Alexandria Issue iv by worldliteraturejournal

alexandria ajournaloftheworldlanguages& literaturesdepartment atbostonuniversity spring2022 issueiv

“You have no idea, Felice, what havoc literature creates inside certain heads. It is like monkeys leaping about in beingthetreetops,insteadofstayingfirmlyontheground.Itislostandnotbeingabletohelpit.Whatcanonedo?”-FranzKafka,LettertoFeliceBauer,July8,1913

Editor in Chief Dina Famin EditorialDemianTeam Choi Dina

a journal of the world languages & literatures atdepartmentbostonuniversity

of AdvisorsEmilyDinaDesignFaminYoderPeterSchwartzSassanTabatabai

Head

alexandria

EmilyZoeJasmineEleanorMadisonCindyFaminHuMaranoMoranA.RichardsonTsengYoder

Dina Famin, Alhambra Complex, Granada, Spain

At its founding, this journal was envisioned as a love letter to our department, the humanities at large, and the community that we have formed around them. Our writers and editors come from all disciplines at Boston University, and bring a diverse and fascinating background to our work. It has been a pleasure and privilege to work with such a creative team, to get support from our World Languages and Literatures Department and the World Languages and Literatures Undergraduate Association, and to continue the work of the journal’s founders. СпасибоDina!

Letter from the Editor

Dear WelcomeReader,toAlexandria’s fourth issue. Whether a hard copy or our online publication, we hope you enjoy!

You will see broad styles and topics: analysis, translation, creative works. You will read discussions of film, literature, social traditions and trends, history, selfhood and identity. You will meet writers at different parts of their academic and professional careers including one of WLL’s very own professors and delve into their passions and interests for a few short but breathtaking pages.

Table of Contents

Common Magic and Folklore in the Trial of Tempel Anneke by Demian Choi 63

The Banality of Revolution: Understanding Militia Conspiracies in Michigan Via Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Demons byEmilyYoder 70

Your Love for Me: A Ghazal byEmmaHardy 68

Close Up by Kiarostami: Identity in Flux within Art and Law by Viv Johnson 26

The Yiddish Theater and German Émigré Hollywood by Dina Famin 74

Lists in the Pillow Book by Jessica Mellen 89

Por allá (Out there, somewhere) byKarynPadilla 23

translatedfromChinesebyTimothyObiso 33

Reframing the Labor of the Apostate: The Concept of Active Love in Silence and The Brothers Karamazov by RachelZhu 8

2020 in byReviewJoanneChang 59

The Role of Michitsuna no Haha’s Attendants in the Kagero Nikki by Alexa Drescher 48

“Where to Go” by Hu Yepin

123

113

In Defense of the Monologically Mature: Leo Tolstoy’s Critique of Dialogueby David Winner 103

ImageCredits

124

“A First Brush with Death” Prof.J. Keith Vincent

Our Contributors

1 Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. 1880. Translated by Constance Garnett, 2004. 298.

Reframing the Labor of the Apostate: The Concept of Active Love in Silence and The Brothers Karamazov

by Rachel Zhu

1 In contrast to this “love in action” is “love in dreams,” an ineffectual and vain love that will henceforth be synonymous with “passive love,” as antonym to active love.

These concepts are presented through the teachings of Father Zossima to his apprentice Alyosha, the hero of Karamazov, whose development mirrors that of Silence’s Sebastião Rodrigues. Considering Alyosha and key passages from Karamazov in tandem with Rodrigues can provide a more elucidated spiritual dimension to the latter’s journey that enriches a theologically curious reading of Silence. While the conflict between religion and humanism in Karamazov is mostly mental, the same is not true for Silence, which has deeply physical ramifications. Rodrigues’s apostasy is the culmination of years of torture of both himself and others as the magistrate forces accused Christians to choose between renouncing their faith and allowing others to suffer. Ostensibly, the act is

Shusaku Endo’s Silence is a Japanese Catholic retelling of a universal religious problem: the designation of priority when conflict arises between faith and humanitarianism. Hidden within this problem is the secondary question of whether love is capable of redeeming or justifying the suffering of people, and within that, the legitimacy of Christian love. Similar questions are at the heart of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, published eighty six years earlier in Russia. In the novel, Dostoevsky seeks to describe what he terms as “active love,” the practice of love that not only redeems suffering, and thereby justifies human life, but reassures the practitioner of “the reality of God and of the immortality of [their] soul.”

I. Reframing Rodrigues

evidence of the dichotomy between religious and human values: Rodrigues’s apostasy is either a condemnable lapse in faith or proof of the supremacy of earthly concern. The fault must lie either with him or with the Catholic Church.

Though Rodrigues imagines himself proclaiming the beauty of all things made by God, he is always acutely aware that the peasants and their homes are dirty, ragged, and foul smelling. On some level, he is repulsed by them. This is most clear in his attitude toward Kichijiro, the apostate

4 Ibid., 75.

2 Endo, Shusaku. Silence. 1966. Translated by William Johnston, 1969. 44, 57.

But reframing this problem with the dichotomy of passive and active love can mitigate, if not resolve, it. The story of Rodrigues’s migration might be understood as the evolution from passive, imaginary love to active, experiential love. In the process of his suffering and spiritual revision, his love and capacity for true empathy becomes “activated.” By considering Rodrigues’s apostasy as an event of “activation,” Endo presents the possibility that this state of tenebrous serenity at Silence’s end contains, or even constitutes, a renewed clarity that reconciles the dictates of the divine with the worries of the worldly.

The concept of love held by Rodrigues at the start of the novel is characterized by a directional flow from the high to the low. Such an idea is embodied by his assertion that “men are born in two categories: the strong and the weak,” as well as his belief that “the Japanese peasants [look] in [him]” for existential meaning, so they may do more than “live and die like beasts.” 2 As a missionary, Rodrigues readily volunteers to be one of the strong who bestows hope on the weak. His self perception, that he is “the only one who could give the water of life to this island,” exhibits a psychological savior complex. 3 It is this self perception, not sincere faith, that stirs in him “violent emotion” and prompts him to cry out, “Lord, everything that You have created is good. How beautiful are your dwellings!” 4

3 Ibid., 74 75.

II.The Ego

7 Dostoyevsky, 61.

This is a straightforward example of Zossima’s “love in dreams” Rodrigues’s dreams of “glorious martyrdom” are totally fantastical. As Zossima states, “Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all… But active love is labor and fortitude.” 7 Labor cannot be imagined nor superficially performed, but must be experienced and endured to exist. Witnessing the actuality of martyrdom does not inspire but rather horrifies Rodrigues, as will the eventual death of Garrpe. Not long after, he admits that “what kept [him] going now might be [his] self respect.” Already, he acknowledges to some extent

6 Ibid., 62.

Rodrigues and Kichijiro both speak as though a person’s strength or weakness is part of their nature, determined at birth. Slowly, however, Rodrigues is shown how much his education in the cathedral has sheltered him from struggle. The prolonged drownings of Mochiki and Ichizo on the shore deal the first blow to his high minded ideals of martyrdom, as he reflects:

who guides him to the villagers. Both Rodrigues and his companion, Garrpe, look down on him as contemptible, cowardly, and sickeningly servile. For a length of time, Kichijiro’s lack of outward dignity and courage causes them to question whether he, who was “unable to endure the sight of the martyrdom of his brethren,” is really a Christian like themselves. 5

5 Ibid., 41.

I had long read about martyrdom in the lives of the saints how the souls of the martyrs had gone home to Heaven, how they had been filled with glory in Paradise, how the angels had blown trumpets… But the martyrdom of the Japanese Christians I now describe to you was no such glorious thing. What a miserable and painful business it was! 6

12 Dostoyevsky, 311.

Rodrigues8

9 Dostoyevsky, 24 25.

shares some of these aspects, including that of misplaced devotion, with Alyosha. First, some background on Dostoevsky’s young monk is needed: he enters the monastery at age nineteen because he sees it as “the ideal escape… from the darkness of worldly wickedness to the light of love.” 9 Despite his seemingly inexhaustible patience and the purifying nature of his presence, Alyosha is deeply aware of others’ cruelty and sinfulness, most of all that of his own family. Zossima, knowing this, orders him to leave the monastery: “This is not your place for the time. I bless you for great service in the world. Yours will be a long pilgrimage… You will have to bear all before you come back.” 10

Like Rodrigues, Alyosha’s ability to love others is not “concentrated” on religion itself, and therefore is liable to falter. This revelation justifies

Within this order is the advice that Alyosha must not allow his awareness of sin to prevent him from being engaged in human society. Rather, he must actively seek proximity to suffering. The reasoning behind this is not completely clear until after Zossima passes away. Alyosha’s grief and mortification at his mentor’s quickly decaying body marks the closest point in the novel in which he comes to straying from faith. 11 That Zossima’s death is capable of shaking his convictions so much illustrates that “all the love that lay concealed in his pure young heart… had, for the past year, been concentrated and perhaps wrongly so on one being, his beloved elder.” 12

that his endurance and “priestly sense of duty” come from ego, not from faith.

10 Ibid., 78.

11 In Russian Orthodoxy, the corpses of saints, starets, and other religious leaders are not expected to decay soon after death. Their bodies are expected to bring about miracles, including physical preservation, as signs of their holiness and salvation. The immediate and rapid decomposition of Zossima’s body leads those who previously revered him to doubt his reputation and denounce his character. Alyosha’s initial failure to reconcile his faith with the aftermath of Zossima’s death leads to a personal and spiritual crisis.

8 Endo, 65.

13 Endo, 186.

15 Endo, 105.

When Rodrigues wonders, “Why did this fellow who betrayed him [Kichijiro] come following after him in this way?” he too betrays the immaturity of his faith. 15 His lack of imagination stems from a lack of empathy. He cannot imagine the self deprecating persistence of a man like Kichijiro, who refuses to allow even his own apostasy to stop him from pursuing the grace of God. Kichijiro, who has already accepted himself as the weakest and lowest of all Christians, has no hesitation in returning after each sin to confess, repent, and beg for forgiveness. He can be thought of as a Sisyphean figure, but his Sisyphus is not resigned instead, he is desperate. In fact, though he feels guilt and shame, he shows little to no signs of spiritual fatigue, wanting to confess to Rodrigues even after the latter loses the title of Father. There is no evidence that Kichijiro’s troubles have ever caused him inward doubt about the existence of God and the compassion of Christ; through prideless labors, through sins and confessions, he is quietly reassured.

Zossima’s command. Even though monks and priests frequently interact with the masses, hearing of their troubles and sorrows, they ultimately reside and take refuge in “a place where there is no storm and no torture,” where they may easily detach themselves from extrinsic sin. 13 The word “pilgrimage” suggests that this insulated faith must be transformed into something else by traveling and being “in the world.” 14 This is, of course, not a direct narrative parallel Alyosha undergoes relatively little to challenge his faith compared to Rodrigues but nonetheless the two protagonists are both removed from moral sanctuary and thrust into the base and precarious world of the undevoted. Alyosha, at this point, is more advanced than Rodrigues in that he lacks pride, but his faith is still immature because he lacks the experience of labor to qualify it, which, again, is precisely why Zossima sends him away.

14 Dostoyevsky, 78.

This contrasts with Rodrigues’s mentality. His mind oscillates: his moments of elation at being closer to Christ are equally punctuated by anguish at being surrounded by Judases. These thoughts render him in a

Hamlet like suffocation: Jesus or Judas, to be or not to be. At one point, he is driven to despair and supposes that “if God does not exist,” then the whole event, from the missions to the martyrdoms, becomes an “absurd drama.”

Yes, his fate and that of Christ were quite alike; and at this thought… a tingling sensation of joy welled up within his breast. This was the joy of the Christian who relishes the truth that he is united to the Son of God. On the other hand, he had tasted none of the physical suffering that Christ had known; and this thought made him uneasy.

Rodrigues’s desperation to cling to dreams of Christ like sacrifice does not save or prevent him from despair. Rather, both his desperation and despair stem from pride. The ego is flattered by imagining itself as Christ, yet cannot stand the reality of physical suffering and, when faced with it, becomes tempted to reject all as absurdity. Just as his desire to sacrifice does not indicate a strength of faith, these thoughts of doubt do not necessarily indicate a complete absence of it only that both expressions are, at present, dominated by misguided conceit.

16 Ibid., 72.

18 Ana tsurushi, literally translated as “hole hanging,” was a common torture technique used on Western and Japanese Christians in sixteenth- and seventeenth century Japan. The victim is hung upside down in an underground pit, such that only their feet remain above ground. Usually, the victim is also given a small cut on the forehead, which continuously

17 Ibid., 133.

Though witnessing martyrdoms marks the start of Rodrigues’s delivery from the egotistical dream of love, he only becomes fully self aware of his ego during his conversation with Ferreira, who is now known as Sawano Chuan. After Rodrigues has spent days praying for God to intervene in the ana tsurushi 18 of the peasants, Ferreira comes to convince Rodrigues to apostatize:

16 At another point, he compares his position at the mercy of the magistrate Inoue to that of Christ at the hands of Pontius Pilate. Herein is another demonstration that passive love is easy and gratifying, while active love is regarded as dreadful:

III. The Silence of Christ

This may be an instance of projection, because Rodrigues’s focus is not on the essence of Kichijiro’s question but rather his own concern that God bleeds due to the force of blood pressure. This technique is therefore also a mode of execution, as victims who refuse to apostatize can bleed to death.

Some will argue that there is no truthful substance in Ferreira’s words because he is merely manipulating Rodrigues; certainly, Inoue would understand the utility of self awareness to the Japanese cause. Nevertheless, Rodrigues has already arrived at the fundamental conclusion by himself, as previously described, but is unwilling to recognize it. This conversation, then, constitutes the first of Rodrigues’s own labors of active love an ordeal undertaken in private, with no glory or admiration to be won, only the painful laceration of his ego and the consequent transformation of his view of reality.

“Don't deceive yourself!” said Ferreira. “Don't disguise your own weakness with those beautiful words… You make yourself more important than them. You are preoccupied with your own salvation… And yet is your way of acting love?” 19

20 Ibid., 57.

Fittingly, it is Kichijiro who first raises the question of God’s silence in Rodrigues’s mind. When the officials select villagers for interrogation, he cries out, “Why has Deus Sama imposed this suffering upon us?” at which RodriguesNo,muses:Kichijiro was trying to express something different, something even more sickening. The silence of God… in the face of this terrible and merciless sacrifice offered up to Him, God has remained silent. This was the problem that lay behind the plaintive question of Kichijiro. 20

19 Endo, 181.

“In return for these earthly sufferings, those people will receive a reward of eternal joy,” [Rodrigues] said.

does not answer it. This question torments him throughout the novel as he finds divine silence permeating through nature: the rain, the noonday, the “monotony of the sea.” 21

21 Ibid., 72. Ibid., 179.

Considered this way, Rodrigues is plagued by the same problem of freedom. Rodrigues believes that if God were to reveal Himself, as he begs Him to do, humans would no longer have the free choice of faith their obedience would be bought and no one would be aggrieved with religious persecution. Rodrigues, who is powerless in captivity, pleads for God to rescue Christians from the consequences of freedom. The jaded Inquisitor one of the most powerful figures in the Catholic Church believes that men have, in a large part, already orchestrated the rescue, and is only anxious for Christ to rebuke him for his sacrilege. Furthermore, a tenet of the Inquisitor’s argument is that men had to act to remedy the shortcomings of Christ; in light of this comparison, it may be fair to say that the true crime in Rodrigues’s apostasy is not the renunciation itself, but the decision to “act” upon a matter that he had, until that moment, left up to God. On this point, it is important to differentiate between acting out of love and active love itself active love does not inherently mean

At last, when he is unable to continue withstanding the sounds of peasants being executed via ana tsurushi, he makes his first and only demand of God on this account: “You must not remain silent. Prove that you are justice, that you are goodness, that you are love.” 22 Yet God, when implored for proof, breaks no silence.

Karamazov also features the silence of Christ in one of its most significant chapters, “The Grand Inquisitor.” The chapter, a prose poem composed by Ivan Karamazov, imagines that Christ returns to Earth during the Spanish Inquisition only to be imprisoned by the Grand Inquisitor. The Inquisitor blames Christ for the human condition of freedom, to which he ascribes all moral suffering. He asserts that “only one who can appease [the people’s] conscience can take over their freedom.” 23 In other words, Christ chose to give men freedom instead of “[buying] obedience with bread,” and thereby denied them lives of untroubled conscience.

Dostoyevsky, 235.

24 Ibid., 243. Ibid.

taking initiative to act, but rather undertaking and experiencing labor, while initiating action sometimes but does not always lead to such labor. From this framework, the apostasy is still pardonable, as will be elaborated later.

The kiss of Christ, more so than an act of reassurance or forgiveness, is an act of empathy. The Inquisitor commits mortal sins and speaks with pride, yet it is possible to see that these moral crimes arise, on some level, from suffering his point that freedom often leads to suffering is evidently not incorrect and for suffering, there is sympathy. After the kiss, the Inquisitor releases Christ and tells him never to return. His mind remains unchanged, and yet the kiss transforms him in some invisible way, as he feels it “glow in his heart.” 25

Neither the Inquisitor nor Rodrigues receive the answers they desire. Instead, they are met only with acknowledgment of their afflictions. For the Inquisitor, this acknowledgment comes within the silence. Though he blasphemes, berates, and denounces Christ, and bestows himself and his fellow authorities with the honors of merit and self sacrifice, he is demonstrably agonized by his actions and the content of his monologue:

His silence weighed down upon him. He saw that the Prisoner [Christ] had listened intently all the time, looking gently in his face and evidently not wishing to reply… The old man longed for Him to say something, however bitter and terrible. But He suddenly approached the old man in silence and softly kissed him on his bloodless aged lips. 24

In Rodrigues’s case, more explicit compassion appears to be offered. With the groans of the suspended peasants ringing in his ears, God’s silence is broken at his impending apostasy:

And then the Christ in bronze speaks to the priest: “Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men's pain that I carried my cross.” 26

While these words are attributed to the fumie, the bronze likeness of Christ, some readers speculate that it is the voice of the devil persuading Rodrigues that apostasy would be inconsequential, an echo of Eve’s first disobedience in the Garden of Eden. Rodrigues himself doubts whether it was really Christ or merely what he wanted to hear a voice invented by the ego to reaffirm his spiritual security despite his sin. On the surface, there is no definitive evidence against this idea. Yet the broader narrative, again reframed in the dichotomy of love, provides suggestion to the contrary of those claims by designating the apostasy as the moment of his ego death. The voice as Christ declares his purpose as empathy—as Christ shares in Rodrigues’s pain, so too does Rodrigues begin to share in the pain of all the apostates before him, including Kichijiro and Ferreira. Unlike the words of Satan persuading Eve to seek godly knowledge, what Rodrigues heard from the plaque was unconcerned with affirming his selfhood. Its goal was not to individuate or elevate, but to “share.” It is this collectivizing spirit that exonerates Rodrigues of pride, and so marks his permanent emergence from passive love.

Rodrigues’s turmoil over his position and circumstances nevertheless continues. After he has forfeited his priestly title and assumed a Japanese name, he continues to ponder over the words he heard in that moment. He “[wonders] if all this talk about love is not, after all, just an excuse to justify [his] own weakness” in apparently choosing humanism over religious doctrine. 27 Once again, this problem can be reconsidered with the dichotomy between passive and active love: the crux of the apostasy issue is then not whether weakness is justified or unjustified, but whether it is experientially endured. The kiss of Christ is not concerned with 26 Endo, 183. Ibid., 186.

“But you told Judas to go away: What thou dost do quickly. What happened to Judas?”

IV. Renewal Through Humility

In both texts, the silence of Christ is not condemnatory, nor is it the leftover product of withheld communication. It is a conscious exercise by which the mystery of God and free choice of faith are maintained, yet also the only vehicle through which humans, who suffer under that choice, may find solidarity for their sorrow, if not alleviation of it.

whether the Inquisitor’s struggle is legitimate, only with the fact that he struggles.Some

“Lord, I resented your silence.”

“I was not silent. I suffered beside you.”

verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

Dostoevsky saw John 12:24 as central to the ideas of Karamazov. The verse not only appears as its epigraph but is repeated twice verbatim in the book:Verily,

The parable of the grain of wheat neatly summarizes the transformation of self, and therefore of love, expected of Christians. Its illustration of death and resurrection echoes the death and resurrection of Christ and sets a core principle for the spiritual activity of all His followers: let the Ibid., 203.

time later, Rodrigues has a conversation with Christ in his heart:

“I did not say that. Just as I told you to step on the plaque, so I told Judas to do what he was going to do. For Judas was in anguish as you are now.” 28

of understanding returns: once in the position of providing understanding to others, Rodrigues now sees how absent the world, including his old church, is of the unjudging empathy provided through Christ’s silence, and desperately yearns for it. On this, consider Zossima’s warning against judging others for their sins:

30 Dostoyevsky, 295. 31 Endo, 187, 203.

After Rodrigues has, like the corn of wheat, fallen to the ground, he is indeed transformed thoroughly. No longer is there Hamletian dissonance between thought and action, or between the perception and reality of the self. Rodrigues has accepted, “with a bitter smile of resignation,” his expulsion from the Portuguese mission, along with the loss of any chance of returning to his native land, and tries to comfort himself with the thought that “it is not they [the other missionaries] who judge [his] heart but only Our Lord.” 29 Still, he is occasionally gripped by “feelings of desperation” and cries out at dreams of the Inquisition, “What do you Again,understand?”thetheme

Rodrigues has finally come to understand this. Reflecting on his relationship to Christ, he “[wonders] if there is any difference between Kichijiro and [himself],” and the ultimate answer he arrives at is clear in his new assertion: “There are neither the strong nor the weak.” 31 He now understands that Christians exist as a single collective under the silent

29 Ibid., 185 186.

earthly self and convictions die, and from that death a more virtuous and righteous personhood will be born.

Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of any one. For no one can judge a criminal, until he recognizes that he is just such a criminal as the man standing before him, and that he perhaps is more than all men to blame for that crime. 30

compassion of God, unseparated by superficial schisms of supposed virtue or vice.

But this understanding comes belatedly. After the deaths of Mochiki and Ichizo, he notes that “ever since that martyrdom, the people of Tomogi regarded me as a foreigner who had brought disaster to them all.” 32 Inoue’s claim that the peasants suffer because of the missionaries is meant to degrade their spirits, but taken the way of Zossima’s interpretation, can be spiritually instructive. Since Rodrigues stepped foot in Japan, even before he embarked on his voyage, he was already in some part responsible for all the apostasies that had occurred in Japan and therefore “is just such a criminal.” Zossima does not state “can become” or “has the ability to be,” he says “is.” It is not that Rodrigues loses the privilege to look on others as weaklings at the moment he apostatized, it is that he never has any such privilege to begin with. He does not become the same as Kichijiro; they were always the same.

...justsays:

This is not as bleak a conclusion as it seems. To the contrary, Rodrigues’s identification with Kichijiro uplifts him in the end. It is only because Kichijiro still desires to confess that Rodrigues once more resumes his former duty as priest. Contrast this to his behavior in the past where he only refrained from scolding Kichijiro because of his debt to him. This development is reminiscent of Karamazov’s Madame Hohlakov, who despairs in her inability to love without expectation of gratitude. To her, Zossima

when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting farther from your goal instead of nearer to it at that very moment I predict that you will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you. 33 Ibid., 65. Dostoyevsky, 61 62.

This might have been a prophecy for Rodrigues. Compare the “tingling sensation of joy” he experienced while imagining himself as Christ to the “tremendous onrush of joy” he felt in knowing and accepting that he is not. Recall again the desperate Sisyphean nature of Kichijiro, his refusal to give up on reconciliation with Christ, and Rodrigues’s newfound desperation to be understood, and Camus’s assertion that “one must imagine Sisyphus happy.” 34

Romans 8:38 39 aptly reads:

34 Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. 1942. Translated by Justin O'Brien, 1955. 78.

35 Endo, 203 204.

Of course, Rodrigues cannot be considered happy. He most likely lives the rest of his life in his described distress, and most likely never overcomes the guilt of his apostasy, of taking a Japanese name and wife, of writing disavowals of Christianity but perhaps remaining, in his heart, a devotee of Christ. He is forever deprived of the relief of service to that devotion, but in another sense is, by that deprivation, more emotionally united with those he once served than he ever was as a priest. Rodrigues no longer operates under illusions but has joined the suffering of the collective through the experience of sharing laborious love. This is why Zossima can claim that “love can never be an offense to Christ,” and why Rodrigues comes to the conclusion that “everything that had taken place until now had been necessary to bring him to this love.” 35

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Here may be the hopeful abridgment of the results of Rodrigues’s mission in Japan. To the first question posed between the prioritization of faith or humanitarianism, Silence offers no clear answer, but on the transformation of passive into active love, as defined in concept by

Dostoevsky, and relevance of love to suffering, the intention is quite clear. The Bible does not promise that men will not fall from heights like Rodrigues, nor sink into depths like Kichijiro, but that in each of these experiences is the company, closeness, and compassion of Christ. At the expense of his ego, satisfaction with earthly life, and the outward acts that once defined his purpose, Rodrigues has internalized the silence of empathy. Through this measure, the love of humanity and love from God have been quietly reconciled in his soul, and can never again be separated.

by Karyn Padilla

Karyn Padilla, Omoa, Honduras, December 26th, 2021

Por allá (Out there, somewhere)

Qué complicado es expresar cómo me siento sobre ti.

A veces pienso que te extraño, después recuerdo el infierno que fue vivir junto a ti.

(Las flores que no te merecías.)

Por allá

No tengo donde visitarte, tampoco dónde ir para reclamarte. ¿Dónde dejó las flores cada año?, ¿dónde voy a conmemorarte?

No sé cuándo te fuiste de este mundo.

A lo quizás nunca te has ido, y simplemente soy yo la que se conforma con no buscarte.

Por allá te encontraré otra vez, cuando yo también haya dejado de caminar en este mundo, y por fin sabré dónde estás. Podré preguntarte, ¿dónde debí dejarte las flores?

Solo en los sueños te veo, donde puedo despertarme y dejar la pesadilla que fue tu existencia.

At times, I feel I miss you, then I remember it was like an inferno being with you. Only in dream do I see you, where I can easily wake up from the nightmare that was your existence.

With nowhere to visit you, and nowhere to demand answers… Where do I leave the flowers every year? Where can I commemorate you?

When was it that you left this world?

It’s tricky to explain how I feel for you.

Out there we will reunite again, when I too have left this world. And I can at last be free to ask you, Where should I have left the flowers? (The flowers you didn’t deserve.)

Out there, somewhere

Maybe you never left, And it was simply I who was comfortable with not looking for you.

“The more a filmmaker comes under pressure due to the nature of his work, the more he is forced to come up with better solutions and find new means of expression,” said filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami in a 1997 interview. 1 This expression is evident in his film Close Up (1990), 2 which navigates intangible identity and Iranian censorship laws through the intersection of art and law, using documentary style camera shots and real individuals playing themselves. Identity is a complex yet undeniable element of human life and being. Identity is fluid and can change depending on where one is from, what they are doing, who they are talking to, and the place they are in. In short, identity depends on context, and in Close Up, the context is Iranian art and law in 1990.

The identity in question is that of Hossain Sabzian, who acts as himself. Sabzian defends himself in court against charges of fraud after impersonating director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Kiarostami films and asks questions of his motivations. Simultaneously, the judge asks questions pertaining to justice and the charges against him to determine Sabzian’s character. This essay will analyze the specific scenes which feature him in court, a flashback to right before his arrest, and the moments after his release where he is seen riding a motorbike with the real Mohsen Makhmalbaf. These scenes encapsulate the fluidity of identity and how the context of each situation and the characters around Sabzian keep it in flux. Furthermore, the film is affected by the laws imposed on it by the Iranian censorship courts. These laws, similarly to identity, depend on context, personal preference, and the bias of those imposing them.

Close-Up by Kiarostami: Identity in Flux within Art and Law

This paper will begin by analyzing the relationship between art and law within the court scene. A clapboard signals the start of the court scene, a

1 Kiarostami, Abbas, 1997, “Abbas Kiarostami discusses censorship,” YouTube

2 Kiarostami, Abbas, director. Close Up, 1990, Kanoon, 98 minutes.

by Viv Johnson

signal to the audience that the film crew is visibly present to the rest of the court. Art has intruded into the realm of law. Enter Hossain Sabzian, who has been charged with fraud by the Ahankhah family. Director Kiarostami tells Sabzian, and in turn, the viewer, how he will be shooting the court, with one camera zoomed into Sabzian’s face to capture his reactions and explanations, and the other camera set to a wide shot of the court and judge. In the close up shots, Sabzian is usually the focal point, but Kiarostami does tend to pan and cut between the faces of the Ahankhah family, who are sitting directly behind Sabzian. The wide shots position the judge high up in his seat overlooking the court, his eyes fixed on Sabzian. Kiarostami presents two perspectives, the eyes of Sabzian and the eyes of the court, occasionally also presenting the perspective of the Ahankhahs. Another example of the visible intrusion of art is how Kiarostami, on a few occasions, pans the camera across the room, capturing his soundman and lighting equipment in the shot, who are positioned between Sabzian and the judge. Throughout the scene, the judge conducts most of the questioning. However, Kiarostami also directs questions to Sabzian, questioning his motives for impersonating Director Makhmalbaf and specifically to the Ahankhah family. Kiarostami’s voice comes from off camera during questioning. These examples are important in establishing the mix of art and law, but they are not the focal point of this scene. Sabzian, his motives, and his identity are the main focus. Sabzian’s words and face take up a majority of the courtroom shots, with occasional additives from Mehrdad (the youngest son of the Ahankhah family), the judge, Kiarostami’s voice, and even Sabzian’s mother. However, the court scene is also broken up by flashback scenes.

The flashback scenes periodically interrupt the courtroom scenes, preventing a long, monotonous scene. These flashbacks help to construct a clearer understanding of the events described in court to the viewer, and show Sabzian when he is acting as Makhmalbaf. This back and forth between Sabzian as himself in court and as Makhmalbaf keeps his identity in flux. The flashback scene inside the Ahankhah house begins with Mr. Ahankhah revealing to a friend that the family suspects Sabzian to be a fraud but that they haven’t been able to confirm it, and that Farazmand, a journalist who has interviewed Makhmalbaf in person, is on

his way over. When Sabzian comes back from the mountain his identity is not clear to the people in the house. They introduce him as “Mr. Makhmalbaf” and talk with him about directing, but there is an obvious tension in the house and in the interactions between Sabzian and Mehrdad. In the previous courtroom scene, Sabzian established that when he was in the Ahankhah house he existed as Makhmalbaf, and it wasn’t until he went back home that he had to “shed” that identity. In the flashback, he is acting as Makhmalbaf, referencing his love of film and pursuit of his new film involving Mehrdad as an actor, however, the men around him are unsure of his identity and his motives. Ironically, Sabzian talks with Mr. Ahankhah about how he retreated to the mountains that morning to remove the rust from his heart and to uncover his “true face.” When Farazmand arrives, he is introduced to “Mr. Makhmalbaf,” then goes to speak with Mr. Ahankhah privately. The tension is palpable. Sabzian’s body language shows his discomfort: he walks around and looks out the window after the two men leave the house. He reveals in court that he knew that the Ahankhah family had started to suspect him but despite that, he still returned to their house and wrote down in his notebook “the tragic finale.” He could not stop himself from returning because he loved being Makhmalbaf due to the respect and trust given to him and the confidence he gained.

The different actions and perceptions of Sabzian in this scene contradict each other. In one shot, Sabzian is sitting in a nice chair, Farazmand’s briefcase is still next to it, and a small hole in Sabzian’s sock causes his big toe to poke through (Fig. 1). In this setting, he could be viewed as a rich man with a briefcase sitting in his comfortable and decorated home, but the hole in his sock and the tension in his body contradicts this character.

Figure 1: Close Up, still courtesy: YouTube.

His identity is neither Sabzian nor Makhmalbaf until he is arrested and charged with fraud by the police. From the window, Mr. Ahankhah’s friend looks on as Sabzian is taken out in handcuffs and Farazmand takes photos. From here the cinematic gaze transitions back to the courtroom with a close-up shot focusing on the camera. By focusing on Farazmand’s camera, Kiarostami adds upon the layering of art and identity. Farazmand’s camera captured the moment where Sabzian sheds Makhmalbaf’s identity, and that event is what leads to the courtroom. Farazmand’s and Kiarostami’s cameras here are used to capture a person and identity, in a given moment, and to catalyze events. The last courtroom scene is complex in its different views on Sabzian’s identity. Analyzing specifically the dialogue spoken, Mehrdad describes Sabzian as a “sick man” playing the role of “sensitive soul,” while Sabzian’s mother says he is a “good boy” and begs for his forgiveness. When Kiarostami asks Sabzian if he is still acting while in court, Sabzian says that he is not because he is speaking of his own suffering from the heart. He argues that art is an experience of what “you’ve felt inside” and that it conveys “inner reality.”

Sabzian has truly suffered. He is a poor, divorced man, with no job, whose only dream is to be a famous director, to convey his suffering through art. Unable to do so on his own, he used the Makhmalbaf image to fulfill this

After he is pardoned and has left the courtroom, Sabzian is seen sharing a motorcycle ride with the real Makhmalbaf. Earlier, in the courtroom scene, Mehrdad detailed to the judge a similar scene between himself and Sabzian, then still acting as Makhmalbaf, which ends in Sabzian receiving 1,950 tomans: Sabzian tells Mehrdad the idea for a new film about two men on a motorbike that ends with the men becoming friends. Then, as though spoken into existence, Sabzian and Makhmalbaf ride through Tehran together at the end of the film. The scene is shot from inside the film crew’s front windshield, and a large crack obscures the bottom corner while the audio cuts in and out. After buying red flowers, as the men continue to the Ahankhah’s home on the bike, the musical theme of the film takes over the audio. The flowers, the angle of the shot from inside the van, and the cracked window obstruct both mens’ faces, further obscuring the identity of both (Fig. 2). This fragmentation and

dream. Sabzian’s motives are not directly tied to money but instead stem from a need to be a director and create film. However, to create a film is not cheap and Sabzian was willing to take his film as far as he could. In his final argument to the court, Sabzian asks the Ahankhah family to forgive him “in the eternal sense” rather than the legal sense; and the judge, too, then asks the Ahankhahs to forgive Sabzian under the “extenuating circumstances.” Mehrdad still considers him to be sick and sites “social malaise and unemployment” as the source of Sabzain’s corruption. However, the family withdraws their charge of fraud on the condition that he gets a job and becomes a useful member of society and because he showed remorse for his actions. Sabzian’s final defense to the judge but also his inner motivations as brought out by Kiarostami, and his mother’s plea, culminate in his forgiveness. The reason for his forgiveness cannot be narrowed down to one point but instead must be viewed in context of Sabzian’s character and his pursuit of art but also Mehrdad and his brother, who also dream to direct films but cannot.

This subversion of a univocal identity puts into question Iranian film censorship laws. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, a new censorship system was put in place and could be enforced at the discretion of courts. As described in Iranian Cinema in a Global Context, minimum legal regulation, personal preference, interfering government obstacles, and bias all culminate to create a complicated and unpredictable pressure on filmmakers. The censorship courts have two “red lines,” the moral red line concerning family and modesty and the belief system red line which offends the principles and values of the Islamic Republic. Both Kirostami’s and Makhmalbaf’s films have historically been banned due to the presence of marriage infidelity, the removal of a hijab, and one for “no specific reason.” When asked to omit certain scenes or dialogue, Kirostami refused to alter his films. 3 Whether or not a film is banned falls on the whim of the courts. This pressure, however, does not stop filmmakers like Kiarostami from creating unique, thought provoking, and radical films.

obstruction of view is Kiarostami’s final contribution to the similarly fragmented identity of Sabzian.

3 Iranian Cinema in a Global Context: Policy, Politics, and Form. Edited by Peter Decherney and Blake Atwood, 2014.

Figure 2: Close-Up, Still courtesy: YouTube.

Art and law do not work cohesively or consistently. They push and pull against one another. They demonstrate different motives and understandings of the world. In Close Up, these two forces keep Sabzian’s identity in constant flux. In the Iranian film industry, censorship laws influence not only film but also the culture in which film exists. While Kiarostami’s driving point and central theme is fluid identity, the role of law within this film raises interesting perspectives on power dynamics. The enforcement of power systems within Iran, whether the capitalistic system that imposes class or the justice systems that imposes laws and carry them out, create circles of control and exploitation over society, justice, and art. However, these systems cannot control individual emotions, dreams, or delusions. Hossein Sabzian dreams that he is a director of films that can encapsulate his suffering, a dream that becomes reality through Kiarostami’s documentary even as it fails in reality. This abnormal shift in status and identity is condemned and eventually forgiven; not only by those around Sabzian but also by the courts, and is captured on film and made visible by art.

Wuyijun 1 is a young author. In modern times, an author is someone who can hang life out in the open like a paper lantern. Naturally, in a chaotic society, everything has exceptions. Needless to say, even authors are both wealthy and poor. Yet Wuyijun is truly one of the extremely poor Threeones.

“Where to Go” by Hu Yepin

translated from Chinese by Timothy Obiso

1 无异君 (Wuyijun): 无异 (wuyi) - ordinary, not different than; 君 (jun) - gentleman, morally upright person, society’s idealized citizen

Leaving Beijing was leaving, after all. Coming to Shanghai, everything was strange again, like a person beginning to go blind learning what everything looks like now. One day, he got lost. Even after trying a few times, the linguistic differences only got him a disgruntled head shake and “Huh?” the sound of complete ignorance. There wasn’t even a way for him to hire a rickshaw. “How irritating!” he thought. He often resorted to writing his address on a piece of paper and handing it to an officer to get taken home. If it wasn’t for the paper and pen he had with him, he might have enjoyed spending one of these nights wandering the streets. Yet, the biggest problem was money. He was inundated with “Leaving Beijing is absurd!” and “Coming to Shanghai is pointless!” So for the extremely poor Wuyijun, naturally, the cost of living became quite an issue. Originally, he knew that as long as he wrote two articles for Culture

weeks ago, he left Beijing. He has been in Shanghai for five days now. His journey took up the remaining time.

Why did he want to leave Beijing? He wasn’t able to say. Nothing was bothering him there, there was no clear reason, it was sudden, and every friend thought it was unexpected. So, naturally, he had to leave quickly. This was all a bit ridiculous, even to him. It was as if he was pacing back and forth on the snow without shoes or wearing a leather hat in the sun. Regardless, he had to leave Beijing.

Yet, since moving here, things have only gotten worse.

After moving into the pavilion room, he continued to struggle. In the eyes of his neighbors, he was the local idiot. Although Wuyijin was a hardworking person, it seemed people just couldn't help thinking of him that way here. Just like how it is hard to avoid thinking that human beings are vile, gradually embracing the loneliness and boredom of our own liv es.

Weekly as a regular contributor, there wouldn’t be a problem living off of the manuscript fees. Once there was money, wouldn’t the trivial things finally become easy to handle? But he couldn’t write! The only things on his mind were his distressed emotions.

Under the pavilion room is the kitchen. Every morning, once around midday, just about every evening, and even on some quiet afternoons, he would hear the sound of the rattling teapot interspersed with the grotesque sneers of men and women. These sounds distinctly entered the pavilion room, bringing the stench and smoke of frying tea oil in with them. For the imprisoned and lonely Wuyijun, there was truly no amount of patience that could get him used to these things. So, whenever he 间 (tingzijian): a small room underneath a balcony or staircase

In addition, the financial disturbance caused by the flirtatious behavior and material splendor of women made him realize this was not a city for the poor and single.

“This is a prison,” he often thought.

Wuyijun’s house in Shanghai is a pavilion 2 room, the smallest room in the house. A bed, desk, and chair were set up in the room. In the corner, two worn out cloth boxes were stacked. The floor space was even smaller than the bed.

2 亭子

His thoughts raced.

He thought, “This place is absolutely unlivable!”

tiptoed down the sloped stairs alone, quietly opened the kitchen door, and quietly headed down an alley. He suddenly felt a strange sensation turn into a thought, “Do I look like a criminal sneaking around like this?” The silence of slumber surrounded him, pr oviding no answer. As he reached the alleyway exit, he saw a few haggard men and women next to the portable stove. Some were standing around, some were buying water.

For monetary reasons, Wuyijun left his pavilion room first thing in the Hemorning.quietly

He walked to the road. At the beginning of February, the weather was still quite cold. The morning wind was filled with refreshing strength. This

would hear that sound or smell that odor, he would feel something of a mixture of distress and loathing all at once.

He opened the only window in his room, which looked into the parlor of another house. From time to time, bursts of black soot would rise out of a chimney, follow the wind, and drift in through the open window. As a result, the only place to circulate air was often closed shut. One time, because the air reeked of tea oil, the entire pavilion room was shrouded in a foggy mist. Wuyijun opened the window again and looked outside. Unfortunately, he saw mankind’s disgraceful show in the parlor next door, a couple making love, in the nude. This irritated him. It was as if he himself felt their shame and humiliation.

At dawn, the strange sound of metal wheels rolling on the stones carried all the way to the window of the pavilion room. The indecipherable, extremely coarse and brash melody rang out from far away. Next, the sounds of pouring and washing and their associated smells rushed in. Wuyijun became worried that the dirty air would cause him to develop lung disease

A tram arrived, but not the right one. He directed his eyes back out to the road, both sides of which were lined with imposing mansions, arrogantly and powerfully entrenched like the motionless giants of legends. He thought to himself, “What happens in there each day? Don’t the sickest crimes happen behind the most expensive doors? It’s probably quite Then,common.”he

refreshing feeling spread throughout his body all at once, making him think, “Besides the heat of passion, all else is cold.”

aspired to do something that would make him feel good, something he has never done before. A tram’s bell rang again as it approached. Looking at the number, it was the right one. He boarded behind the second person in line.

He silently reflected on that. He passed yet another wide street and arrived at the tram waiting area.

In turn, many previously dormant memories concealed within him began to stir. Temporary happiness and long lasting sadness, all types of emotions were competing with one another to produce a clear memory “Chewingfirst.

He felt like an old leather coat that had just entered a pawn shop.

