nu știu de ce mi-a luat așa mult să termin cartea asta.
probabil faptul că am mai ascultat 2-3 cărți printre e un motiv plauzibil :)
urmărim un bărbat în vârstă, în special relațiile pe care le are cu familia sa (copiii și soția, predominant). în aparență nu se întâmplă nimic, însă spre final protagonistul ajunge la niște concluzii pertinente cu privire la viața sa și la impactul pe care l-a avut ca om. Scriitură sensibilă, subiecte comune, abordate într-un fel caracteristic japonezilor, ceea ce le conferă un oarecare grad de mister.

câteva chestiuni random care mi-au plăcut:
- am găsit conexiune în idei cu alte 2 opere citite de la acest autor (ambele publicate după acest volum): Păpădiile (cartea mea preferată de la el) și Frumoasele adormite (meh, destul de asemănătoare ca atmosferă și idei).
- fiind un scriitor japonez, stabilește acea atmosferă pe care, personal, o ador- un stil degajat, respectuos, sobru, dar profund.

Nu știm unde ne ducem. Dar ne ducem în pace.

astea fiind spuse, îl recomand pe Kawabata și, pe cât posibil, am să încerc să îi parcurg toată opera tradusă.

I think I could have enjoyed a story quite similar to The Sound of The Mountain: an old man coming to terms with his own mortality by reflecting over his life and his relations? Sure, I can dig it.
But for me this story became too symbolic and subtle. And if you add a dash of confusion and a pinch of weirdness you get my total reading experience of The Sound The Mountain.

As this is my first take on japanese literature, I gather that at least the weird part might just be me getting to know japanese writing. But reading about how Kikuko’s breasts compared to Kukiko’s(?) was not really what ruined it for me. I just didn’t find the story all that interesting.

To be honest I found it to be more confusing than interesting. A number of times I had to stop reading and ask myself, “Wait, I thought it was Shingo who said that”. I’m sure some of the confusion may be due to the author wanting the reader to experience the same confusion as Shingo, who was very much lost in thought, but for me I think most of the confusion was due to Kawabata’s writing style and, possibly, due to something being lost in translation? Nevertheless, it made it hard for me to get into a good reading flow.

So what I was left reading was a rather dull, confusing, and more or less inconclusive and plot-less story with a lot of symbolism I’m sure I didn’t pick up. If I had picked it up, however, I’m sure I would have enjoyed it much more.

2 / 5

Peccato che il romanzo sia sostanzialmente incompiuto. Ha il merito di far luce però sulla figura di Fumiko, con una parte centrale composta solo dalle sue lettere.
7 apr 2010, 12:11:16

"Storms make trees take deeper root"

Beautiful and saddening, this book slowly narrates the reflections of Shingo, an aging Japanese man living in the outskirts of Tokyo. His days are split between his office-job with his distant son, Shuichi, a man Shingo fails to relate to, and his house, where he lives with his wife, Yusako, the plainer looking sister of his childhood crush, now deceased.

"Even now that he had been married to Yasuko for more than thirty years, his boyhood yearning for her sister was still with him, an old wound."

Regardless of his childhood infatuation with his wife's sister, Shingo has grown to love Yusako, and she seems to love him too.

Their love is not that of a storybook romance, they're certainly no Elizabeth and Mr. Dracy. Instead, the love between Shingo and his wife is mundane and solid, like a house made from brick - cracked, perhaps, from Shingo's feelings for Yusako's dead sister, but functional nonetheless.

In fact, its character reminds me of the marriage displayed in the movie Another Year from 2010, where the relationship between the movie's two central characters offers a foundation of stability for the volatile and unpredictable lives of their friends and family, much like in this book.

The book's narrative slowly unravels as Shingo contemplates what a successful life entails: whether the failing marriages of his children is an indication of his own failure as a person. He becomes increasingly disappointed by his relationships with his close family, with the exception of his daughter-in-law, Kikuko.

His affection for her is his sole comfort as his failing mind and body continue to let him down, and he watches friends and old classmates die all around him. There's a particularly poignant scene involving a tie that I expect will stay with me for quite some time.

For all its positives, the book does have some flaws as well. Kawabata writes, perhaps intentionally, with a notable patriarchal focus. The women are often described as objects of fancy rather than people, and some of Shingo's reflections involving women seemed, at least in my opinion, to reduce them to abstract concepts.

