English teacher) to depict the different facets of a single personality, one might suggest that the young student, the master, and the friend represent distinct vantage points for probing the author’s character: the youth embodies the fragility of a hope-filled youth; the suicidal friend signifies the search for spiritual anchors in an era of transition; and finally, the master is Sōseki himself, now disillusioned, locked in individualism and a pessimistic vision of life and Japan. If we step away from the author's biography and make a bold leap into contemporary Italy, the relationship between the young man and the master seems to keenly capture the intergenerational crisis afflicting our country. We, the "baby boomers," are the bad mentors who dispense nuggets of wisdom and fine rhetorical phrases, yet like Sōseki's master, we are dishonest because we are manipulative—shielded by our pensions, our conduct far removed from our pompous pronouncements. The young are the student: naive, filled with aspirations, fleeing from the false guides in whom they no longer believe! This modern transposition is also hinted at by the theatrical adaptation of *Kokoro* (*Il cuore delle cose*) in Kenzaburō Ōe's work (see the review of *The Changeling* [*La foresta d'acqua*]), where the master is viewed as a "false educator" by the high school students attending the performance. In an elegant and lucid manner, the author investigates the psychological and moral entanglement between the master and the young man, as well as between the former and his suicidal friend. The narrative unfolds slowly, at times repetitively; the extended letter bears too heavily the hallmarks of a soliloquy to escape being prolix. Why read it? It prompts numerous reflections on the present.

The protagonist and narrator of this novel is a cat: a stray taken into the home of a teacher, unloved yet tolerated out of sheer inertia. This is how our hero defines himself: > I do not grow fat because I eat no delicacies, but I am in passable condition and get by day after day without limping . Like all of his kind, our cat’s stillness and indolence conceal great wisdom, a profound capacity for reflection on the events of the human world. And this is why whoever were to read > the book distractedly, convinced that it was a work of little value, will suddenly realize they are faced with something very different, something that seems facile but is as profound as the doctrine of Buddha, and will no longer dare read it sprawled on the tatami with legs askew, skipping lines . We are in Japan at the beginning of the twentieth century, during the war with Russia, which would end in the resounding victory of the nascent Japanese empire. It is a long transitional phase, from the traditional, insular culture of the shoguns to an opening toward the Western world, its literature, and its science. Gathered at the teacher’s house in endless, pointless chatter are various intellectuals: the skeptic, witty and superficial; the young physicist, lost in scientific research whose purpose eludes comprehension; the Zen philosopher, yearning for a spirituality no longer truly felt; and finally, the young businessman, eager to strike it rich. At the center is the teacher: misanthropic, closed like «an oyster», selfish, spending all his time in his study, officially to read the countless books he purchases by squandering his modest teacher’s salary > But what is he doing, lying face down on this blanket with a long past, his chin resting on his hands, a cigarette between his fingers? Nothing, he just lies there idling. It is possible that in his dandruff-sprinkled head reflections on the grand schemes of things turn like a wheel of fire, but observing him from the outside, you would never tell. Yet, the cat is immensely grateful to the teacher, for he allows him to witness an emblematic cross-section of human society; a gathering of fabulists, to be sure, but one that provides our hero with «a thousand experiences», and us readers with pearls of wisdom. For instance, the cat visits a public bathhouse, where all men appear equal in their nudity, and suddenly there emerges a > a giant. Nietzsche’s superman. The king of demons, The commander-in-chief of brutes. (...) And on my way, I reflect. Among those men naked as worms, who in their effort to become all equal stripped off their trousers, haori, and hakama, an equally naked hero emerged who imposed his authority upon the others. I deduce from this that human beings may strip down as much as they like, they will never achieve equality . And what of narcissism? Observing the teacher looking in the mirror and lamenting his face, so disagreeable, the cat reflects that > when one is dissatisfied with oneself, when in the grip of discouragement, there is no more effective remedy than looking in the mirror. One gains an immediate and clear perception of beauty and ugliness. One marvels at having lived up to that moment showing such a face to the world. And this sudden awareness is a precious moment in a person’s life. Nothing is more useful to the human being than the perception of their own stupidity . We all know that cats are very patient; but everything has its limits! In the face of senseless babble, the vacuity of words, the poverty of feelings, and a background noise in which traditional philosophies (Buddhism and Confucianism) as well as Western thought dissolve, even a feline can take no more; and so he gets drunk and lets himself die. > Enough now, let it go as it will. I am tired of fighting... (...) Little by little I feel better. (...) Where I am. what I am doing, is completely indifferent to me. I only know that I feel good. (...) I sweep away sun and moon, pulverize heaven and earth and enter the mystery of eternal peace, I am dying, And dying I achieve peace. (...) I give thanks. I give thanks . At a certain point in this long novel, a doubt arises, at once fascinating and unsettling: could the cat and the teacher be parts of the very same person? The sage and the dullard? The engaged and the indifferent? And could this tale, written not long before his death, be Soseki’s spiritual testament? If this were the case, the book takes on an extremely modern, almost psychoanalytic mantle, a fresco of the complexity and ambivalence of the human soul, a precursor to those ambiguous and evanescent traits that would accompany great Japanese literature. The book is decidedly boring. There is no plot; the characters are stereotypes, the dialogues are protracted and serve merely as pretexts for musings; the cat’s digressions are more compelling, yet to be grasped in their fullness they would require a profound knowledge of Japanese history and culture. The translation is of a very high caliber, elevating the prose, which is the novel’s sole redeeming feature; the explanatory notes are meticulous and exhaustive, enriching our knowledge of Japanese society and inviting us to study it. Why not read it? It is boring.