The vibrations of the tram brought him back to his original state, one of perplexing intangible bewilderment: his own observation. The result of this observation caused, once again, a shift back to pessimism. He thought, “What is the purpose of living? Why even endure all of the world’s hardships alone? If you endure it for others, then you must not love yourself; if you endure it for yourself, then how is this suffering good for yourself?”

the bitterness of life on an empty stomach... so then… doesn’t that give my life meaning?”

gained a new type of understanding. Excited and determined, he silently said: “Amidst hardship, true life is born. This is why I want to Solive!”he

He also thought, “This basic work is clearly pointless. How could someone even be convinced to follow some generals into battle and wave their flag?” Work is work after all, and what do you get from others? Sympathy? Advice? Neither! Just the constants of jealousy, unprovoked slander, and intentionally or unintentionally titles of ridicule from certain parties or cliques.

“Who wants to live in a utopia anyways? A comfortable life just makes you numb and emotionless. Why not live a life full of thrilling deprivation? Give up everything just to build the foundation of that utopia!” These thoughts encouraged him.

thought about his works, the manuscript fee, as well as trivial issues like food.

Wuyijun was entertaining his own thoughts for what felt like a long while, yet less than ten minutes had gone by. The tram stopped at the side of the clocktower. Many people squeezed out of the tram, many people squeezed in. Wuyijin found himself a recipient of both squeezings,

Suddenly, those dusky and gloomy thoughts dissipated like an evening mist. The only thing on his mind was the courage to keep living, shining as brilliantly as the morning sun. He was dumbfounded: “In an instant, how could my thoughts on life sway between these two extremes so Heeasily!”almost

Thinking more, he slowly became truly discouraged. By thinking that it was impossible to find any sort of joy in life, life began to have less and less meaning. Society, unfortunately, was not built for this type of person.

So the resistance against this society begins.

“In that case, can I borrow a piece of paper, I’ll leave a message.”

“Can’t say.”

Wuyijun hesitated.

“Neither are here. So what’s the matter?” His gaze as light as his speech.

“No! Tell me. What do you want?”

At that moment, a customer came in through the big door. The employee walked over. He stood beside the cliff of bookshelves thinking, frustratedly searching as if he walked into the wilderness alone, all by himself.

“Who are you looking for?” said the handsome young man, one of the attractive employees.

“Shuxing Publishing House” was printed on a banner in purple and blue characters. It flapped in the breeze on the other side of the street.

He followed the complicated hastily written directions in the “Street Guide” to arrive at Qipan Street. On this street, Wuyijun looked around silently, like an eagle looking for prey. He was worried he would not see the sign of Shuxing Publishing House.

“The editor or the manager...”

“What time will they be in?”

eventually stumbling through the blanket of pedestrians and vehicles reaching the side of the road.

Wuyijun secretly rejoiced. Still not completely at ease, he entered the store and fished out his hand written business card.

“Oh! You are Mr. Wuyi. it is an honor to finally meet you!”

Wuyijun felt like a disgrace before even entering the store. It humiliated him to even take out the letter of recommendation from his friend everyone calls “the General” and hand it to the editor and manager of the publishing house, Mr. San Mu.

Yet to his amazement, Mr. San Mu gave him a full smile and humbly read the letter while saying: “Please have a seat.” There actually wasn’t a single seat to be seen.

Tonight, Wuyijun painstakingly wrote a collection of small novels and a long preface.

Wuyijun felt himself to be in an awkward situation.

He carried his sorrowful mood out of the publishing house.

“In total it is 60,000 characters, not counting the preface, this should be worth at least 150 yuan. With that, I could leave Shanghai, or even return to Beijing, both would be possible.” These thoughts were the cause of another restless night.

The loneliness and coldness of this situation immediately made Wuyijun feel as if he were about to cry, shifting his thoughts to his leaden and gloomy life.

Once again, an attractive employee took the letter and walked away. Wuyijun’s mind became unsettled. It was as if he were having a premonition that everything that could go wrong would.

In the afternoon of the next day, the bright and multicolored lights of all shapes and sizes were shining. Wuyijun made his way to Wangping Jie. Shops on both sides of the street were beautifully decorated, making the street look distinctly alien. Yet, it was easy to see the heroic and majestic characters of “Xiayun Publishing House” on the sign.

Wuyijun felt too embarrassed to reply. Mr. San Mu, the editor manager, continued to read the letter.

“And your work?”

Mr. San Mu spoke again.

“There is a bit of a resemblance.”

“The letter is pretty short, is it really worth that much reading?” Wuyijun thought to himself.

“Oh great...” Mr. San Mu appeared to think deeply for a moment, “but as far as readers are concerned, works on love and sexuality are fairly popular. These types of books are all but destined to be best sellers, with thousands of second and third editions being printed. You see, we still have a business to run here. We can’t buy 1,000 copies of something that will never sell. Although this has high artistic value, filled from cover to cover with deep and profound depictions,” Mr. San Mu wrinkled his brows tightly, “this just will not work! Actually, works on love and sexuality, as long as they are well written, there’s no reason they can’t be written, am I right? Ok, this work, tonight I will read it... Mr. Wuyi, am I keeping you?

“This new work, is the style similar to Limes?”

Wuyijun made a supreme effort to think, yet he could not find the words to hazard an answer. He was forced to smile, silently knowing that his heart was full of feelings of depression and monotony.

Wuyijun, embarrassed, handed over his manuscript. “Great!” Mr. San Mu said, taking the manuscript. “Your work Limes, the collection of novels, I should get started on reading that. I think China’s present literary circles are so... dull. This is the kind of work that needs to be produced, something that no one has read before... Am I right? China’s literary circles are totally dull!”

As he arrived at the center of the street, Wuyijun suddenly felt his entire body liberated. The awkwardness, depression, humiliation, and repression in his heart dissipated.

at her with infinite sadness and sorrow and a sense of repression weighing on him. This woman was in a completely different universe than him and yet he wanted to hug her and pour out his heart to Wuyijunher.

3 野鸡 (

Yet anxiety quietly began to seep into his heart, making him feel their gloomy desperation. In the eyes of that editor, his book isn’t worth the paper it would be printed on.

Slowly, he became completely dejected. Wuyijun walked down the stone path with second-hand clothes stores on either side, ignoring a young woman wearing a red silk jacket, trying to secretly stand underneath a telephone pole, showing that she is a pheasant 3 that anyone is allowed to Wuyijunravage.looked

Do you have something to attend to? Coming to Shanghai for two days is good too. It’s a pity that the new world belongs to the soldiers of foreign countries! Yet the Great World amusement park also has Didu Young Women’s Performance Troop. Mr. Wuyi, have you been there? You should make your way around, people who write have to see what they write about, am I right?” Mr. San Mu gave an almost imperceptible look of tiredness as he dismissed his guest.

“Great, see you tomorrow!” Heading to the door, he said that phrase with excessive affection.

“As happy as a pardoned prisoner!” he thought.

wanted to scream, “Everything about your physical appearance will always be insulted! Everything about my mental state will always be yeji): euphemism for unlicensed prostitute

insulted! Our fates are equally lamentable, or maybe mine is better than Contraryyours!”

The next day, he woke up especially early.

He became irate.

“Rain’s coming,” he suddenly thought, “I’d better go!” and closed the window. Before he could, the wind blew the rain at him through the window, causing him to shiver helplessly.

He lay back down on the bed, keeping his eyes open so the shadows of dull life continuously appeared before him. He suddenly realized that a young person should not have had to endure this much.

“Really?” he thought “In this world, instead of enjoying my fleeting youth as a young person should, I became something of a lonely monk that no one seems to care about. Forgotten by all. Should I just live the rest of my days quietly and then die quietly too?”

to what was said, Wuyijun knew that the work he gave Xiayun Publishing House would never be accepted no matter what changes he made. Yet in this gray area, it was as if a shining ray of hope was blinding him. “Well, there has to be a chance,” he thought. So he made it seem true. He hoped, knowing perfectly well this hope was hopeless.

Looking out the window, he saw a low cloudy sky threatening to crush each house. The sky was full of clouds almost the same color as the smoke on the windows of each house: black. He thought, “This is my life?” He gazed out the window with an expressionless look of infinite Soonmelancholy.afterthe clouds appeared, a drizzle began to fall.

Wuyijun left through the door of the pavilion room.

He thought, “Torturously. That’s the way I’ll live.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he finally thought, “just go, maybe it’s already afternoon, early is on time after all! Otherwise, just wait. Do I need to put myself through more of that?”

It’s still drizzling. It hasn’t let up and it seems like it won’t ever stop.

But as soon as he thought of the work he gave that unscrupulous businessman to appraise, to decide on the destiny of that collection of novels, he felt ashamed and embarrassed.

Wuyijun became anxious. There were no rays of sun. No clocks or watches. The sky was silent, dark, and gray from beginning to end. It was impossible to know exactly how much time had passed.

He walked over to the window several times. Outside the window, it was completely dark. Rain leaked off of every house, either hitting another sheet of roof tiles or the cement ground, producing the carefree sound of the flow of water that fills people’s hearts with boredom, loneliness, and coldness at the same time.

Yet the absolute poverty spread before his eyes and slowly turned his thoughts toward hope. He suddenly remembered Mr. San Mu. The impression Mr. San Mu gave him was so bad that it made him never want to go back. But, for money, and Wuyijun knowing that that was his last and only option, wronged himself, went again, and suffered horribly. It was like listening to the puppet preaching to the children before the actual sermon. Wuyijun used all the patience he could muster to get through it, just waiting.

Gray shadows of life flocked into his mind.

Wuyijun felt frustrated.

As he exited the tram, the drizzle of rain began to pick up. After two streets, his robe had turned from gray to black in the rain.

Wuyijun carried himself into Xiayun Publishing House.

Yet Wuyijun didn’t understand he was being mocked. “Is Mr. San Mu in?” he asked. He suddenly saw the clock on the wall saying it was eleven, he was slightly early.

The employee continued, “Our manager said our boss doesn’t want your manuscript. That type of stuff doesn’t sell and we have to sustain our losses. On the bright side, our manager really admired your work, you know that, right?”

“This is completely ruined!” Lowering his head, he silently looked at Athimself.this time, the only thing he could think of was the boundless and unfathomable meaning of life.

As he headed to the tram, Wuyijun remembered Wangping Jie, he remembered Xiayun Publishing House, he remembered Mr. San Mu...

“Oh ” the employee who recognized him let out with surprise, laughing. “You came? In this weather? Didn’t drive?” he continued.

The old, once fixed, leather shoes stepped into a street full of mud facing the ice cold windchill head on. A dense mix of rain and wind wrapped around him whipping against his gray cotton robe. Suddenly, a car sped toward him splashing the thick muddy water of the street on him without missing a single spot on his robe.

“Not here. He went to Xihu to view the cherry blossoms! The cherry blossoms in Xihu are incredibly beautiful!”

Gradually, every kind of emotion came to oppress him. All Wuyijun wanted to do was cry. He hadn’t yet. His eyes glanced at the window: coarse rain is very distinct, but he could have mistaken this constant downpour for his own tears.

He ignored the rain getting heavier as it hit his body on his way back to the pavilion room.

Wuyijun grabbed his manuscript back. He was imprinted with a deep scar as if that insult had just cut him with a knife.

The pavilion room was once again inundated with the stench and smoke of frying tea oil. He had the thought that other people must have eaten lunch by now. He opened the window, and the rather large line of rain began to wet the floor of his room at an angle. This made him recall that his cotton robe had been soaked. So he closed the window, took off the robe, laid it flat on the bed, and stupidly inhaled the scent of tea oil to pacify his empty stomach.

He picked up the manuscript repeating, “He really admired your w ”

“Cry! Cry as hard as you can! But don’t let anyone see!” a voice in his mind called out.

“I’ll starve like this,” he thought. “When will they finally find my corpse?”

His emotions continued to stir so much that he almost fainted. He began to dream: he saw many dark hearts biting what could be a beautiful life.

As he passed through the kitchen, the sneers of the free spirited men and women were mixing and mingling, using their shrill voices to hum the purely sensual Yangzhou folk tune. They saw him. They silently deliberated with a few glances and decided to approach him. Soon after, they gleefully took part in harassing him. “That poor devil!” “Poorer than the ones by the docks!” “He used our bathroom! Is he allowed to do that?” Yet, Wuyijun silently climbed up the sloped stairs.

Two days after the rain stopped, the asphalt road was blown dry. It looked dry. Both sides were lined with the dull uneven shadows of trees. The crescent moon placed in the middle of a sky full of stars shined faintly between the falling leaves of the black locust tree. All the western buildings resembled dead giants. The water of the Yangtze flowed at its

I hope this letter finds you well. Your work Limes is not doing well on the market. Six months after publication, it has yet to sell 200 copies. (We will reprint the leftover copies. If you compare your work to The Second Type of Water at Beautiful Publishing House, you’ll see the difference!) As such, the section on the Settlement of Royalties is very difficult to follow.

He snapped out of it. The kid he lived with was knocking on his door shouting: “Letter! Letter!” This letter was his reply from “Shuxing Publishing House.”

Mr. Wuyi:

Publishing House

We are aware you wish to publish a collection of novels to be printed in our shop, which we were very pleased to hear. Unfortunately, our shop is not able to honor this request due to our current economic situation. We have returned your draft in this letter. We hope you can understand. We wish you the best of luck with your Shuxingwork.

“This is great!” he thought. “My last lifeline has finally been cut off! No more ‘hope’ will be able to torment me!”

This letter should have been a huge shock, but Wuyijun wasn’t shocked. He finished reading the letter. He felt a knot untie in his mind, and pressure lifted off his shoulders.

But at last, he finally realized he was out of food.

So he looked at his surroundings. This entire night has been a type of hopeless misery. Tears began to fall.

“Even if,” he thought, “I have to work to live...” He lifted his head, stupidly staring at the river silently flowing by at its own pace.

“I just want to live!” he shouted until he lost his voice.

wandered in the night.

natural pace. These sights and sounds brought about a calm, quiet, deep Wuyijunnight.

Due to the excitement of grieving alone, he left the pavilion room in a confused stupor. He let his feet carry him past many sloped and wide streets, unconsciously heading toward the riverside of Huangpu Beach.

He repeatedly thought, “The result of this labor? Is it just more labor?”

The Role of Michitsuna no Haha’s Attendants in the KageroNikki

by Alexa Drescher

Because social conventions during the Heian period deemed expressions of anger, jealousy, and other strongly negative emotions as unladylike, women of high status found it difficult to take a stand against people who

The Kagero Nikki, written in Heian era Japan by Michitsuna no Haha, is an example of Japanese nikki bungaku, or diary literature. The three volumes detail Michitsuna no Haha’s dramatic life as an aristocratic woman committed to a neglectful marriage. Across all three books of the Kagero Nikki, Michitsuna no Haha’s attendants appear to function as a form of hive mind, voicing the author’s thoughts relating to her marriage at times when she herself cannot. Because of the social conventions governing her position as a female aristocrat living during the Heian period, Michitsuna no Haha’s manner of thinking is regulated in a way her attendants are not burdened by in their own minds. The attendants’ primary role in the Kagero Nikki is observing and providing advice on Michitsuna no Haha’s relationship with her emotionally distant husband, Kaneie. Despite their lowly status, the attendants consistently play a significant role in driving Michitsuna no Haha to action. In fact, it is because of their status that they are able to voice their opinions directly, as they are able to make suggestions and help her develop strategies to deal with Kaneie that she would otherwise be unable to propose herself. We as readers encounter numerous examples of clear differences in the manner of thinking held by aristocrats versus that of attendants throughout the Kagero Nikki, which demonstrates how important it is that Michitsuna no Haha gathers multiple perspectives on the issues she faces. As a literary device, the attendants are utilized by Michitsuna no Haha to verbalize the thoughts she would be expected to keep to herself as an aristocratic woman during the Heian period. Her attendants not only play the role of articulating her beliefs and opinions on Kaneie’s behavior, but they also show more emotion relating to her unstable marriage than she is able to publicly display herself.

1 Bargen, Doris. A Woman’s Weapon: Spirit Possession in the Tale of Genji. 1997.

2 Nalbandian, Karine. “Female Anger in the Literature of Heian Period.” Osaka University Knowledge Archive, 20 Apr. 2010. 66.

wronged them. By analyzing Heian literature featuring female characters, it is clear that expectations imposed on women forced them to express their anger in very subtle ways. Doris Bargen explores the matter of Heian social conventions in her book, A Woman’s Weapon: Spirit Possession in the Tale of Genji. She states,

The Heian court's highly stylized way of life demanded a ceremonial approach to the emotions. The court's sumptuous style required not only the submission, voluntary or coerced, of the lower classes, but also the repression of the courtier's own impulsive behavior [...] aggressive acts were concealed in a courtship ritual so refined as to almost elude us. 1

Women and men were both expected to suppress emotional outbursts during the Heian period, lest they risk developing a reputation for a lack of sophistication. However, the expectations applicable to men greatly differed from those which applied to women. In Karine Nalbandian’s article on the nature of female anger during the Heian period, she states that “one could express dissatisfaction or anger, as long as it was ‘proper’ within social convention.” 2 Though this statement is technically true, the standards for instances of “proper” emotional outbursts allowed men much more freedom to express themselves than women. Kaneie’s behavior is a prime example of this concept: at one point in the Kagero Nikki, he storms out of Michitsuna no Haha’s home, stating to his distressed son that he will never return. Not even a week following his verbally abusive behavior, Kaneie returns and is accepted by his wife back into the home, albeit begrudgingly. The social dynamic in place during the Heian period between men and women limited Michitsuna no Haha from ever making such combative statements. While men were forgiven for displays of anger, society expected “women’s emotions particularly

Following discussions with her attendants, Michitsuna no Haha took many drastic actions to express her anger and unhappiness towards Kaneie. Throughout the first volume of the Kagero Nikki, we see her left powerless and pining for her husband. As Nalbandian states in her article, “a woman could be sad and melancholic, since these emotions were in accord with the fashionable ‘mono no aware’ atmosphere.”

5 Nalbandian, 62.

4 As a member of the aristocracy, Michitsuna no Haha was raised under the weight of these expectations. The concept of emotional suppression had been ingrained in her mind since her birth, which later governed how she was able to think about managing her unhappy marriage with Kaneie.

3 Women who did not suppress their emotions were viewed as “freakish.”

4 Ibid.

requests that Michitsuna no Haha sew him a new set of robes in preparation for a wrestling meet, she is unsure how to respond. Clothing production, as discussed by Carole Cavanaugh in an article on women and textiles during the Heian period, was exclusively relegated to women. In Cavanaugh’s words, “the provision or withholding of textiles was a weapon, parallel to sexual favors, that women could use

3 Sarra, Edith. Fictions of Femininity: Literary Inventions of Gender in Japanese Court Women Memoirs. 1999.

5 Given these societal expectations placed upon women, Michitsuna no Haha’s way of thinking prevented her from conceiving of ways to stand up for herself in an aggressive fashion. The rigid social customs which governed her life since birth render it impossible for her to conceive of rebellious acts without outside guidance. After speaking with her attendants, Michitsuna no Haha took bold actions uncharacteristic of the time to properly express her anger with her neglectful husband. Not only were there instances in which she refused to sew clothing for her husband, but she ultimately took a pilgrimage to distance herself from Kaneie due to his behavior. Both of these drastic actions, which were highly unconventional for a Heian era aristocratic woman, were prompted by discussions with her Whenattendants.Kaneie

hostile ones [to be] repressed.”

The cleverer of my women [attendants] agreed that he was being most tiresome. “We will surely hear what a

to hold male autonomy in check.”

“This is very fine,” she said. “Over where he is playing these days, there is probably no one who can sew a stitch. That is what happens when you go around collecting noisy, incompetent females.”

In the Seventh Month, at about the time of wrestling meet, [Kaneie] sent over material for two sets of robes and asked me to have them sewn. I discussed the matter with my mother.

7 Ibid., 601.

8 Michitsuna no Haha. The Kagerō Nikki; Journal of a 10th Century Noblewoman. Translated by Edward Seidensticker, 1955. 40.

6 Cavanaugh, Carole. “Text and Textile: Unweaving the Female Subject in Heian Writing.” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, vol. 4, no. 3, 1996. 600.

6 At the time, clothing had the “capacity [...] to advertise and enforce rank,” 7 which lent importance to the women who produced it. From a modern perspective, deciding whether or not to sew clothes for one’s husband seems to be a trivial matter. However, for Michitsuna no Haha, Kaneie’s request for new robes was a rare moment in which she held more power than he.

In the preceding months, Michitsuna no Haha wrote extensively on her dissatisfaction with her husband’s distant behavior. She writes that Kaneie’s visits became “infrequent,” and that she “began to feel listless and absent minded as [she] had never been before.”

8 At this point in her diary, Michitsuna no Haha is struggling with the fact that Kaneie is consistently taking his carriage past her home on his way to spend time with another lover. Her growing unhappiness with the state of her marriage leaves her wondering whether she should take a bold stand against Kaneie. She discusses the matter with her mother and her attendants. The opinions held by both parties are greatly influenced by their social status. Michitsuna no Haha details her discussion with her mother and her attendants as follows:

Cavanaugh’s article makes clear the social importance of clothing during the Heian period. She argues that the creation of clothing, as it was left entirely in the hands of women, was one of the few forms of power they possessed over their male counterparts at the time. As such, Michitsuna no Haha’s decision to refuse to sew Kaneie’s new robes carries immense importance. However, it is evident that she did not come to this decision on her own.