There's also the strange Japanese obsession with breasts that's common in Murakami as well.

Regardless of these reservations I still enjoyed the book greatly, and if you're interested in a slow but poignant read, you should look no further.

I wanted to like this, but Shingo kept putting me off. There were also way too many "ripe breasts" in this translation (and, I'm sure, in the original).

The quietness suited me, as did the relatively low-stakes story, and some of the language (especially when describing plants) was beautiful, but then there were all those breasts (etc.).

It would be a very frustrating book to read if you were interested in any sort of character arc, because no one here really experiences one. Things happen to people, but they don't really seem to choose a particular path. They're all drifting, and I felt like I was just drifting along with them, too, especially as I neared the end of the book.

Though I've fallen out of the habit of writing about books that I've finished reading, and though I finished reading this particular book a few weeks ago, I am sitting here on a Saturday night and wanting to reflect back on what was good about this exceptionally good book. But I'll keep this short and sweet.

First of all, it is a true pleasure to read. From first page to last, the writing is flawless and effortless and glowing. There are no exceptionally long sentences, no explorations that push the shape of language; just perfect, simple prose that reads quickly and beautifully and feels like a poem in its economy of form. Kudos to the translator, Seidensticker, who, I have read in other places, is not terribly well regarded in contemporary translation circles. I’m not sure why. The clear spirit of the text shines through beautifully.

Second, the book was not what I was expecting it to be. I thought it would be a meditation on aging, the challenges of losing one’s faculties and control. This is what the blurb at the back of the book had lead me to believe. But it isn’t. It is about a man who is growing old in a Japan that is rapidly changing, and who must now navigate a culture that has changed dramatically from the one in which he came to understand his place in the world. The family he has built is crumbling in unexpected and, at least to him, unacceptable ways. He isn’t thrilled with his son, he worries his daughter is a failure of a wife, and he doesn’t like his wife very much as at all - though he still thinks often about his wife’s long-dead sister. He can’t figure out what to do to make everything just a little bit better and, if not better, at least honourable.

Third, everything in this novel fits together wonderfully well. The little side stories in this book are some of the best parts - and this is a piece art filled with a great many marvellous parts. And they serve that ever-important purpose of exploring and filling out those central themes of the novel - aging, the continuing loss of control over the world, and the pounding sound of death. I would not hesitate to say that this book takes the form of the novel, the swirling shape of it around a cluster of ideas and characters and plot, and puts it into it’s perfect, full realization.

There is more. But I said I would keep this short, so I will.

Yasunari Kawabata in The Sound of the Mountain has a sexagenarian, Ogata Shingo, for a protagonist, whose point of view we explore in the book. Shingo is a man who is slowly accepting the fact that he is stepping closer to embrace death, but has to also deal with the twists and turns of his family life. We know that Shingo works in a company with his son and we know he is a generous and gentle employer, as evidenced from his interactions with his secretary Eiko. However, that is the extent we know of Shingo as far as his professional life is concerned. Where Kawabata draws our attention to is his family life and his personal thoughts and feelings regarding the events happening around him.

Immensely lyrical in its narration, tone and pace, Kawabata presents to us an old man who is slowly losing his grip on life and his impotency in dealing with his family's issues and his feelings for Kikuko, his daughter-in-law, as well as his late sister-in-law. Much of the work seems to elide over what should be stated and most of the action unfolds in what is being withheld rather than what is said out loud by the characters. This strategy seems to be Shingo's preferred mode of communication and his way of dealing with issues when they crop up. Even the expression of his emotions seems to be alluded to the readers by the symbolism of nature around him. In fact, Kawabata litters the book with so much nature symbolism that its presence in the book almost begins to feel like a separate character with its own moods, only coinciding with those of Shingo's.

As far as storytelling goes, this is a work of art and Kawabata has crafted a masterful portrayal of modern Japanese life without compromising on the traditional Japanese qualities of beauty and lyricism.

If you liked my review, do feel free to stop by my Instagram here!

I did not finish this book. At page 170, about sixty percent of the way through, I concluded that Kawabata's lyrical, understated approach cannot sustain a work of the length and thematic complexity of "The sound of the mountain," because Kawabata almost resolutely dispenses with tension and other narrative conventions that typically form the armature of successful novels that reach beyond two hundred or so pages.