4 1/2

After watching the 1954 film of this novel (Mikio Naruse) I wanted to read the book as well.
3rd person narrator, all through the mind and observations of an aging Ogata Shingo.
While the film ends with the stroll through the park, and with the lovely and gentle Kikuko choosing not to go back to her husband, the novel contiues on. Not only does she return home, but the depth of how horrid her husband is is further made clear by another plot event (I won't spoil it here).
There are no references to the war in the film, while it plays a larger, but still quiet, part in the book.
The novel includes a number of dreams. And also an explanation of the title, which is never made clear in the film (the house is on the edge of a small mountain, and Ogata can hear "sounds" from it - which he believes are the sounds of his oncoming death). We also watch the seasons change on the mountain from their garden.
If a parent's success is judged by the quality of his children, he is very much a failure - something he is very much aware of.
A changing post-war Japan, there are still geishas (and the men here make use of them) and also there are now women living on their own, and opening their own shops.
But the overall theme is of Ogata's aging (his memory loss is not well portrayed in the novel unfortunately), and his attraction to his early 20's daughter-in-law.
Kawabata's ability to portray both the internal and the day-to-day lives of his characters (and Ogata in particular here), and the older generation living in a New Japan, is a good reason he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968. His "Snow Country" is one of the few novels I have not only reread, but reread multiple times.
I need to read, and reread, more of him.

Un altro straordinario affresco del dopoguerra in Giappone, con le famiglie patriarcali e le relazioni piuttosto confuse che creavano. Con questo ho letto tutti i libri che avevo a casa di Kawabata, ora devo assolutamente procurarmi quelli che mi mancano, con la speranza di rileggerli un giorno in lingua originali, tipo in una trentina d'anni.....

Slow beginning. A tour de force from pg. 50 onwards. The cloudy haze of Shingo's battle with his failing memory, aging body, and demented mind overrides the readers cognition, reducing our inner buzz to an oscillating tuned note that revealingly pierces layered family dynamics built on suppressed emotion. A masterclass in realistic tension. Kawabata has indeed done it again.

"She gave his chin a gentle shove upward as she took the tie in her hands. Shingo closed his eyes.
Yasuko did somehow seem to be producing a knot.
Perhaps because of the pressure at the base of his skull, he felt a little giddy, and a golden mist of snow flowed past his closed eyelids. A mist of snow from an avalanche, gold in the evening light. He thought he could hear the roar.
Startled, he opened his eyes. Might he be having a hemorrhage? Kikuko was holding her breath, and her eyes were on Yasuko's hands.
It was an avalanche he had seen in the mountain home of his boyhood."

De Kawabata ainda só tinha lido "Terra de Neve" (1948) e se tinha gostado não me tinha deslumbrado, dadas as expectativas colocadas por qualquer autor recipiente de um Nobel. Decidi continuar com "O Som da Montanha" (1954) por ser o livro escolhido pelo Instituto Norueguês do Nobel para figurar na lista das 100 Obras Literárias do Mundo. Posso dizer que as obras se aproximam, ainda assim, em termos de mundo-história e sentimento imprimido, prefiro "Terra de Neve", por sinal, o seu livro com mais edições e resenhas no GoodReads.

Estamos em 1954, pouco tempo após o final da Segunda Grande Guerra, a cultura é japonesa clássica, mas o foco de Kawabata parece ser exatamente a viragem que estava a acontecer nos costumes mais tradicionais do Japão, nomeadamente as relações entre casais, o divórcio e o adultério, e especialmente o modo como as gerações mais velhas lidavam com a transformação dos costumes que estava a ser operada pelos filhos.

É uma obra dramática, mas sem tragédia, o olhar japonês mais dado à reflexão tranquila impede esse caminho. Mas percebemos, ainda que à superfície, que as personagens sofrem, mais por não saber como lidar com o diferente do que propriamente por considerarem esse diferente errado.

Mas, como disse a propósito de "Terra de Neve", é difícil para nós ocidentais e em pleno século XXI, descortinar a interpretação esperada por Kawabata na escrita e delinear dos comportamentos dos seus personagens. Não temos certezas das linhas vermelhas que estão ou não a ser ultrapassadas, por isso lemos tudo como se de uma realidade um tanto indiferente se tratasse, apesar de compreendermos, ou melhor sentirmos, que de pessoas reais se trata.

Publicado no VI:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com/2020/12/o-som-da-montanha-1954.html