In Sonja Artzen’s translation of the Kagero Nikki, the advice offered by Michitsuna no Haha’s mother carries a different nuance than that of Edward Seidensticker’s translation. Instead of using the phrase, “that is fine,” she tells her daughter, “how regrettable. There must be no one over there who can do these.” 10 Though this statement appears vastly different from the statement included in the Seidensticker translation, it carries an important nuance which differs from the advice offered by Michitsuna no Haha’s attendants. In the Artzen translation, Michituna no

9 Michitsuna no Haha, translated by Edward Seidensticker. 42

bungle they have made of it.” Indeed we did hear, after we sent them back, that the robes had to be farmed out widely in search of competent seamstresses. 9

10 Michitsuna no Haha The Kagero Diary: A Woman’s Autobiographical Text from Tenth Century Japan Translated by Sonja Artzen, 1997. 81.

In the passage, Michitsuna no Haha receives advice from two very different parties. First, she speaks with her mother, whose status is naturally superior to that of the attendants. Due to her status, the idea of committing any form of social faux pas would never cross her mind as a viable option. As a result, it appears that Michitsuna no Haha’s mother reasons that Kaneie’s request for clothing is reasonable in spite of his distant and unfair behavior towards his wife. During the Heian period, husbands were expected to have multiple wives, which rendered it socially acceptable for them to be somewhat distant from their less favored women. Because of this social structure, Michitsuna no Haha is advised by her mother to serve Kaneie’s every whim regardless of whether or not he deserves it.

Haha’s mother refrains from suggesting that her daughter outright refuse to sew the garments, instead choosing to merely acknowledge why Kaneie chose Michitsuna no Haha to sew his clothing over any of his other women. In this case, examining what Michitsuna no Haha’s mother did not say expresses a world of difference between the way upper class aristocratic women and female attendants approached socially charged problems. Because Michitsuna no Haha’s mother was not the one to suggest that her daughter ignore Kaneie’s request for new robes, we as readers can recognize that the class difference between the attendants and Michitsuna no Haha’s immediate family governs their manner of Thethinking.“cleverer”

attendant, however, has a very different view. Because of her lower status, she is able to conceive of committing social faux pas under special circumstances. Michitsuna no Haha’s mother, contrary to the female attendant, was raised to be completely subservient to her husband. For women born higher on the social ladder, failure to follow social conventions and serve one’s husband brought great risk to the stability of their status. A lowly attendant serving Michitsuna no Haha however, has much less to risk. Because of her status, the attendant is able to voice controversial and unconventional opinions at a much lower risk to herself than Michitsuna no Haha’s mother, which allows her to push Michitsuna no Haha to send the robes back to Kaneie without having them properly sewn. Like her mother, Michitsuna no Haha was unable to conceive of refusing to sew the robes due to her upbringing. It was only at the urging of her attendant that she was able to take a bold stand against her husband and refuse to have his clothing sewn. Without her attendant’s advice, Michitsuna no Haha would have struggled immensely with deciding whether or not to snub her husband’s socially acceptable

Soonrequest.after

Michitsuna no Haha’s refusal to sew her husband’s garments, she becomes despondent due to her husband’s neglect. She writes that she wishes she could spend more time with him, but her lack of multiple children leaves her at a disadvantage to Kaneie’s other wives. Once again, she becomes acutely aware of Kaneie’s visits to other women nearby as

behavior was odd. He could hardly have found another lady friend, I thought and I began to wonder. One of my women remarked that he seemed interested in an attendant of the late Regent, the one called Omi...

“Well, he is after someone, we can be fairly sure of that,” [her attendants] concluded, “But in any case you will not accomplish much sitting here moping, as cheerful as the last light of day. Why don’t you make a pilgrimage somewhere?” 11

she hears his carriage rolling by at all hours of the day and night. While considering her best plan of action, she again seeks advice from her attendants:...his

Following this conversation, Michitsuna no Haha ultimately decides to take a pilgrimage to clear her mind, an action that, for a woman born into such a relatively high social position, risks damage to both her own reputation and that of Kaneie. It is important to recognize that prior to speaking with her attendants, Michitsuna no Haha had only reached the stage of questioning Kaneie’s fidelity. Without the urging of her attendants, Michitsuna no Haha would have never considered the matter further, instead choosing to fall deeper into her own isolation and depression. Not only did her attendants plant the idea of a pilgrimage in her mind, but they also pushed her to take action.

Here, Michitsuna no Haha’s attendants serve as a mouthpiece for the thoughts she is unable to conceive, let alone voice. Without considering the perspective of someone less bound to social convention, Michitsuna no Haha would not have decided to leave her home without notifying her husband. In both this case and in her decision to refuse to sew robes for Kaneie, Michitsuna no Haha is influenced primarily by her attendants. They serve to not only push the plot forward, but also to allow Michitsuna no Haha, Seidensticker translation, 207.

11 Michitsuna

no Haha to open her mind to a world of possibility in which social convention plays a lesser role than she is accustomed to.

Michitsuna no Haha’s attendants also occasionally voice the innermost thoughts which she desperately wants to believe are true. When these false beliefs eventually reveal themselves as being nothing but fantasy, they grieve on her behalf, showing more dramatic displays of public emotion than Michitsuna no Haha ever could. Viewing the text as a non literal representation of Michitsuna no Haha’s life, the remarkable empathy displayed by her attendants allows the reader to better understand how she is feeling in spite of her attempts to appear unbothered by Kaneie. In this sense, Michitsuna no Haha’s attendants can be viewed as a form of distributed personhood; because she is expected to remain composed at all times due to Heian era social conventions, Michitsuna no Haha utilizes her attendants as a way to convey her emotions to the reader without appearing overly emotional.

12 Michitsuna no Haha, Artzen translation, 203.

Following a number of long, lonely days spent without Kaneie, Michitsuna no Haha finds that he has finally come to visit her. Her attendants urge her to “look as though [she] is not upset,” suggesting that Kaneie “had his reasons for staying away.” 12 From the reader’s perspective, it is obvious that Kaneie had no extenuating circumstances which prevented his visits. His long standing track record of neglect towards his wife suggests that his absence on this occasion was simply another instance of his taking Michitsuna no Haha for granted. At this point in her marriage, Michitsuna no Haha should be forced to recognize this pattern of neglect. However, she desperately wants to believe that, maybe this time, Kaneie was legitimately tied up with other obligations. Her attendants reinforce this sense of denial by voicing what Michitsuna no Haha needs to believe about the state of her marriage, and thus channel Michitsuna no Haha’s innermost feelings. Their presence in the diary is crucial for readers, as their statements and rationalizations for Kaneie’s behavior highlights the true degree of Michitsuna no Haha’s suffering, even when she cannot explicitly admit that pain herself.

Not all of the attendants’ comments serve to validate Michitsuna no Haha’s false beliefs, however. On some occasions, the attendants force Michitsuna no Haha to confront her reality in spite of the pain which accompanies it. She writes,

In addition to validating Michitusna no Haha’s denial of Kaneie’s neglect, the attendants put on displays of emotion which reflect Michitsuna no Haha’s devastation more than her own actions do. Following Kaneie’s visit mentioned in the previous paragraph, Michitsuna no Haha begins to wonder if this particular visit could be “the last time [she] would ever see him.” 14 In spite of her obvious distress, Michitsuna no Haha sheds no tears publicly. As Emily Hillman states in her study on displays of emotion during the Heian period, women were held to a strict emotional standard during times of grief. She writes that women in Heian era literature were often scolded for “excessive weeping,” as “too many tears could bring about misfortune.” However, she also notes that “men are never scolded

14 Michitsuna no Haha, Artzen translation, 205.

One day, as I sat looking out at the rain, knowing that today there was less chance than usual of seeing him, my thoughts turned to the past... it had seemed once that wind and rain could not keep him away... I heard someone going into the south apartment, a suitor no doubt. Feigning a calm which I did not feel, I remarked to an old attendant that it was indeed gallant of him to come out on such a bad night. “Yes,” she replied, “but the Prince used to come on worse nights than this.” 13

Michitsuna no Haha, Seidensticker translation, 93.

In this case, the attendant forces Michitsuna no Haha to hear the thoughts she so desperately attempts to silence. As such, the attendants are not merely speaking in an effort to please Michitsuna no Haha. By voicing the thoughts Michitsuna no Haha is denying, the attendants allow the reader to understand the complex nature of her feelings towards her marriage.

15 This double standard particularly applied to aristocratic women, as their primary concerns focused on maintaining a good reputation.

The attendants, though easily overlooked, are a tool the author utilizes to give readers a more intimate look into the inner workings of her mind. The social conventions which govern the lives of aristocratic women during the Heian era prevent Michitsuna no Haha from stepping out of line. It is only at the suggestions of her attendants that she is able to muster up the resolve to go against common social expectations and refuse to sew garments for her husband or take a pilgrimage away from him. The difference in status between aristocratic women and the attendants allows Michitsuna no Haha access to a new world of possibility when responding to her neglectful husband. The attendants do not carry the burden of a high social status, which allows them much more flexibility in how they display their emotions. As a result, many of the interactions between Michitsuna no Haha and her attendants can be likened to having a conversation with another version of herself. As a writing technique, including the perspectives of the attendants in Michitsuna no Haha’s story allows her to speak much more freely without risking her reputation. However, it is crucial to recognize that the attendants are not

for similar behavior.”

15 Hillman, Emily. “‘Never Had I Known Such Sorrow’: Death and Emotional Standards in Heian Japan.” 2018.

16 Michitsuna no Haha, Artzen translation, 205.

As Michitsuna no Haha is in a clear state of distress after watching Kaneie leave her home for what feels to be the last time, her attendants “couldn’t help crying” on her behalf. 16 Though Michitsuna no Haha is the one who is overwhelmed with pain, it is her attendants who demonstrate the emotion through tears. Due to their lesser social position, the attendants do not feel pressured to maintain their composure to the same degree as Michitsuna no Haha. Throughout the Kagero Nikki, tears relating to Michitsuna no Haha’s unhappy marriage come from her attendants if she is not completely on her own. As a literary device, this case demonstrates that Michitsuna no Haha’s attendants serve the crucial role of conveying the feelings she works to keep hidden.

merely telling Michitsuna no Haha what she wants to hear. They empathize with her on an incredibly deep level, both agreeing with the thoughts she needs to believe and voicing what she knows deep down but cannot bear to believe. Without the presence of the attendants in the Kagero Nikki, the reader would have a much more difficult time piecing together Michitsuna no Haha’s true feelings. The attendants inspire Michitsuna no Haha in ways which push the plot of the Kagero Nikki forward, while also providing a way for the author to safely convey her pain hidden underneath an artificial calm.

Come, come, my sweet, my dear broken nation Venīte! Sing, pray, read, write, relax, and Join me in eternal isolation

You can get lost but you must take action Respect your time and self and take my hand Join me in eternal isolation

Stop and relax. Ignore and take a stand Come, come, my sweet, my dear nation

Then I kneel, begging for absolution

What for? Listen! Heed my words of caution Swim in the abyss, claw for precious land Come, come, my sweet, my dear nation

In times where we strive for our ambition

Isolation

2020 in Review

by Joanne Chang

Thank you. Being here with you is so grand Come, come, my sweet, my dear nation Join me in eternal isolation

Friction creates fire and so we ran. Our memories often leave me upset. This is my journey, I understand. Some things I wish I could forget.

I wonder if you’ll ever hear this. Friction creates fire and so we ran. Lucky for you, ignorance is bliss. This is my journey, I understand.

Our memories often leave me upset. Has our time apart changed anything? Some things I wish I could forget. I don’t hate you. Hate is a scary thing.

Journey to the West

Has our time apart changed anything? Lucky for you, ignorance is bliss. I don’t hate you. Hate is a scary thing. I wonder if you’ll ever hear this.

Names are a fickle thing, aren’t they? A concept riddled with contradictions.

I tell you now, and promise me you’ll try. Try to remember, try to say exactly what I said. Inflections are important, they define a word. So, what is my name?

But I’ll remember. Who am I to you if You don't know my name?

Then it all comes crashing down. I have many names, one for each occasion. One for each language, one for each person. What is my name?

It’s not for you, no, it’s for others. But you tie it to yourself. You tie it to your every cell. How could you not be you?

Why must you tease me so? You know me! Right? No, I’m not her. Not that one either. It’s okay, you’ll forget me getting annoyed.

What’s My Name?

Simran Singh, Lisbon, Portugal

Common Magic and Folklore in the Trial of Tempel Anneke

In 1663 in the village of Harxbüttel at Brunswick, Germany, an old woman named Tempel Anneke was brought to court on several counts of witchcraft. She was known for being a “knowledgeable woman” 1 to whom the villagers went for medical advice and cures despite being an eccentric nuisance who drank excessively. According to one witness, she had not been to church for twenty years. With that and the accusations of witnesses, she was quite the suspicious figure for the court. However, was there some truth behind some of the witnesses’ testimonies? Aside from the evidently preposterous notions of devils forwarded by the elite court’s understanding of magic, various proceedings were mentioned by the accused and accusers alike in regard to certain “magical” practices and the local populace’s conception of magic. These practices followed a theme similar to recorded practices of the Middle Ages. Tempel Anneke’s “magic” was a continuation of this form of medieval common magic, as can be seen in her healing rituals and forms of sympathetic magic.

1 Morton, Peter Alan, ed. The Trial of Tempel Anneke: Records of a Witchcraft Trial in Brunswick, Germany, 1663, Second ed., 2017. 4.

2 Ibid., 12 17, 62, 47, 63, 62.

by Demian Choi

Tempel Anneke played a wide variety of roles as a healer, midwife, and veterinarian, all of which involved the use of “common magic.” For instance, she allegedly treated the Bahrensdorffische by prescribing herbs cooked in wine, 2 treated Hennig Roleffes’s genital disease by sealing the holes with “resin, wax and boar lard,” gave the miller dried carline thistle and angelica for his leg trouble, burned a sheep to the crisp to feed amongst the healthy sheep, mentioned that peacock feathers helped people “without sense in their head,” and aided “a soldier’s whore” in giving birth. These practices are reminiscent of older medieval treatments such as those found in the Wolfsthurn handbook, which advised rubbing the eyes with bat’s blood for night vision and told of

3 Kieckhefer, Richard. Magic in the Middle Ages, Second ed., 2014. 67, 83. 4 Morton, 49.

see, there is a clear trend in the local, earthy use of various materials that an elite scholar or nobleman would not have bothered trying, as opposed to the agricultural likes of Harxbüttel. Based on these witness accounts and past medieval treatments, there is some truth behind Tempel Anneke’s techniques, and they demonstrate a continuation of local traditions. In a small village without an educated physician on hand (the court had to write to a doctor for his medical opinion on Anneke’s practices), healers such as Tempel Anneke, who relied on common magic passed down locally for generations, would have been the people to seek for advice. The established medical university knowledge of certified physicians, as can be seen in Doctor Giesler's reaction to Tempel Anneke's practices, viewed the local treatments as illogical and incapable of healing. An official physician would not have incorporated liturgies and saints into medical practice, yet there is a continuation of the tradition of common magic when comparing the Wolfsthurn handbook with Tempel Anneke, the former bringing up the story of St. Peter’s toothache being treated by Christ and the latter invoking “John and the Holy Evangelists” to “pluck a branch in Paradise” in treating some chicks. 4 This continuation of using saints and the Divinity in these prayers that combine elements of both religion and natural magic to treat different ailments is a demonstration of common magic still being

artemisia’s ability to ward off evil. Other, more unpleasant treatments from a fourteenth century Low German Latin miscellany include prescribing the “testicles of a stag or bull,” 3 ants’ eggs in a woman’s bath, and mixing an herb with earthworms in a husband’s food as potential aphrodisiacs, with another mentioning evidently folkloric advice of mashing up earthworms in stale ale to treat jaundice so as to not disgust the patient. At one point, Tempel Anneke mentioned using Heilebarts, stork’s dung, to treat the lame, and cow’s dung mixed with vinegar for healthy cows, while another medieval text mentions using cat’s feces for Asbaldness.onecan

in fruition at the time of Tempel Anneke’s trial, and is echoed by her

Beyondaccount.

5 A fragment of this belief resides with Tempel Anneke, albeit with a different sympathetic significance. The clearest example of sympathetic magic is the pegging of the thief in which Tempel Anneke allegedly frightened a thief by hitting a plug in a drilled hole loose, pulling it out, throwing it out from “an old shirt into the yard,” 6 and declaring, “There you stick in the name of God.” From these examples, one sees a symbology placed upon particular objects that is then enforced through certain means, all these being demonstrations of common magic that have roots in the past.

7 Ibid., 85.

6 Morton, 23.

the use of herbs, Tempel Anneke performed a strange healing ritual that consisted of having a boy lie down on the earth and planting things at his arms, feet, and head. Aside from being a potential ritual with ancient folkloric origins, especially considering how similar it is to an Anglo Saxon charm regarding the use of blessing turfs for the land’s fertility, she demonstrated a form of sympathetic magic, a type of “magic” based on the symbolic and mimetic use of objects and actions to bring about a desired effect. More themes of sympathetic magic are evident when looking into other accounts from both her and the witnesses such as one scenario that regards the mandrake as a symbolic source of good luck in the household that must not move out of the house. In the Medieval Era and before, the mandrake was “thought to have a sort of personality, [so that] those who uprooted it to make use of its power feared that it would take vengeance on them.”

5 Kieckhefer, 13 14.

In contrast to Tempel Anneke’s practices were the stereotypes of magic amongst the elites and locals. The folkloric viewpoint of the Devil was exemplified by characters such as Til Kleppersack, a local nickname for the Devil that Tempel Anneke mentioned after being tortured, confessing to having conducted magical practices and rituals with him. While Tempel Anneke never actually engaged in mass sabbaths or sexual “unnatural ways” 7 with the Devil following the elite stereotype, the

8 Ibid.,

mention of that specific name is an indication of folkloric belief surrounding Til Kleppersack in the village. Other village stereotypes of magic associated with a person who “knows how to bring back lost things and cures animals with magical potions” 8 allowed Tempel Anneke to make a living in the village despite being eccentric. Only when she was being confronted by the witnesses did she confess to having done certain acts in detail, such as mentioning the mandrake root or pegging a thief. On the contrary, the court did not conform to this local understanding of common magic but rather subscribed to elite stereotypes and understandings of magic that had been developed over the centuries by literature such as the Munich handbook, one of many necromantic grimoires created by certain elites and clergy. To the court’s eyes, engaging in these seemingly innocent common practices, or really any form of magic, meant dealing with the Devil and therefore participating in an evil collective seeking to endanger society. Although this secular court checked with other authorities such as university trained doctors on the legitimacy of Tempel Anneke’s practices, the likes of Doctor Giesler dismissed them as illogical and incapable of working. The only way for them to have even worked was through magical means, and therefore through conversing with demons. Thus, though the local stereotypes of magic helped Tempel Anneke make a living, the court’s understanding of magic prohibited her common magic as one dealing with the Devil and being a threat to society at large.

In short, the various conducts of Tempel Anneke regarding healing and sympathetic magic have origins in medieval common magic. Living in a rural village without doctors, she was one of the few healers who the locals could go to for cures, as well as finding lost objects, divination, and veterinary advice. The local stereotypes developed a sense of awe and fear about her that helped her to make a living doing such activities, despite how much of a town nuisance she could be. Unfortunately, the elite court’s judgment viewed her magic as one working with the Devil and his minions that could undermine and destroy the whole of society, regardless of how beneficial it might seem. The elite medical authority of universities would be of no help to her, for she was merely a backward, 5.

old healer in the countryside whose cures could not have worked unless by such magical and therefore diabolical means. In the end, although she was not burned alive, Tempel Anneke met her end by the swish of a sword before the New Year.

Tears shed for the love you share with the world Most merciful I see in all your blessings embodying your love in signs for me

Should my eyes be shut they cease all but seeing you, Illustrations of the greatest fabric weave in my mind a picture of your love to define for me

I fill my days with the words of your voice, Words that fit in my heart as if written by design for me

when there isn’t a whisper of warmth in me I find comfort in the light your love can shine on me

When the mouth is parched of the sweet taste of your words I look up towards your path of great incline made for me

Fear should be rippling through the body at the sight, But it is the path to your kingdom that lets me know how you pine for me

byEmmaHardyInthewinter

Bliss lingers, though between us there is great distance For even if I drift away your love is a growing vine within me

Your Love for Me: A Ghazal

Though my clothes might be tired and my hands might be dirty, Your love in all its glory to the nines dresses me

When I walk through life it is not what I cannot do or where I cannot go For when walking in the light of your love, not one confine entangles me

A path to be guided through by words whose pages drip with honey For your words are even sweeter than ambrosia wine in me

There are those who fear death, a phenomenon which I know shall never infringe my thoughts,

The warmth of your love exists always like a shawl of a passion most divine protecting me

For it is not a stop on the line left for me

Though there’s been times where doubt has found itself at my doorstep

Until then I shall relish in the knowledge that even in the darkest nights or the coldest winters

One day there shall cease to be space between us; relieving the hardship of your distance

I know not to let it in the castle of my mind, for your love is a shrine in me

For hardship it is, even should your separation be wide as a thread, thin and fine, from me

Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky’s terrorist movement, the ‘fivesome,’ and the militia culture that enabled the kidnapping plot in Michigan rely on deceptive illusions to invigorate their conspiracies. Pyotr manipulates his revolutionary pawns on the basis that their terrorist cell is one of many, supporting others in Russia. After Shatov is murdered and Pyotr begins to lose control of the fivesome, Liputin demands, “are we the only fivesome in the world, or… there are several hundred

During October of 2020, news broke nationally that six men in Michigan had been arrested and charged for a plot to kidnap the state’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer. Seven other men were arrested alongside the six on charges of terrorism, conspiracy, and the posession of weapons. 1 Although this news reached a national audience, the majority of articles released about the arrests failed to address Michigan’s longstanding history of independent, conspiratorial militia groups, one of which, the Wolverine Watchmen, instigated the kidnapping plot. 2 This omission is significant because the culture of militia groups in Michigan nearly culminated in substantial harm to Governor Whitmer and had political implications akin to a coup. As illuminated in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Demons, ideology such as that of Michigan’s militia groups creates illusionary, attempted revolutionary movements such as the kidnapping

Bothplot.

1 Bogel Burroughs, Nicholas, et al. “F.B.I. Says Michigan Anti Government Group Plotted to Kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.” The New York Times, 8 Oct. 2020.

by Emily Yoder

The Banality of Revolution: Understanding Militia Conspiracies in Michigan via Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Demons

2 “Wolverine Watchmen, Extremist Group Implicated in Michigan Kidnapping Plot, Trained for ‘Civil War.’” Washington Post

5 “Wolverine Watchmen.”

3 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Demons: A Novel in Three Parts. 1873. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 1994. 608.

3 The movement Pyotr began disintegrates upon close inspection, which Stepan Trofimovich calls attention to: “‘It can’t be that there’s nothing more to it,’ everyone says to himself, and looks for a secret, sees a mystery, tries to read between the lines.” 4 The plots in Michigan likewise rely on convincing both the conspirators themselves and society at large of their substantiality. According to an affidavit, the goal of the Wolverine Watchmen was a “civil war leading to societal collapse.” 5 The group initially planned to storm the Michigan state capitol with armed men in order to ov erthrow the government, but abandoned the plan in favor of the kidnapping. 6 Only thirteen men were ultimately arrested; this militia group clearly did not possess the manpower or logistical skills needed to overthrow the state government. However, its viability relied on the conspirators believing that they were capable. Like the lie of a national framework of many fivesomes, the Wolverine Watchmen attempted to carry out a plot incompatible with reality.

6 Brady, Erin. “Militia Scrapped Plan to Storm Michigan Capitol, Favored Kidnapping Whitmer.” Newsweek 7 Feb. 2022

7 Dostoyevsky, 485.

The fête in Demons, a liberal, intellectual symposium encouraged by Pyotr and hosted by Yulia Mikhailovna, the wife of the governor of the province, exemplifies the foolishness of ideological, revolutionary action. Similarities between the fête and the failed uprising in Michigan provide insight into the banality of the kidnapping plot. The event utterly fails after the previously distinguished writer Karmazinov is mocked as pretentious and insufferable, before culminating in mass panic because arson was committed during the reception. 7 The fête ends with the general public furious about its high cost, lack of refreshments, and general pretentiousness: as one visitor remarks, “Gentlemen, it’s sheer deception…” 8 The event is an illusion of intellectual valor that is completely at odds with reality and any revolutionary success. The failed

8 Ibid., 482

4 Ibid., 484.

fivesomes?... So it’s one! I just knew it!”

10 Dostoyevsky, 485 486.

Both Demons and the actions of militia groups in Michigan illustrate the consequences that occur when banal, revolutionary ideology takes hold among anti establishment groups. The characters in Demons are ungrounded in any redemptive forces and ultimately fall prey to Pyotr’s scheming because they have nothing substantive within themselves that would allow them to reject his parasitic ideology. Stepan Trofimovich is one exception who is grounded by a redemptive force. He ultimately perishes from sickness, not because of the scheming like Pyotr’s victims. At the fête, Stepan fervently rejects the modernism that has preyed upon the town: “The whole mystery of their effect lies in their stupidity! […] mankind […] only cannot live without beauty…!” 10 Stepan understands that the plotting of the fivesome is a vapid illusion, and rejects their modern liberalism in favor of classical beauty. Dostoesvky thus proposes grounding oneself in tradition and beauty as an antidote to infectious ideology, which empowers Stepan alone to publicly reject the plotting of the fivesome and likely can have the same power in modern insurrections as well.

9 Beckett, Lois. “Armed Protesters Demonstrate against Covid 19 Lockdown at Michigan Capitol.” The Guardian 30 Apr. 2020

fête is very similar to the armed invasion of Michigan’s capitol that occurred as a protest against COVID 19 restrictions in April 2020. Hundreds of protestors, including members of militia groups, forced their way inside the Michigan statehouse. However, once inside, it became clear that they had no plan that would result in any tangible change. Rather, they stood with rifles as if in confusion outside of the legislative floor, unable to overpower the state government that they so despised. 9 The fête in Demons illuminates the foolishness of the militia based storming of the Michigan statehouse: both were the products of ideology that resulted in no revolutionary action, but rather public humiliation.

Emily Yoder, Michigan, USA

This censorship is explained by the 1934 moralistic Production Code and the desire of Jewish studio leaders, including the Warners, to assimilate as Americans. Furthermore, Jewish organizations aimed to raise American morale against the Nazis as anti democratic monolith, not sympathy for the Jewish people, fearing that too militant a campaign would label Jews warmongers. 5 Under fire from modern critics, the film was nevertheless

Introduction: Jews in Hollywood

by Dina Famin

2 Dieterle, William, director. 1937. The Life of Emile Zola. Warner Bros. Pictures, 116 3minutes.McGuire, John Thomas. "Formation Of The Ambiguous Heroic Archetype: Three Jewish American Film Actors And The United States’ Film System, 1929 1948." CINEJ Cinema Journal 9, no. 1, 2021, pp. 200 245. 227.

4 Herman, 77.

5 Ibid., 85.

The Yiddish Theater and German Émigré Hollywood

William Dieterle’s third biopic, The Life of Emile Zola (1937), starring Paul Muni, told the story of the Dreyfus Affair without once uttering the word “Jew.” 1 Yet The Life of Emile Zola was unusual not in its skirting of the Jewish question but in its showing of the word: as French army captain Alfred Dreyfus is named the scapegoat for the actions of an Austrian spy, his accusers point to “Jew” written in his biographical reference folder. Dreyfus is humiliatingly stripped of his rank and weapons, sentenced to prison and isolation, and finally defended against the antisemitism of the entire French Army by novelist Emile Zola. 2 Its films banned in Nazi Germany by 1939, Warner Brothers was the Hollywood studio most vocal against fascism at the time; 3 nevertheless, only a single written word was all that remained of Zola’s three verbal instances of “Jew,” the rest cut by studio heads. 4 Save for a handful of other films, Hollywood refused to take an anti-Nazi stance until the 1940s.

1 Herman, Felicia. "Hollywood, Nazism, and the Jews, 1933 41." American Jewish History 89, no. 1, 2021, pp. 61 89. 75.

The stage tradition of Muni and Schildkraut was similar, as was their progression to the screen. Paul Muni (1902-1967) was born Muni Weisenfeund in Lemberg, Austria, to ghetto actors who established

7 Ibid., 80.

9 Herman, 75.

favorably received by contemporaneous American Jewish and gentile press, who “read the film as an effective plea for tolerance” during the rise of Nazi Germany. 6 To contemporaneous audiences, it was unnecessary to equate “Dreyfus” with “Jew” those who had not lived through the affair itself in 1894 were present for Dreyfus’s rehabilitation into the French army in 1906, and those who had not lived through the rehabilitation had read The American Hebrew’s tribute to Dreyfus upon his death in 1935. 7

The Life of Emile Zola connected key players and cultural tensions in Hollywood in the third and fourth decades of the twentieth century. Director William Dieterle and composer Max Steiner were German exiles, each representing the major elements of twentieth century German immigration into the United States: artistic immigration in the 1920s and political exile in the 1930s. 8 The censure of the film and the rising urgency of the question of Jews on screen laid the critical history for Zola and hid in plain sight the Jews behind its synthesis, among whom were Hollywood’s Jewish mogul Jack Warner, the socially minded Jews of the Production Code Administration and Anti-Defamation League, and Eastern European Jewish immigrants Paul Muni (Zola) and Joseph Schildkraut (Dreyfus). Zola made over two million dollars and won three Academy Awards. Simultaneously hailed as a universalist tale beyond its Jewish roots, the film is understood not simply as The Life of Emile Zola but the story of Alfred Dreyfus; it was, in fact, not the nominated Muni who won an Academy Award (for Best Actor, which he had previously won with The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936)) but Schildkraut (Best Supporting Actor). 9

8 Brook, Vincent. Driven to Darkness: Jewish Emigre Directors and the Rise of Film Noir 2009. 2.

6 Ibid., 76.

To characterize the cinematic world beyond The Life of Emile Zola, one must follow Muni and Schildkraut to their cosmopolitan traditions of New York, Berlin, and Los Angeles. These parent theater traditions, the Yiddish and Art Theaters, gifted to Hollywood not only individual influences like Marlon Brando’s teacher Stella Adler, but, crossing over with mid century German émigré traditions, wider cinematic trends such as film noir.

12 Nahshon, Edna. “Overture.” New York's Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway 2016. pp. 8 49.18, 22.

The Yiddish Theater made its home in New York City in the late nineteenth century. Primarily from Russia’s Pale of Settlement, the Eastern European Jews who migrated to the city spoke Yiddish as a lingua franca, 13 bridging the gap between Russian and Polish as well as providing a common culture against entrenching Americanism. The Yiddish Theater emerged as a popular entertainment and social entity outside of religious and family spheres. Full of song, dance, and spectacle, the Yiddish Theater was dominated by its actors, and a cult of personality emerged around the most prominent, many of whom began building dynastic theater lines. Unlike the German Jews who had come to America in the 1860s and 1870s, the Jews of the Pale carried strong traditions of

The Early Yiddish Theater: Jacob Adler, Joseph Gordin, Boris Tomashevsky

13 Buhle, Paul. From the Lower East Side to Hollywood: Jews in American Popular Culture 2004. 20.

themselves across the Atlantic by 1907. 10 Active in vaudeville and the Yiddish Theater, they encouraged their sons to do the same. Muni showed considerable skill, not only as an actor but as a makeup artist, once convincing an audience hall at age twelve that he was an old man, 11 an act that he would later pull in his private life as a prank on his mother in law. Later, he became one of the only Yiddish Theater actors to transition to Hollywood. On the other hand, Joseph Schildkraut (1896 1964), son of German and Yiddish Theater actor Rudolf Schildkraut (1862 1930), received his training with Max Reinhardt (1873 1943) in Berlin, 12 and remained primarily a stage actor despite his Academy Award.

11 Ibid.

10 Druxman, Michael B. Paul Muni: His Life and His Films 1974. 41 42.

14 Ibid., 30.

16 Howe, Irving, and Morris Dickstein. World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made. 2017. 440.

an emerging urban egalitarianism centered on St. Petersburg and Vilna rather than Vienna and cared little for assimilation. The German Jews, now members of American society, looked down on their primarily working- and lower class Eastern European counterparts 14 and, in turn, their choice of entertainment. A popular yet historically unsupported anecdote described how, at a show starring the young Boris Thomashevsky (1868 1939), “uptown” German Jews threatened ticket sales and actors to prevent the show from running. 15 Thomashevsky’s Yiddish Theater was vernacular theater, a folk art leaning on a religious corpus and commonality, thus preserving Eastern European traditions and sensibilities. It was a low theater whose early days were marked by improvisation and audience distraction: a place to relax within a community rather than take in a form of art.

15 Lifson, David S. The Yiddish Theatre in America. 1965. 46.

Siberia preceded Gordin’s later popular plays, which combined this strict realism and auteurship with cantorial inspired Yiddish music and popular

Yet Thomashevsky’s Yiddish Theater was quick to evolve. Never quite abandoning its roots, the Yiddish Theater expanded, looking not to Germany but Russia as an intellectual model. Seeking to evolve the Yiddish Theater beyond popular entertainment, the star actor-manager Jacob Adler (1855 1926) invited newly emigrated author Jacob Gordin (1853 1909), whose chief muses were Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, to pen plays. Gordin’s vision was one of a high theater. His groundbreaking play, Siberia (1891), told the story of a Russian Jew exiled to Siberia. With a strict script, no songs or dances, and a tragic ending, Siberia outraged its audience, who calmed only when Adler came on stage between acts to plead the case for transition to a higher form of theater: “’I am ashamed,’ he said, tears in his eyes, ‘because you do not appreciate this masterpiece by the famous Russian pyesatl [writer] Yakov Mikhailovich Gordin. If you understood how great this play is, you wouldn’t laugh.’” 16

jokes. As the twentieth century dawned, the Yiddish Theater came into its own, creating hundreds of plays and translating dozens more: Ibsen, Shakespeare, and Gogol were crowd favorites.

“The Jewish Queen Lear” came on the tail of a Yiddish translation of Shakespeare: The Jewish King Lear altered the ending to feature aging Russian merchant David Macheles reuniting with his daughters at the final curtain, 18 speaking to Jewish matriarchy and allowing the female stars of the Yiddish theater to shine.

The Yiddish silent film, which had the advantage of relying on music as a narrative technique and thus reaching a broader American audience, soon transformed into the Yiddish talking film. Like its predecessor, Yiddish cinema spoke of “separation (generations, immigrants and stay-athomes, man and woman, religious and secular)” and “‘the urge for totality, the desire for a complete and self contained Jewish world.’” 19 In fact, most productions were simply remakes of plays, often starring the same actors. For most stage actors, that was the limit of Hollywood success. A waning Yiddish community limited by immigration policies of the 1920s preventing East European entry narrowed the market, while success on stage made cross country luck trying unnecessary.

The European theater of Yiddish Theater occupation flourished in Berlin. Scholars have proposed a fascination with Catholicism, specifically its looming cathedrals, as an influence on the Jewish Max Reinhardt’s (1873 Ibid., 443. Ibid. Buhle, 41.

The journey from New York to Hollywood was neither continuous nor one sided. In the 1910s, the Yiddish Theater spread in two directions: west to the silent film and east to Europe. With crossover in New York City, the threads reunited and emerged in the 1930s and 1940s as mainstream Hollywood films.

A Survey of The Yiddish Theater’s Expansion: The Art Theater and Yiddish Cinema

17 Gordin’s Mirele Efros

Reinhardt’s only film A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935), an exile collaboration produced in America with William Dieterle echoed the efforts of the Yiddish Theater to turn to the bard to raise cultural status, this time of the Warner Brothers studio. When the stage came to screen, it did so in style, featuring large group singing, dancing numbers, and

1943) 20 staging philosophy, but that seems a simplification. His experimental theater, a contrast to the modernist experimental theaters, was mostly described as expressionistic: it was “a sensuous theatre, ‘a big wedding cake’ featuring lavish sets, copious music, elaborate staging.” 21 Reinhardt himself, however, “prefered the designation ‘Impressionist,’ [being], above all, anti naturalist and eclectically experimental.” 22 Ex- or Im ? The difference might have lain simply in personal definition: Reinhardt’s theater was the impression of expression, or the expression of impression. It was dynamic, large, utilizing “many scenic devices, but [a] simplified background” as well as “rhythmic forms to knit together various scenes in a play, thereby establishing a unified emotional line.” 23

22 Brook, 45.

24 Howe and Dickenson, 458.

20 Silverman, Lisa. “Max Reinhardt between Yiddish Theatre and the Salzburg Festival.” Jews and the Making of Modern German Theatre. Edited by Jeanette R. Malkin, and Freddie Rokem, 2010. pp. 197 218. 209 210.

23 Lifson, 295.

21 Howe and Dickenson, 458.

Both Rudolph and Joseph Schildkraut played for Max Reinhardt’s theater, and both were swept away. Schildkraut the elder began in German speaking Berlin; upon moving to German speaking New York, he was charmed away by Thomashevsky. The Yiddish Theater acquired a star. Schildkraut, as both actor and director, did not sever his European link, and on future collaborations “brought Europe some of the notions developed in the German experimental theatre” 24 from Europe to America and back to Europe. Reinhardt’s theater unified spectacle with experience, mirroring the Yiddish Theater. It is no wonder, thus, that Schildkraut and others had little difficulty moving between the two.

30 Walden, Joshua S. “Molly Picon: Darling of Second Avenue.” New York's Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway, ed. Edna Nahshon, 2016. pp. 128 139. 130.

The Yiddish Art Theater, headed by actor manager Maurice Schwartz (1890-1960) set itself apart from other Yiddish theaters by employing Emanuel Reicher, “an assimilated German Jew who had studied with Reinhardt.” 26 Thus, it was anchored on a Jewish self understanding that was broader, and thus closer to universal, than its newly emigrated Eastern European roots. Schwartz aimed to preserve the intellectualism of Yiddish Theater at a time of increasing cinema attendance and battled the commercial need for staging with a cultural desire of preservation. Soon supplementing stage with screen, it was Schwartz who filmed Gordin’s Mirele Efros (1939) and God, Man, and the Devil (1950). 27 On the other side, Reinhardt trained Edgar G. Ulmer (1904 1972) entered Yiddish cinema through Hollywood. An émigré, he was blacklisted from the studios for “stealing away the wife of the head of Universal,” 28 which caused him to turn to independent studios, where he directed, among others, the Yiddish film Green Fields (1937) with Yiddish Theater star Jacob Ben Ami as co director to make up for his own lacking in the language. 29

26 Sandrow, Nahma. “Twentieth Century America.” Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theater. 1st ed., 1977. pp. 251 302. 268.

27 Sandrow, 288.

28 Buhle, 81.

sprawling palace and forest sets. 25 At least, if it was the stage of the art theater, the expressionistic effort on the part of Reinhardt’s contemporaneous directors.

Thus, the Yiddish cinema, and even the Yiddish Theater of the 1930s, was even broader than its predecessor. American Yiddish Theater star Molly Picon toured Europe to hone her craft and accent: 30 where the Yiddish theater of the previous decades maintained strong transatlantic ties, the transatlantic ties were now maintaining the theater. Centered, as always,

25 Dieterle, William, and Max Reinhardt, directors. 1935. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Warner Bros. Pictures, 143 minutes.

29 Kanfer, Stefan. Stardust Lost: the Triumph, Tragedy, and Mishugas of the Yiddish Theater in America 2006. 198.

A more subtle influence of the Yiddish Theater can be seen in the internationally popular genre of film noir. The name only coined in France after the Second World War, film noir has come to be defined by its stylistic playing with lights, shadows, and fog, and its thematic pessimism, challenge of social roles, and fascination with crime. The genre developed in the late 1930s and 1940s at the hands of exiled second wave German immigrants such as Dieterle and Fritz Lang, for whom the terrors of Nazi Germany were real, a far cry from the ostrich maneuvers of mainstream cinema directly before the war. Where Dieterle challenged censorship at home and fascism abroad with The Life of Emile Zola, Lang and others explored themes of home, exile, violence, and love on the often-allegorical screen.

31 Brook, 51. 32 Ibid., 18. 33 Ibid., 57.

The Jewish and the Universal: The Birth of Film Noir

The communication between stage and film was encouraged by Reinhardt and producer Paul Davidson, who founded “a guild to promote and regulate exchanges between film and theater personnel.” 31 Analogous to Yiddish cinema as an intermediate between the Yiddish theater and the mainstream screen, the German Kammerspiel connected German theater and film. Translated as “street film,” the Kammerspiel is characterized by its “dark look, claustrophobic feel, and everyman antihero caught in a web of urban angst and transgressive sexuality.” 32 The genre, however, falls short of the full noir, not only because of its silent nature: noir features a clear good evil dichotomy, represented with “the figure of the private eye or police detective and his flip side, the master or pathological criminal,” the latter usually a megalomaniac. 33 A

in New York City, the Yiddish Theater had much crossover with Broadway: both Paul Muni and Celia Adler, daughter of Joseph Adler, expanded to the gentile stage here first. Its crossover with Europe showed itself in the art theater movement and the Reinhardt connection; its crossover with Hollywood featured most prominently in Yiddish cinema.

Film noir’s creation, so anchored in German consciousness, had expressionist roots that “bore a strong Jewish trace.” 36 The Reinhardt theater connection was chronological and causational via the Kammerspiel. Yet thematically, too, film noir was anchored in a Jewish consciousness as well as a German one, its pioneering directors being both gentile and Jewish. Noir blended the Jewish and the universal: the fear of the Nazis and the Holocaust, the dynamics of transplantation, generations, and class, and the perhaps unconscious challenging of gender norms. 37 The allegory of noir was created to be consumed. The Production Code was in full effect, less strict on the B movies but nonetheless present, and audiences were invited to share in the anti Nazi

The stylistic visual effect was also created from necessity. As the Hollywood industry grew, demand did as well, and the double feature a showing of two films for the price of one kept the masses busy, while a closing of Germany to American production likewise necessitated an increase in the home market. 34 The B movie came to the rescue. Made parallel to an A film which had known directors and stars, the B movie was cheaper, had simpler screenwriting, a smaller budget, and unfamiliar actors; to mask such shortcomings, directors turned to visual tricks shadows, fog, narrow shots to bring up the quality. 35 Hollywood’s metaphorical B stage thus held, at the end of the 1930s and beginning of the 1940s, two peripheral enterprises: domestic Yiddish cinema, the majority of which was shot on the East Coast or in Poland, and the noir film. Ulmer made a direct journey between the two; Reinhardt remained in mainstream Hollywood and influenced both genres.

34 Pells, Richard. “Night and Fog: From German Expressionism to Film Noir.” Modernist America: Art, Music, Movies, and the Globalization of American Culture 2011. pp. 233 264. 35253.Ibid., 256. 36 Brook, 3. 37 Ibid., 211.

melodrama different from the Yiddish Theater of sound and spectacle to appeal to nostalgia, identity, and humor, film noir uses silence, dramatically opposing visuals of light and dark, and high stakes intrigue to create tension and challenge social safety.

Noir Develops: Fritz Lang and the Anti-Nazi Film

The star of the German émigré noir genre was Fritz Lang (1890 1976), a pioneering director in the Weimar Republic whose transition to the United States was rife with personal challenge. His was a transplantation of necessity and sorrow, and a “self distancing from his Jewish heritage” combined with an aesthetic yearning for Germany to create an ambivalent figure. “Despite and because of his very public anti German pronouncements,” many members of the German émigré milieu struggled to classify Lang. 39 He was a wandering artist, a man without a home reconciling ethnicity, nationality, and assimilation, but he did not always look as such. Max Reinhardt’s son Gottfried, a director like his father, could not forget thinking that he had seen the Nazi flag in Lang’s window in the early 1930s. 40 By 1943, Lang’s once-collaborator Bertolt Brecht must have believed Lang to be a truly American director, when Lang’s cinematic ambition compromised artistic vision and integrity in the production of Hangmen Also Die! 41

That year, the Hollywood ostrich decided to look around, and decided it did not like what it saw. Hangmen Also Die! was an anti Nazi film depicting the aftermath of the 1942 murder of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi chancellor of occupied Czechoslovakia, as his fictional murderer hides from the law with the help of a chancily met young woman. 42 The

Continental Strangers: German Exile Cinema 1933 1951, 2014. pp. 48 73. 71.

38 Ibid., 167.

39 Ibid., 82.

40 Ibid.

picture, whether a direct portrayal (as the next discussed Hangmen Also Die!) or a simple exploration of power and authority. A more direct connection to Jewish culture lay in the creation of the femme fatale, a possible analogue to the nagging Jewish mother, the diva of the Yiddish theater stage, and the Jewish American Princess, all stereotypes of powerful women within Jewish culture and art 38 that, despite their archetypical appearance, were positive portrayals of matriarchy and female agency

41 Gemünden, Gerb. “Tales of Urgency and Authenticity.”

42 Lang, Fritz, director. 1943. Hangmen Also Die!. Arnold Pressburger Films, 134 minutes.

43 Druxman, 196 197. 44 Ibid., 76. 45 Ibid., 85.

In 1943, as Hangmen Also Die! came out, Paul Muni guest starred in the comic Stage Door Canteen alongside sixty five other stars, briefly appearing to commend the protagonist on getting cast in a play. 43 That year, he took a break from acting for surgery, delivered a narration of We Will Never Die in memory of murdered European Jews, and did multiple programs for the Armed Forces Radio to promote the war effort. 44 Philanthropy and activism were not new to Muni, who regularly raised money for numerous international charities 45 and was vocal for social causes. Since 1937, had maintained a position on the Board of the Hollywood Anti Nazi League, and five years earlier, in 1932, he played the protagonist of I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, a biopic of Robert

setting accounts for the Nazi tension and the almost romantic dynamic between the murderer Dr. Svoboda and the engaged Mascha Novotny, whose point of view centers femininity in the film. At the same time, Mascha’s father, a professor, is arrested and jailed alongside working class men, which accounts for the film’s class, generational, and spatial dimensions. Penned by German émigré playwright Bertolt Brecht and John Wexley, once of the New York theater scene, Hangmen Also Die! was scored by émigré composer Hanns Eisler and featured German actors exclusively as Nazis. Like The Life of Emile Zola six years previously, Hangmen Also Die! skirted around the Jewish question. The Czech resistance was nationalistic and democratic, and the Germans were monsters rather than men, larger than life, humanized only by their victims, whose strength and courage flowed across the divide and imbued them with spirit. Hangmen was as universalist as Zola, just with a different background: evil ordinary men still made up a monolith, but it was now the Nazis instead of an abstract society. What better a group to personify the unimaginable obstacle to happiness greed, darkness, power than Nazi Germany, the antithesis of the democratic United States?

Jewish Activism and Presence in Hollywood During the War: Paul Muni and Émigré Productions

Burns’s autobiographical novel I am a Fugitive of a Georgia Chain Gang, depicting the cruelty and dehumanization of convict camps. 46

46 Ibid., 112, 119.

49 Gottlieb, Jack. Funny, It Doesn't Sound Jewish: How Yiddish Songs and Synagogue Melodies Influenced Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood. 2004. 165.

The Yiddish cinema brought Jews to the American screen. Where Yiddish Theater had catered to a Jewish milieu, the cinema had a farther reach, and “these Yiddish movies not only represented Jews to Jews, but represented Jews to non Jews,” 50 a task far more daunting as filmmakers balanced sympathy, censorship, and growing antisemitism. The studios’ small stature and artistic mien kept them on the theatrical side of allegory. Like Werfel’s The Eternal Road, the theater-born Yiddish cinema “explored the Jewish experience” but did not “[mention] what was going on in contemporary Europe.” 51 Jewish creators walked the tightrope

50 Cohen, Joseph. "Yiddish Film and the American Immigrant Experience." Film & History 28 (1 2) 1998: 30 44. 33.

51 Kanfer, 234.

47 Lifson, 518. 48 Ibid.

Conclusion: American Assimilation and The Waning of Yiddish Theater Influence in Hollywood

In 1937, Muni also took part in a production of Franz Werfel’s Eternal Road, which even aside from its author was a largely émigré creation: the show was translated by Ludwig Lewison, orchestrated by Kurt Weil, directed by Max Reinhardt, and choreographed by Benjamin Zemach. 47 Muni and Celia Adler, the show’s American leads, were both graduates of the Yiddish Theater. The show’s German Jewish emigres and American Jewish cultural leaders depicted a congregation hiding from a pogrom inside a synagogue, a thin analogy for European Jewry on the eve of the Second World War. The play’s allegory might have been grasped, but its spectacle and style was labeled “shoddy” 48 and a “pageant.” 49 Despite Muni’s cinematic success, Reinhardt’s international acclaim, and Adler’s dynastic hold on the stage, Eternal Road fell through. America had primed its audiences well: flock to the stage they might, but the Jew on stage and screen could not be.

between assimilation and alienation; it was easier for them to depict historical Judaism, perhaps emotionally as well as from necessity. While the Anti Defamation League’s worry that sympathetic and prominent portrayals of Jews in Zola, The House of Rothchild (1934), and The Sons of Liberty (1939) would turn the American public against its Jewish citizens on the grounds of warmongering and of labeling the Nazis as a threat to Jews rather than to the principles of American democracy, seems far fetched, it was justified. Once the war had broken out, so did “a surge in accusations of Jewish warmongering in 1940 and 1941.” 52 The American public was content with its Jewish Hollywood so long as that was in name only. As the Yiddish cinema aimed to mirror the complicated portrayals of Judaism of the intellectual Yiddish theater, mainstream Hollywood Jews, among them studio heads Jack and Harry Warner and Louis B. Meyer, projected a modern, American, assimilated image of themselves to the world. As the Nazi threat grew before the war, American stage and film experienced a “de Semitization,” 53 an erasure of its scant Jewish presence as audiences and executives alike balked at addressing ethnoreligious tensions and identities. No pro Jew anti Nazi films were to come out of that Hollywood, no matter how hard Yiddish cinema hoped.

The trend of de-Semitization did not stop after the moratorium on antiNazi films ended. Early émigré directed anti-Nazi films included Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939), which told the story of a Nazi ring in America, starring Edward G. Robinson (1893-1973). Like Muni, Robinson had begun in the Yiddish Theater, transitioned to Broadway, and made his significant film debut as an Italian gangster in Little Caesar (1931), a more stereotypically dynamic nationality that lacked the polarizing politic of Jewishness. 54 Muni’s post gangster career, after Scarface (1932), careened him into artistic stardom. What he lacked in box office hits he made up for in skill and personality, remaining a sought after actor

53 Cohen, Sarah Blacher. “Yiddish Origins and Jewish American Transformations.” From Hester Street of Hollywood: the Jewish American Stage and Screen. Ed. Sarah Blacher Cohen, 1983 pp. 1 17. 7.

52 Herman, 85.

54 McGuire, 205.

despite demands for creative license over scripts and resistance towards directorial changes throughout filming. 55 Robinson’s post gangster career was one of more straightforward development, and he soon found himself in mainstream films such as Anatole Litvak’s anti Nazi Confessions, which focused on the Nazi threat, and William Dieterle’s biopic Dr. Erlich’s Magic Bullet (1940), about a German doctor finding the cure to syphilis. He also starred in post war noir films, which, by this point, centered crime and investigation as a point of tension: The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946, dir. Tay Garnett), Body and Soul (1947, dir. Robert Rossen), and Force of Evil (1948, dir. Abraham Polonsky). 56 All but Garnett, an American, were first- or second generation immigrants, and had, with the exception of Dieterle, roots in New York City. These films, now that the war was over, were pure entertainment, catering to an American audience wishing to be united in prosperity and

Thehomogeneity.risingAmerican

55 Druxman, 22. 56 McGuire, 205.

57 Cohen, J., 31.

58 Slobin, Mark. “Music in the Yiddish Theater and Cinema, 1880 1950.” The Cambridge Companion to Jewish Music, ed. Joshua S. Walden, 2015. pp. 215 227. 225. 59 Kanfer, 236.

national identity of democracy as antithesis to Nazism, pushed both by Jewish and political leaders, might have also led to the further decline of Yiddish cinema. Never a powerhouse, Yiddish cinema had turned out some 150 films over thirty years, a production rate five or six times lower than studio Hollywood. 57 Its viewership declined as young Jews turned to American entertainment and as the European Jewish market closed to American production. 58 With notable exceptions such as God, Man, and the Devil in 1950, the Yiddish cinema faded away in the early 1940s, and Yiddish found itself a radio home. In its new medium, Yiddish returned to its theatrical roots: “emotions were expressed in primary colors and scripts were sprayed with exclamation points.” 59

Direct Yiddish communication with Hollywood further waned in the latter half of the twentieth century. Yiddish theater stars either remained on the

2. 88

Nevertheless, sounds, tropes, and techniques honed in the Yiddish theater and its branches the German theater, the art theater, and the Yiddish cinema prevailed and pervaded gentile spaces. All American actor Marlon Brando, for example, had acted with Muni on Broadway before coming to Hollywood. Brando’s signature style, “method acting,” wherein an actor remains in character even when not on stage (practiced by Muni as well), was taught to him by Celia Adler, Joseph Adler’s daughter. Adler’s technique differed from the contemporaneous “method” acting of Lee Strasberg, who much to Brando’s frustration claimed to pioneer the method: it relied on a mixture of Yiddish theater sensibility and the European influence of Konstantin Stanislavsky’s Art Theater.

stage, often expanding to the gentile Broadway, or died; those who entered American Hollywood, such as Paul Muni, did not shed their theatrical roots but aimed at a universalist rather than Jewish performance. On the other side, the death of European Jewry in the Holocaust was also the death of the world’s Yiddish speaking majority. The pressure of American melting pot assimilationism had at last come for East European Jews in America beyond the media moguls.

Assimilationist60

cultural drives developed a cinema of censorship and a de Semitized anti Nazi film genre where Yiddish language and culture could only be a root or a sidenote. Yet parallel to the rise of the Hollywood studio monopoly, the Yiddish Theater, an American synthesis of immigrant experience and professional cross over to Europe, carried these sensibilities and the spirit of international collaboration as it expanded. Perhaps the presence of German exiles, a majority of whom were German Jews, helped thematic aspects of the Yiddish Theater gain a foothold; German directors, themselves products of German theater, had thus a speck of Yiddish Theater in their blood. The theater’s eastern and western threads, the German theater and Yiddish cinema, combined in Hollywood in the rise of noir films at the same time as purely Yiddish entertainment lost popularity. Scott. Beyond Method: Stella Adler and the Male Actor. 2018.

60 Balcerzak,

The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, completed in the year 1002, is one of the most beloved classics of the Japanese literary tradition. There are three types of entries in the book that each make up roughly one third: diaries, essays, and lists. 1 The diaries recount various vignettes from Sei’s days serving Empress Teishi at court, always with an air of amusement. The essay sections cover Sei’s opinions on a variety of topics and best capture the assertive nature of her narrative voice. The most striking and definitively unique aspect of this work are the lists: types of people, situations that elicit similar feelings, poetically significant places, and how things should or should not be. Scattered throughout the book, the lists have become what the text is best known for and are the work’s most original aspect. A “list of the lists” in The Pillow Book includes annoying things, endearing things, rare things, mountains, lakes, illnesses, times of the year, things that should be big, things that should be small, things that fall, people who are smug, people who seem enviable, and things with terrifying names. Why are these lists so captivating to readers over a thousand years after the work was written? What about them makes the presence of their author so immediate and vivid? The strangely informal and intimate method of ‘listing’ constitutes a highly complex literary technique, one which the author employs to reveal both her charm and ingenuity.

1 Morris, Mark. "Sei Shōnagon's Poetic Catalogues." Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 40, no. 1 (1980): 5 54. 5.

Scholars of The Pillow Book have noted that the lists are likely where Sei’s writing began, taking poetic subjects and infusing them with her own unique perspectives to arrive at the brilliant prose that characterizes her work. Though they comprise only a third of the entire book, the lists are arguably Sei’s primary method of developing and perfecting the elegant and poetic descriptions that reveal her genius as a writer. The list of flowering trees, for example, includes a micro essay on the beauty of

by Jessica Mellen

Lists in The Pillow Book

Scholarship concerning the list and its uses has been undertaken in the twentieth and twenty first centuries to answer these questions. By definition, “the list [is] a formally and conceptually systematized block of information.” 5 The structure of a list can be compared to the conjunction ‘and’ in that both “join and separate [a given piece of information] at the same time;” each ‘unit’ in a list stands as an individual item and as a part of the collective whole of the list. 6 Lists were originally used as a means of recording valuable information with tallies and tokens as early as 3200

The Origins and History of Listing

the orange blossom, so saturated with imagery that it threatens to become a poem. 2 In other lists, Sei extolls the pleasures of water drunk in the middle of the night and the infuriating sound of a mosquito’s “thin little wail” as one tries to sleep. 3 These mundane but emotionally charged scenarios characterize the enduring charm of The Pillow Book. The lists, more than the diary and essay passages that equal them in capacity, reveal their author’s poetic sensibilities and ability to capture ineffable sentiments.

2 Sei Shonagon. The Pillow Book. Translated by Meredith McKinney, 2006. 76 [34].

3 Ibid., 65 [28], 63 [25].

The human brain tends to look for patterns to such an extent that it invents them when none can be found, and the list is the written manifestation of pattern and order. 4 This foundational aspect of written language has endured from the origin of writing and remains a central feature of both daily life and great literature. In literature, lists go beyond the function of ordering and become vessels to articulate what descriptive prose alone fails to capture. It is this function that makes Sei’s lists in The Pillow Book deeply resonate with readers across time. What exactly is a list? What makes lists an effective literary technique and enables them to express something mimetic prose fails to articulate? How can this illuminate the lists of the The Pillow Book?

4 White, Patti. Gatsby's Party: The System and the List in Contemporary Narrative. 1992. 6594.Ibid.Belknap, Robert E. The List: The Uses and Pleasures of Cataloguing. 2004. 15.

9 Cuneiform is the earliest known written language, originating in ancient Mesopotamia around around 3200 B.C.E.

11 Ibid., 10.

12 Morris, 8 9.

The lists in The Pillow Book appear scattered throughout the other sections of text with no apparent order and are split evenly into one of two categories, wa and mono. 12 The wa type passages are straightforward lists of names with poetic associations, usually proper nouns (mountains, lakes, etc.) and serve a pragmatic purpose. These are heavily based on the tradition of poetic compendiums and poetic place names (utamakura). They reveal Sei’s thorough knowledge of the thirtyone syllable classical Japanese poetry tradition (waka), and in her choices of which items to include or exclude, they also express her subjective preferences. The mono-type lists are the more striking and original of the two. They consist of things or scenarios which fall into a category. A study by Ikeda Kikan groups the mono passages into two sections: lists concerned with emotion such as endearing things or infuriating things, and lists concerned with objects like worthless things or things that are

10 Belknap, 9.

BCE. 7 Over time, this evolved into a writing system that coincided with spoken language. 8 Although the research I reference is based on Western written languages, beginning with cuneiform, 9 one can assume that other societies, such as the one which predated Heian Japan, followed a similar pattern in developing written languages. The development of written markers and language that “facilitated transactions” became “increasingly organized as economic, civic, and religious life became more complex.” 10 Because listing was born to serve bureaucratic and inventory purposes, it can be deduced that “the written list, itself born as a purely serviceable budgetary and mnemonic device, thus helped to bring further modes of writing into existence.” 11 The need to create lists was a driving force in the development of writing language as a whole. It follows that, once writing was established, the list evolved to take on more literary qualities in addition to its pragmatic purposes.

8 Ibid., 8.

7 Ibid., 9.

In contrast to the wa type lists that are more direct descendants of poetic catalogs, the mono type lists are an invention of Sei’s and operate more on personal sentiments rather than established tropes.

13 Ibid., 21.

truly splendid (which then may or may not become sources of emotion). 13

In list theory, there are four main types of lists: catalogs, inventories, itineraries, and lexicons. 14 The itinerary orders actions or events according to time, and a lexicon is an inventory of words ordered along with their definitions for ease of access. 15 Both catalogs and inventories are categories found in The Pillow Book. Sei’s wa type lists are inventories because they list names of things under a conceptual principle. The mono type lists, which are the topic of this discussion, fall into the catalog category. As catalogs, the units in the mono list include more “descriptive enhancement[s]” that display the poetic quality of Sei’s prose. 16 The four types of lists can be subdivided by purpose as either poetic or pragmatic. A pragmatic list intends to “fulfill a reference function,” much like the lists of poetic topics that are scattered throughout The Pillow Book (the wa type). Alternatively, a literary list exists to “convey a specific impression,” creating meaning as opposed to simply storing it. 17 This ‘meaning’ is created in establishing an order or connection between the often disparate items in this list in order to hint at something that cannot be adequately conveyed with a standalone description. The effect of listing can be likened to that of metonymy, a central feature of Japanese literature in which the associations of a word or thing intensify its effects. Like metonymy amplifying the power of a word through poetic associations, a list amplifies the power of the units included by highlighting certain qualities and creating a “playful metaphorical bond between individual entries.” 18

14 Ibid., 3. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 43.

the lists have no definitive pattern or structure, the ordering of items within lists and their placement in the text are not devoid of purpose. Scholars have noted that similar types of lists are often grouped near each other. 25 An example is the series of lists from passages twenty two to twenty six: dispiriting things, occasions that induce half heartedness, things people despise, and infuriating things. 26 These topics share a negative connotation; by placing them alongside each other, Sei crafts a consistency in the often disparate book. On the other end, we find

Auto/biography Studies, 28(1) (2013): 86 111. 109.

The items in the lists in The Pillow Book lack an apparent order, making them “lists built without a formal organizing principle that take shape as elements emerge.” 19 This structure, or lack thereof, stands in opposition to lists dictated by a principle (ie. alphabetical, chronological) or a system (table of contents). 20 Lacking an apparent structure allows Sei to freely engage in her own stream of thought, using the subject of the list as the sole guiding principle for whatever comes next. The whole of The Pillow Book is said to be written in a style known as zuihitsu, which means “following the brush.” 21 The style has the impression of being offhanded or casual, an effect that is created by the free movement of the “narratorial consciousness” from topic to topic. 22 In a similar manner, a list without a set pattern develops “out of thin air” 23 to create “a joyful concoction” 24 that is free of the constraints of typical prose. Jumping from topic to topic without having to explicitly connect ideas through explanation, the concept of a list already creates an implicit connection between the ideas. This is precisely the method that Sei takes in creating the mono type of lists in The Pillow Book, and it is at the root of their

Thoughappeal.

22 Ibid., 97 Ibid. Ibid. Morris, 11. Sei Shonagon, 56 60.

19 Ibid. 20 Ibid.

Bede, Scott. "Every Trivial Little Thing": Sei Shonagon and the Poetics of Insignificance.”

the list of things that make one’s heart lurch with anxiety placed just before endearingly lovely things. 27 Here, Sei strategically offers readers a respite from the stresses of the previous list. Additionally, within lists the topics tend to flow between longer descriptions and short phrases, creating a dynamic of “concision expansion contraction.” 28 This patterning is not consistent across all of the lists, but it does reveal that the apparent randomness of Sei’s lists is likely an intentional impression created by giving only the barest structure. The subtlety with which Sei creates these aesthetic effects while appearing offhanded attests to how adept she is at employing these techniques.

27 Ibid., 201 202. 28 Morris, 13.

29 Krause, Timothy. "Twentieth Century Catalogs: The Poetics of Listing, Enumeration, and Copiousness in Joyce, Schuyler, McCourt, Pynchon, and Perec." Order No. 3541944, City University of New York, 2012. 2.

Umberto Eco’s Infinity of Lists describes listing as “a means for cultural order and form in the attempt to convey what is otherwise beyond

invested with another dimension, one tending toward expressivity, uncertainty, play, juxtaposition, and chaos, one that belied the smooth lines of enumerated objects with a running subtext of unforeseen correspondences, and that even questions the possibility of comprehensiveness itself. 29

Contemporary List Theory and The Pillow Book

The mono type lists in The Pillow Book are catalogs organized loosely by a guiding principle, but understanding what type of lists they are is not enough to explain why they are such a striking feature of the text. Contemporary list theory attempts to explain the literary effect of the list’s complex power: they are able to express what cannot be expressed otherwise. In the words of Timothy Krause, literary lists are:

32 Ibid., 144.

34 Sei Shonagon, 202, 177, 101.

articulation.”

30 He argues that lists “point toward that which is inarticulate, and that which cannot be expressed or understood.”

It may seem counterintuitive to imagine that what originated as a purely economic and organizational technique predating the development of language itself can be considered a means to express qualities that are otherwise ineffable, but that is precisely what Sei achieves in the lists of The Pillow Book. The disparate components of Sei’s lists are united under a topic which itself is impossible to describe adequately. This is how we can experience abstract concepts like adorableness, awkwardness, or rarity. 34 These concepts cannot be captured or expressed by explanation but through listing different things that produce this effect, the concept emerges in the reader’s mind. Not only did Sei see the merit of lists as a

31 Ibid.

33 White, 94.

31 The artistic nature of lists comes from their capacity to describe that which cannot be described, and in describing what cannot be articulated the list challenges what is comprehensible. This ‘dizzying’ 32 sensation of being confronted with something that cannot be adequately articulated through descriptive language alone is what gives the list its emotional impact. Patti White, in describing the “inside” of a list, states that a list engages in and echoes the dialogue between chaos and order that whispers in the background of all systemic endeavors. Indeed, by its very nature a list comments upon the opposition between order and disorder, rendering categorical assumptions visible and participating in the enforcement of local regulation even when its structural fissures provide an entry for chaotic material. 33

30 Mancino, S. "Philosophy of Communication and Umberto Eco’s Infinity of Lists: The Interplay of the Poetic and Pragmatic." Atlantic Journal of Communication. 25, no. 3, 139 50. 139.

35 Belknap,

the great satisfaction in the search for order in a list […] due to an appreciation of explicitly patterned artistry, a delight in unforeseen and unexpected combinations, or the writer’s invitation to the reader to generate his or her own sense of meaning, to piece matters together in whatever way seems right. 35

literary technique, her lists embody every aspect to which contemporary list theory attributes the appeal of the genre:

The elusive and rather ungoverned sense of structure within the lists echoes that of the entire Pillow Book and is essential in producing the effect of immediacy and anecdotal air of the book as a whole. This hints at the underlying project of The Pillow Book. The lists, despite being more unprecedented and original than the other parts of the book, are only a third of the whole. What they share with both the diary and essay passages are their role in Sei’s project for the book. Scholars are in consensus that Sei’s goal in The Pillow Book was to memorialize her time in court under Empress Teishi in the most positive light despite her tragic fall and subsequent death. Sei recounts her days in the empress’s court but deliberately excludes any reference to the tragedy surrounding Teishi’s demise, revealing that her record of history is highly selective. Sei includes only stories that are amusing, highlighting the elegance of court life and painting her empress as a saintly figure of the highest grace and refinement all while maintaining a lighthearted tone. To do so, The Pillow Book constitutes an aesthetic of ‘okashi,’ a sense of delight and pleasure in the present moment.

The Function of Lists in The Pillow Book

Far from being a record of reality, The Pillow Book is meant to ‘re vision’ reality as what Sei wishes it to be remembered. Naomi Fukumori’s “Sei Shônagon’s Makura No Sôshi: A Re Visionary History” expounds this 5.

The Poetry of the Lists

A large ship left beached by the tide.

36 Fukumori, Naomi. “Sei Shônagon’s Makura No Sôshi: A Re Visionary History.” The Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 31, no. 1 (1997): 1 44. 37 Ibid., 37.

project with great clarity using the diary passages. 36 The same goal can be applied to the lists. The lists do not recount specific events in Sei’s life in order to frame them, as the diary passages do. Rather, they participate in the crafting of an overall ‘okashi aesthetic.’ They include everything from poetic subjects and anecdotal humor to descriptions of elegance contrasted with that of impropriety. Their air of conversation and interaction, which as discussed is achieved through a seemingly random, free flowing order, is key in creating the airy, fanciful tone that Sei uses to reimagine her days in court. It is precisely the lightheartedness and the sense that they are written for the author’s own personal amusement that makes the lists appealing to readers. Scattered throughout the entirety of the book, they buffer the sections of prose with witty reverie and, as list theory explains, the expression of the inherently indescribable.

The early translator Arthur Waley said of Sei, “as a writer she is incomparably the best poet of her time, a fact which is apparent only in her prose.” 37 One could say the same of her lists. These lists, though they are superficially informal, are where her poetic genius becomes most evident. In the cataloging of things that elicit similar responses, Sei beautifully captures sentiments that reflect her personal preferences, the preferences of the society she so perfectly embodies, and timeless human emotions. The charm of The Pillow Book is the text's incredible resonance and relatability, which derives from the immediacy of Sei’s narrative voice. The lists are where this sense of direct interaction with the author is most viscerally felt. Take for instance the infamous passage:

[120] Awkward and pointless things

An inconsequential little man strutting about scolding a Inretainer.thegrip of foolish jealousy, a wife takes herself off and goes into hiding from her husband, certain that he’ll come looking for her —but he’s in no mind to do so, and goes about his business with brazen indifference, so she must face the fact that she can’t stay away from her home indefinitely, and finally returns of her own accord. 38

38 Shonagon, 177. 98

It seems as though an impossibly vast range of emotions is presented in this brief four-scenario list. The sensation one feels reading the first two lines is unexpectedly moving. The innate awkwardness of a tree’s roots sprawled in the air or a beached boat are surprisingly poetic. Instead of forcing us to recognize this through a poem, Sei simply presents us with an understated but nonetheless vivid visual description. There is an abrupt, hollow sensation one gets while picturing the image of the first two lines, immediately followed by a gratifying realization of how perfectly accurate the awkwardness of an uprooted tree and a beached boat are. In the third description, we transition to find ourselves amused and mildly annoyed by the image of “an inconsequential little man.” The disdainful language and sharpness of her tone reveal Sei’s own annoyance with the image, which naturally is shared by the reader in picturing the scene. The final thing on the list, the jealous wife, elicits our sympathy and discomfort. Simultaneously, there is a tragicomic effect in the wife’s embarrassment. The comedic value is balanced by the ironic poetry of the scenario and the inherent awkwardness of the situation. These effects are achieved from fragments and sections no longer than a few sentences, which, when taken together, express a shared quality of awkwardness. Through the list, Sei has alerted us that these apparently unrelated scenarios, by virtue of their lack of a direct connection, are in fact all the same in one way or another, which is deeply satisfying. We

A great tree that’s blown over in the wind and lies there on its side with its roots in the air.

are made aware of the abstract connection between these things and delighted by the clarity with which Sei can conjure these images.

On the other end of the spectrum of mono type lists, we find as less ornery but every bit as sharp perspective:

[144] Endearingly lovely things

A baby’s face painted on a gourd.

Sparrows come fluttering down to the nest when her babies are chewing for her.

A little child of two or three is crawling rapidly along when his keen eye suddenly notices some tiny worthless thing lying nearby. He picks it up in his pretty little fingers, and shows it to the adults. This is very endearing to see. It's also endearing when a child with shoulder length hair ‘nun’s cut’ hairstyle that's falling into her eyes doesn't brush it away but instead tilts her head to tip it aside as she examines something.

An enchanting little child who falls asleep in your arms while you’re holding and playing with it is incredibly endearing.Thingschildren use in doll play.

A tiny leaf that’s been picked from a pond. A tiny aoi leaf. In fact, absolutely anything that’s tiny is endearing.

A very white, plump child of around two, who comes crawling out wearing a lavender silk gauze robe with the sleeves hitched back, or a child walking about in a short robe that looks more long sleeves than robe. All these

A very young son of a noble family walking about dresses up in ceremonial costume.

are endearing. And it's very endearing when a boy of eight or ten reads something aloud in his childish voice.

100

It’s also enchanting to see a pretty little white chick, its lanky legs looking like legs poking out from under a short robe, cheeping loudly as it runs and pauses here and there around someone’s feet. Likewise, all scenes of chicks running about with the mother hen.

The eggs of a spot-billed duck.

It is impossible not to smile reading this list. Sei reveals her own excitement with the spontaneously interposed, rather un poetic interjections. Assertions like, “This is very endearing to see,” and “In fact, absolutely anything that’s tiny is endearing,” interrupt the vivid descriptions in the list and alert us to the authorial presence, lending a charmingly anecdotal quality to the observations she makes. There is also a deep poetic quality to her prose that comes from her fastidious rendition of details and the free flowing pattern of statements. The vividness with which one can imagine the adorable fingers of a toddler and their innocent excitement over finding the “tiny worthless thing lying nearby” are immediately recognizable as heartwarming and endearing. Subjective in their inclusion in the list but universal in their accuracy, these kinds of observations are striking precisely because Sei reveals to us the charm already inherent in them. This kind of lucid description makes her fragmentary prose poignant, but no less striking are the items consisting only of noun phrases. A duck egg or a green-glass pot are not something commonly called endearing, but taken with the sentiment of the list, their endearing virtues emerge by nature of the shared sentiment they elicit. The concept of ‘endearing’ is too abstract to describe with an explanation alone, so Sei uses the combined elements of the list to capture that feeling, thereby exemplifying the power of the literary list. Ibid., 202.

A green glass pot. 39

40 Bede, 103 41 Ibid. 42 Morris, 37. 43 Ibid., 40. 44 Ibid., 5.

The act of listing itself is a pleasurable activity because the aesthetic satisfaction one gets from making the seemingly disparate into a cohesive entity is deeply gratifying. Sei captures, as Scott Bede says, “the sheer hedonistic joy of bringing all these images together on the same page.” 40 The poetic aspect emerges from this joy in Sei’s extraordinary ability to capture the “‘thingness’ of a thing.” 41 Waley also says of Sei Shonagon that “she can describe a sick bed as though it were a sunset." 42 What Waley so brilliantly captures in this phrase is Sei’s ability to expose or reveal, at times caustically, the core qualities of a thing or scenario which speak to her. This empowers the lists as beautiful in a way that modern readers experience as poetic and as reflections of Sei’s own subjectivity. Mark Morris argues that the world of The Pillow Book is “one of exteriors,” 43 and this holds true in that Sei writes from an observational standpoint. I would add that beneath that exterior is a deep interiority, one into which Sei pulls her reader by revealing to them the nature of things. Sei’s own sentiments govern the exterior view she gives us, which in turn makes The Pillow Book a sort of interior view of its author. The pleasure of looking at the world through Sei’s eyes is clearest in the sheer joy of relating to her through the amusing categories of observations.

101

The lists of The Pillow Book are the ultimate expression of their author’s literary talent and her ability to express poetic sentiments without the rigid structure of poetry. Through the “almost subliterary genre,” 44 Sei achieves a remarkable resonance with readers across time. The best of her wit, literary ingenuity, and poetic brilliance are on display in this seemingly perfunctory aspect of the work. The sensation of immediacy her lists capture is so vivid that it can be easy to forget of how distant a world from ours the author is writing from. In its amalgamation of essays, diaries, and the infinitely charming lists, The Pillow Book exists as a sort of list in itself, all the individual components intensifying one another and

made into a whole by the act of listing. Sei’s lists are a microcosm of the entire book, appearing random but finely tuned to achieve otherwise indescribable sensations that strike readers as poignant and deeply relatable to the modern day.

102

103

In his 1963 work Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin critiques Leo Tolstoy for his so called “monologism.” He writes that Tolstoy’s “discourse and his monologically naïve point of view permeate everywhere;” that Tolstoy’s characters are tragically inscribed into the “monolithically monologic whole of the novel;” that Tolstoy refuses a “‘great dialogue’ in which characters and author might participate with equal rights.” 1 Here, Bakhtin suggests that Tolstoy’s authorial voice overpowers the voices of his characters, who cannot become minds of their own as long as they exist in the shadow of their authoritarian creator. It’s an interesting point, one meant to expose an aesthetic shortcoming that relegates Tolstoyan poetics to the realm of the “old fashioned” or “closed.” 2

But Bakhtin’s analysis may not be as scathing as it appears at first glance. I argue that the term “monologic” describes much more than Tolstoy’s formal approach to literature. Bakhtin’s language is clued into something

1 Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. 1963. Translated by Caryl Emerson, 1999. 56, 72, 71.

by David Winner

In Defense of the Monologically Mature: Leo Tolstoy’s Critique of Dialogue

2 In the 1980s, Bakhtin’s Dostoevsky scholarship experienced a surge of popularity in the United States, and it has dominated Slavic studies ever since. Yet Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, while groundbreaking, has lost its steam in the last decade or so. Scholars like Nina Perlina (see Varieties of Poetic Utterance: Quotation in “The Brothers Karamazov”) and Caryl Emerson have critiqued Bakhtin for his lavish praise of Dostoevsky as firmly “dialogical,” a stance which they argue finds no consistent foundation in Dostoevsky’s oeuvre. Emerson has even said that the new task of Dostoevsky studies is to “get out from under a feel good dialogic Bakhtin” (see Emerson, “Dostoevsky Between Theory and Practice, Fantasy and Terror,” Lecture, Midwest Bicentennial Lecture Tour, Columbus, OH, November 5, 2021). Nevertheless, I invoke the dialogic/monologic divide not to analyze its faithfulness to Dostoevsky’s texts, but to find within it a new lens through which we can read Tolstoy.

3 Tolstoy’s 1894 treatise The Kingdom of God Is Within You is a prime example of his late life anarcho Christian work. There, he develops his famous doctrine of non resistance, which holds that the most powerful antidote to violence is not revenge but, like Christ on the cross, a position of meek submission. The piece also accuses the modern Church of heresy. While Kingdom is a nonfiction work, Tolstoy’s late fictional writing also bears the marks of Christian anarchism and non resistance. Take, for instance, “Alyosha the Pot,” a short story in which the hero does everything commanded of him and then dies. “Father Sergius” is another on the nose example.

surfaces even in Tolstoy’s earliest works, long before his writing radicalized into the polemics of anti modernity and anarchic Christianity. 3 Childhood, which Tolstoy began in his early twenties, presents an underdeveloped yet distinct point of view on the nature of conversation; simply, that silence is a good thing. The locus of this view resides with the “holy fool” Grisha, an archetypal saintly religious figure who wanders as a beggar. When the child-protagonist Nikolay witnesses Grisha’s nightly prayer, he delivers lavish praise:

4 Tolstoy, Leo. “Childhood.” 1852. Childhood, Boyhood, Youth. Translated by Judson Rosengrant, 2012. 44.

O great Christian, Grisha!... Your love was so great that the words flowed of their own accord from your lips you did not test them with your reason. And what lofty praise you gave to His majesty when, not finding words, you fell to the floor in tears! 4

104

deeper and truer about Tolstoy as a person, a feature which appears throughout his life work: that, as a matter of principle, Tolstoy repu diates the modern incarnation of dialogue and finds rich value in silence. Therefore, to describe Tolstoy as a monologist is to validate some of his deepest philosophies as an artist and thinker. And even though Bakhtin calls Tolstoy old fashioned for his monologism, he speaks more affirmatively than meets the eye. In a twist of irony, Tolstoy views the advent of polite conversation as a peculiarity of the modern era, one that is useless at best and destructive at worst. For Tolstoy, the happiest, most intimate, and most meaningful moments are found in the quietest corners of Thislife.stance

Even if Childhood only conveys the immature aesthetic or religious sensibilities of Tolstoy, this scene does so with vigor. Tolstoy’s treatment of Grisha is revealing for two reasons. First, Tolstoy finds it praiseworthy when words “flow of their own accord” from a person’s lips. Thought and reason are presented as pollutants to a pure stream of consciousness that manifests immediately on the tongue. Any conscious attempt, according to Nikolay, to “test” those words “with reason” would defeat Grisha’s religious peculiarity. Thoughtful or self consciously “intellectual” conversation, in which participants carefully choose their words in a concert of dialogue, is inimical to this. But there is yet a more radical point. Tolstoy at once praises Grisha’s instinctive speech and gives an even better alternative: silence. To pray is one thing, but to fall on the floor in silence is to give “lofty praise [to] His majesty.” There is something truer and more pious about someone who cannot find words and naturally resorts to silence and tears. 5

I do not mean to suggest that Tolstoy here articulates a focused point on the nature of religious worship. All I argue is that Childhood is aesthetically interested in silence, as both the protagonist and the authorial voice grant silence narrative attention. But this aesthetic soon becomes more than a mere interest for the author; it matures into a philosophical and formal preoccupation. Perhaps Tolstoy’s most experimental novel in this regard is Anna Karenina, with its free exploration of the merits of dialogue, monologue, and silence. Tolstoy centers this experiment around his protagonist, Konstantin Levin who bears some resemblance to Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, and not merely in name. He embodies, at one point or another, several of Tolstoy’s ideals an embrace of marriage, agrarian life, and labor, and a skepticism towards both elite Russian intelligentsia (in the image of Sergei Ivanovich) and

5 While I do not investigate Grisha’s tears here, it bears noting that Tolstoy might be thinking of “the gift of tears,” a concept common in Eastern Orthodoxy: that tears, involuntary and consuming, are gifts from God. The Orthodox saint John Climacus even described tears as a “second baptism” that tightens our relationship to the divine. For a quick read on the tradition of tears and “joyful sorrow” in Orthodoxy, see Kurt Sander, "The Gift of Tears: Some Perspectives on ‘Joyful Sorrow’ in Orthodox Art and Music," Journal of the International Society for Orthodox Church Music, vol. 2 (2016): 90 96

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Marxist revolutionaries (in the image of Nikolai Dmitrich). 6 It is fitting, then, that two of Levin’s most pivotal scenes contain prime examples of Tolstoy’s maturing monologism. In Levin’s proposals to Kitty, we find not only an aesthetic interest in nonverbal communication, but a rapturous endorsement of it as the locus of love and ecstasy, while “thoughtful” conversation is repudiated as superficial and fake. When Levin first approaches Kitty to ask for her hand in marriage, she stumbles over herself: “My God, can it be that I must tell him myself?” she asks. “What shall I tell him, then? That I love another man? No, that’s impossible.” 7 Recall Grisha’s posture in Boyhood. Already, we understand that Tolstoy likes when words flow effortlessly off the tongue. Such is not the position of Kitty. Her conversational mission is one of forgery, a confused yet calculated attempt to escape awkwardness with Levin. And yet she feels condemned to enter a dialogue with him, one that she knows will end in disappointment. Levin feels this, too: for when “nothing prevented him from speaking out, his face darkened,” 8 and he searches for something that can keep him silent.

6 This is a characteristic quality of Tolstoyan heroes: the ability to represent many ideas simultaneously. Tolstoy likes to pass myriad ideas through one personality, and his characters therefore shed and adopt new ideas often throughout a text. See Caryl Emerson, “The Tolstoy Connection in Bakhtin,” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 100, no. 1 (1985): 68 80, 76.

7 Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. 1878. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 2000. 47.

8 Ibid. 9 10Ibid.Ibid.

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Perhaps such a discovery would have been for the best, for Levin’s first proposal to Kitty is supremely awkward. He sputters out: “I wanted to say… I wanted to say… I came for this… that… to be my wife!” 9 For her part, Kitty finds the proposal joyful, but only fleetingly: her “soul overflowed with happiness. She had never imagined that the voicing of his love would make such a strong impression on her. But this lasted only a moment.” 10 This is not an immediate rejection of dialogue, as the voiced proposal gives Kitty ecstasy. Yet that same proposal ends the ecstasy just as swiftly as it begins: Kitty feels “alien and distant” from Levin moments

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If Tolstoy explores polite dialogue in the beginning of Anna Karenina, he rejects it outright by the novel’s end. Without yet examining the close of the text, we can predict just this outcome if we turn to one of Tolstoy’s direct influences, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who lends Tolstoy the philosophical ammunition to defend the camp of principled monologism. 11 In his work “Discourse on the Sciences and Arts,” Rousseau launches a tirade against “politeness” and “decency.” He argues that “politeness makes demands, propriety gives orders,” that “without ceasing, common customs are followed, never one’s own lights.” 12 He writes that the “good man” is someone who enjoys “competing in the nude,” who rejects the modern ornamentation of good manners and “affected language.” 13 Rousseau contends that polite society engages the intellect in an anti intellectual pursuit, for it asks the mind to follow the dictates of propriety unthinkingly. It requires us to sit in smoking rooms and opine lamely on fashionable topics with the affected mannerisms of “esteemed gentlemen.” Thus our interactions with others are mediated by a wall of politeness which prevents us from expressing ourselves in any real sense. Likewise, our self consciousness

11 To be sure, the influence of Rousseau on Russian writers is contested, with Western critics often overplaying the connection and Soviet critics underplaying it. But Tolstoy’s admiration of Rousseau is unambiguous. In 1905, he joined the Jean Jacques Rousseau Society; in a letter to the group, he cites Rousseau and the Gospels as his two greatest influences in life. Tolstoy once claimed that, when he was fifteen, he wore on his neck a medallion with Rousseau’s portrait, rather than the traditional cross. For an exploration of Tolstoy’s attitude toward Rousseau, see Margaret Bullitt, "Rousseau and Tolstoy: Childhood and Confession," Comparative Literature Studies (Urbana) 16, no. 1 (1979): 12 1220.Rousseau, Jean Jacques. “Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts.” Basic Political Writings, translated by Donald Cress, 1987, pp. 1 21. 4. 13 Ibid.

after feeling inseparable from him. The scene is exploratory. It seeks to understand what a calculated, spoken proposal can achieve. The answer is yet unclear, but a critique of language as restrictive is under development here. The proposal is a failure for both parties: for Levin because Kitty refuses, and for Kitty because her words diverge painfully from her true emotional life, in which she feels torn between two people whom she thinks to love.

15 In classic Tolstoyan style, the narrative presents a critique of dialogue and at once proposes an alternative. He attempts to describe Kitty and Levin as being in “conversation,” but soon reverses himself and qualifies it as a “mysterious communication.” He lacks the language to define what happens between Kitty and Levin. Maybe for the better: the interaction is special because it

is mediated by the confines of decency, under which we judge our value and worth. Before modernity, Rousseau posits that our customs were “rustic but natural.” Not so in the modern age. Polite society has rendered our way of being in the world as fundamentally alienating to ourselves and others.

The question, then, is how Tolstoy might craft his novel in the face of Rousseau’s objection. It would require a censure of polite conversation and an endorsement of something “rustic but natural,” a crude yet intimate way of communication that rejects the mores of politeness. We find exactly this in Levin’s second proposal, which offers a clear contrastive analogue to the first. The scene begins, fittingly, with a “general conversation” about the relationship of nation states in which everyone takes part “except Kitty and Levin.” Levin “involuntarily began to consider what he had to say about” the matter, but those thoughts, “very important for him once… now had not the slightest interest for him.”

Something more real and deserving of attention presents itself to Levin. He and Kitty begin to carry “on their own conversation, or not a conversation but some mysterious communication that bound them more closely together with every minute.”

14 The fact that Levin involuntarily begins to form an opinion is telling. He knows little about the mutual influence of states and cares even less. But the instinct to comment on the subject of “general conversation,” that vague and indeterminate presence, is a distinctly modern one. In the parlor rooms of the educated elite, it is only polite to participate in conversation, to say something about something. Participation is artificial, self consciously intellectual, and ultimately non thinking, just as Rousseau predicts.

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14 Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 389.

15 Ibid.

is private, exclusive, and unintelligible to outsiders all qualities diametrically opposed to propriety, that verbose and ostentatious form of showmanship. And the wordless communication yields so much more than propriety. Whereas polite conversation is scripted, artificial, and therefore predictable, in this private interaction, Kitty and Levin experience something raw and novel. It gives rise to a rich and complex cast of emotions, a “joyful fear before the unknown into which they were entering.” 16 This might be love, or happiness, or something else, but at least it is something valuable to Tolstoy, for it binds Kitty and Levin together in a mystical and intimate way.

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of subtext (as distinct from and at times contradictory to the text itself) was undergoing rediscovery in nineteenth century Russia. The Russian writer and playwright Anton Chekhov (1860 1904) was one of the first modern writers to split the inner and outer lives of his characters via subtext. Chekhovian characters can say one thing and mean something completely different and that distinction is often never acknowledged in the text itself. Chekhov was Tolstoy’s contemporary, and the two took inspiration from each other. Thus, insofar as Tolstoy uses subtext in Anna Karenina, he innovates a literary device that was only just being reintroduced. For more on Chekhovian subtext, see Geoffrey Borny, “The Search for Form,” Interpreting Chekhov, ANU Press, 2006, pp. 57 92; for more on the relationship between Tolstoy and Chekhov, see Logan Speirs, Tolstoy and Chekhov. 1971.

Although the success of the second proposal finds no parallel in the first, there is one similarity: words continue to fail Levin. When he struggles to explain his distaste for the “general conversation” in the background, Kitty picks up the slack, for “as soon as he began to explain, [Kitty] understood… she had fully divined and expressed his poorly expressed thought.” 17 The diction is telling: Tolstoy sees something “divine” in the ability to receive an idea wordlessly and express it all the same. Kitty connects with some deeper force to extract meaning from Levin’s impoverished language. Here, Tolstoy pioneers subtext, the notion that what is important in dialogue lies beneath the surface, that what’s being said bears little on the meaning of the interaction. 18 But subtext is more than an aesthetic innovation for Tolstoy. It is evidence of his philosophical commitment, in the vein of Rousseau, against the superficiality of dialogue.16Ibid.,390.17Ibid.,396.18Theidea

In the proposal’s success we find the message most vividly. A “darkening” 21 comes over Levin. Recall in the first proposal how Levin’s face “darkened” when he realizes he has no choice but to speak. But in the face of silence, Levin’s darkening comes “from happiness,” for he “simply could not pick out the words [Kitty] had in mind; but in her lovely eyes shining with happiness he understood everything he needed to know!” 22 Happiness exists here as a direct correlate of silence. The dialogical mode pales in value to the quiet light of Kitty’s eyes. Thus, in their silent conversation, “everything had been said – that she loved him, that she would tell her father and mother, that he would come tomorrow in the morning.” 23 In the background, a pointless and verbose conversation drags on. In the foreground, we find a complete marriage proposal woven together by two people communicating silently and mysteriously with one another. I submit that Kitty and Levin not only experiment with subtext, but champion it as the ideal medium of Nowcommunication.westartto

see Tolstoy’s commitment against modern dialogue. But there is one more step in Tolstoy’s evolution as a monologist. Whereas Kitty and Levin interact with each other in a kind of conversation, albeit

19 Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 396. 20 Ibid.

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Such becomes clear when Levin “smiles joyfully” as he finds “so striking… the transition from an intricate, verbose argument with his brother and Pestsov to this laconic and clear, almost wordless, communication of the most complex thoughts” with Kitty. 19 Silence is literally a locus of joy for Levin. Words warp, distort, and therefore fail. They exhort us to conform to propriety, to obfuscate the feelings of our hearts and souls in order to accommodate intellect as the servant of shallow civility. But silence is complex. And thus “silence ensued” between Kitty and Levin. Her eyes “shone with a quiet light.” And Levin feels in his “whole being the ever increasing tension of happiness.” 20

21 Ibid., 398. Ibid. Ibid.

25 Ibid., 379.

silent and mysterious, Tolstoy, over a decade later in The Kreutzer Sonata (1889), pushes his agenda towards full throated monologism, at least formally: the novella is written almost entirely in a monologue delivered by the protagonist Pozdnyshev. At the outset, Pozdnyshev literally repels the distinguished society in his train car as they debate the rights of women, and once he is left alone, he launches into a monologue directed at the only passenger who will listen. Tolstoy’s rejection of dialogue seeps through the pages: “They talk… and they always lie…” Pozdnyshev says at the beginning of his speech. “Always about the same thing. About that love of theirs and what it is!” 24 We find in Tolstoy’s prose the plain assertion that modern dialogue can convey only half truths, if not outright lies. When Pozdnyshev speaks about his torturous relationship with his late wife, he incessantly mentions their perceived inability to communicate the wretchedness of their marriage to one another; he says that his wife’s “exhausted nerves suggested to her the truth as to the vileness of our relation but she did not know how to express it.” 25 Pozdnyshev seems primed to deliver Tolstoy’s most concrete monological polemic. Yet just before Pozdnyshev begins his monologue, he remarks: “It is painful for me to be silent.” 26

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24 Tolstoy, Leo. “The Kreutzer Sonata.” Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude, 2004, pp. 353 449. 364.

26 Ibid., 364.

This comment casts some doubt on the ferocity of Tolstoy’s commitment to silence. Perhaps it reveals the formal cost of Tolstoy’s position: after all, he is faced with the question of how an author might compose a work of literature while rejecting dialogue, a backbone by which novels stand. Or perhaps Tolstoy’s stance is noncommittal. He is not always in the business of writing airtight philosophical treatises. He is an artist. His philosophies are amorphous and fungible. But Pozdnyshev is by no means a hero like Grisha, nor is he an aesthetically attractive character like Levin. His voice is not synonymous with Tolstoy’s, and as such it is not meant to convey authoritative truths. While a character, as a component of a material work, could represent Tolstoy’s position formally, that character does not need to cohere with Tolstoy in content.

27 There’s no reason for us to believe that Pozdnyshev is right in this moment. Silent glances, smiles, kisses, and embraces are all intimate and comforting. Nevertheless, in a fit of anger and jealousy, Pozdnyshev ultimately murders his own wife. Perhaps, at root, Pozdnyshev’s rage begins with an inability to appreciate his wife in their moments of silence that is to say, the moments where love and happiness exist in their richest and most mysterious forms. The Kreutzer Sonata is a cautionary tale, presented monologically, about what happens when we turn ourselves away from anti dialogical, silent experiences. It is Tolstoy’s open armed anticipatory embrace of Bakhtin’s Bakhtin’scritique.

27 Ibid., 381.

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There is still a story to be told. Indeed, Pozdnyshev’s inability to cherish the merits of silence might be his fatal shortcoming, for he finds the “silent glances, smiles, kisses, embraces” between him and his wife “disgusting,” “horrid,” and full of “vileness.”

analysis of Tolstoy as a monological writer is therefore incisive, albeit not for the reasons he would like. His yearning for a “great dialogue” is fundamentally hostile to the novelist, who sees a “great dialogue” as a quintessentially modern disaster. Ironically, Bakhtin presents dialogical writing as the mark of an open, innovative, and modern novel. But Tolstoy’s anti dialogical stance seems just apt for the modern era. Today, we are commanded into dialogue by much more than lame intelligentsia in parlor rooms. Email chains, texts, social media platforms they all task us to voice an opinion, share an experience, “express ourselves.” To make one’s voice heard: this is the command of modernity. Bakhtin, even if reluctantly, can lead us to a helpful conclusion. Tolstoy tasks us to sit with another person in silence and to interact on a mysterious, primordial, even ancestral plane, one rich in complexity and depth and totally deficient in words. To Tolstoy, only these interactions can remove us from our dialogically punitive lives and place us into a “joyful fear before the unknown.”

1 Kyoshi Takahama, “Shiki Koji No Furui Jidai No Ku Wo Yomu,” in Haiku 1, 22 vols., Shiki Zenshū 1 (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1975), 568 73.

See Shiki Masaoka, “Haiku No Shoho,” in Hairon Haiwa II, vol. 5, Shiki Zenshū (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1975), 175 86. 177.

by Professor J. Keith Vincent

一重づゝ一重つゝ散れ八重桜

The Shiki scholar Yamashita Kazumi has speculated that Shiki held onto this poem because of its association with the death in the spring of 1886 of Shimizu Noritō, a childhood friend from Matsuyama, who was one year younger than Shiki. 3 Noritō’s family lived across the street from the

2 The number “eight” in “eight layered cherry” (sometimes translated as “eightfold” or “eight petalled”), moreover, is not literal, but rather a conventional way of saying “many.” Most flowers going by this name have many more than eight petals. I thank Nanae Tamura for pointing this out to me. Since her own name means “seven layered,” she should know!

“A First Brush with Death”

Scatter layer by Layer, layer by layer, Eight layered cherries!

In a 1928 essay on Masaoka Shiki’s early haiku, Shiki’s friend and disciple Takahama Kyoshi wrote that this poem, written in 1886 when Shiki was only nineteen years old “…may express some sadness over the fate of the flower, but the idea for it derives so obviously from the flower’s name that the poem lacks any real interest.”

Hitoe zutsu / hitoe zutsu chire / yaezakura

1 Shiki himself would later look back and criticize his early fondness for haiku like this one, which he saw as evidence of a bad habit of mistaking the “intellectual pleasure” to be had from wordplay for real beauty. 2 And yet, of the fourteen haiku that Shiki wrote down for the year 1886 in his haiku notebook, this is the only one that he did not later cross out. Today, it stands alone on the page in his collected works as the sole poem for that year. Why, then, did he choose to keep it?

3 Kazumi Yamashita, Haiku de Yomu Masaoka Shiki No Shōgai (Tōkyō: Nagata Shobō, 1992).

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4 Shiki Masaoka, “Fudemakase Dai Ni Hen,” in Shoki Zuihitsu, vol. 10, Shiki Zenshû (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1975), 215 368 275.

Masaokas in Matsuyama and the families were so close that Noritō’s mother nursed Shiki when Shiki’s mother’s milk ran dry, making the two boys “milk brothers.” They remained friends throughout their childhood years, and after Shiki mov ed to Tokyo in 1883, Noritō followed in the spring of 1884, rooming with Shiki in a boarding house.

Shiki would later recall what a slob Noritō was as a roommate. As mandarin orange peels and other trash accumulated in their shared room, he would pretend not to notice. “It was the only time in my life that I couldn’t get someone else to do the cleaning. You were even more stubborn than I was!” 4 But Shiki respected Noritō’s talent for math, and he was also the first of many friends whom Shiki would convince, through sheer force of personality, to join him in writing haiku. This poem of Noritō’s may recall a moment from their boyhood together:

led along by the fireflies’ light we get lost on the levy

5 At least one daimyo of Matsuyama, Matsudaira Sadamichi, who founded the Meikyōkan in Matsuyama and made the pilgrimage to Nikkō on behalf of the Shōgun in 1816, had died of beriberi at his Edo mansion at the age of 30.

蛍火にひかれて迷ふ土手の道

Noritō suffered from beriberi, a disease that was reaching epidemic proportions in Japan at the time. It is caused by thiamin deficiency, often brought on in Japan in those days by a diet of polished rice from which the nutrient rich bran has been removed. For this reason it was especially prevalent in the military and among students in the big cities, where polished rice was more common. 5 But Japanese had believed for centuries that it was caused by living in low lying, damp areas. Edo being one such area, the disease was sometimes known as “the Edo malady.” As the physician Katsuki Gyūzan (1656 1740) wrote in 1699, “Those

hotarubi ni / hikarete mayou / dote no michi

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Unfortunately, Norito’s trip to Hakone did not have the hoped for effect. To make matters worse, he lost his wallet somewhere along the way and had to walk the 90 kilometers back to his lodgings in Tokyo; almost twice

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6 The cure, in other words, was to get out of the city. It worked in most cases because going to the country meant eating country food, namely, whole grain rice and other grains rather than polished rice. Hakone, near Mt. Fuji, was the point on the Tōkaidō Highway that marked the outermost limit of the city, the closest place where one could legitimately claim to have gotten out of Edo. Noritō was too poor to travel all the way back to his hometown of Matsuyama, but he did manage a trip to Hakone in the summer of 1885, probably because he had heard some version of Gyūzan’s prescription.

When Noritō arrived in Hakone a letter was awaiting him from Shiki, who had traveled home to Matsuyama that summer. In the letter, dated August 2, 1885, Shiki urges his friend to take good care of himself and recommends various foods. He tells him that he has reassured Norito’s mother that he will recover fully, and that “not even the great Bian Que,” a legendary Chinese doctor who appears in the famous Chinese text, Records of the Grand Historian, “could cure you better than this trip to Hakone.” 7 He also tells Noritō that he has failed his exams and would have to repeat a year. But he puts a characteristically positive spin on the situation, saying that now that he had been held back a year he would be in the same class as Noritō. “I’ll surely do better this time, by ‘swimming in your wake,’” also a phrase borrowed from the Records, a text that the boys had studied together.

samurai who are stationed at their lord’s mansion in Edo all fall victim and the worst cases always result in death. Those who do not get well should quickly return to their provincial homes, for if they pass over Hakone, they will be cured.”

6 Quoted in Alexander R. Bay, Beriberi in Modern Japan: The Making of a National Disease, Rochester Studies in Medical History; v. 24 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2012). 15.

7 SZS 18:76.

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9 It is unlikely that Shimizu would have been helped much even if he had been able to afford treatment. The Western medicine that was taking hold among elite medical professionals in the 1880s were under the sway of “germ theory,” and even as evidence mounted that the cause was diet, they ignored this evidence in order to search for a bacterial agent that they assumed must be the cause. The result was that thousands continued to die from the disease well into the twentieth century. See Bay, Beriberi in Modern Japan

the distance they had attempted to walk to Kamakura in the previous fall. 8 He made it back, but with painfully swollen and weakened legs.

At the end of 1885, Noritō’s family in Matsuyama sent him a money order so that he could finally go and see a doctor, 9 but for some reason, the money took months to arrive. By the time it finally reached their boarding house on April 3, 1886, the disease had caused Noritō’s entire body to swell up and he could no longer walk without getting out of breath. With the money order in hand, Shiki went to the Hisamatsu mansion in Azabu to consult with his uncle Fujino. They called two different physicians to examine Noritō. But it was too late. He died from heart failure at 1:40 in the afternoon on April 4, 1886.

Earlier that day, another roommate, Ibayashi Hiromasa, had sent a telegram to Noritō’s family in Matsuyama informing them that their son’s condition was critical. Now Ibayashi ran to the telegraph office in Hongō with the news of his death, but there was no time or money for them to come to Tokyo. The reply came late that night: “We are counting on you. Please send a lock of his hair.” Shiki took this as his cue to make arrangements for the funeral, gathering a total of seventy young men, most of whom were similarly living on their own in Tokyo far from home. One of these attendees, a young Minakata Kumagasu (1867 1941), who would go on to become a well known naturalist and ethnographer, later recounted how Shiki orchestrated the complicated funeral service entirely

8 柳原極堂『友人子規』 336. Quoted in an article in the Shiki kaishi by Kamachi Fumio that gives an extensive account of Noritō’s illness, death, and Shiki’s reaction to it, based partly on interviews with his surviving younger sister in 1958. See Fumio Kamachi, “Masaoka Shiki to Shimizu Noritō No Shi,” Ehime Kokubun Kenkyū 7, no. 3 (1958): 46 53.

10 Minakata told this story to Shiki’s disciple Kawahigashi Hekigotō, when Hekigotō visited him in 1911. As he told the story, he “let out a laugh that came from deep inside.” Hekigotō Kawahigashi, “Zoku Ichi Nichi Isshin (Kōhen),” in Kikō Shū 3, vol. 17, Kawahigashi Hekigotō Zenshū (Bungei shobō, 1994), 1 349. 208.

Shiki’s drawing of Norito’s coffin (right) and both sides of his grave marker (left), included in his letter to Norito’s brothers. The marker identifies Norito as a “former samurai from Ehime.” The date of his death is shown at left.

on his own, but “once the last rites had been said he had to beg the priest to give him a break on the fee because he had run out of money.”

Three days after Noritō’s death, having hardly eaten or slept, Shiki sat down to write a letter to Noritō’s two brothers back in Matsuyama, describing in detail the funeral and everything that had happened leading up to the Noritō’s death, including his own drawings of the grave marker and the coffin.

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The essay ends with Shiki describing the efforts he has made to keep Noritō’s memory alive: placing a mortuary table on his desk for the first 49 days, visiting his grave regularly, and gathering their friends together for memorial ceremonies. He asked his friend the painter Shimomura Izan (1865 1945) to do a portrait in oil of Noritō based on the only photo of him that survived, and then sent the painting to Noritō’s family in Matsuyama. But neither the photograph nor the painting could “capture”

The letter was 7.72 meters long: the second longest letter Shiki ever wrote. 11 Towards the end, he asks that the brothers convey his apologies to their parents for not taking better care of Noritō, and promises “upon the honor of our friendship” to make it his life’s work to make sure Noritō’s name is not forgotten. Shiki then vows solemnly to make a name for himself as well, “so that my own success will be a memorial to him.” It was a promise he would keep. 12

14 A common practice to keep animals from digging up the body

12 Kamachi, “Masaoka Shiki to Shimizu Noritō No Shi.” 49.

11 SZS 18: 78 87. The longest was not a personal letter but a letter to a friend who had asked Shiki to comment on a large number of his haiku in 1892. Shiki obliged with a letter that fills thirteen pages of small type in his collected works (October 9, 1892). A letter to Ioki Hyōtei written in 1895 was almost nine meters long, but has a smaller wordcount and takes up only five pages in the collected works. For the Hyōtei letter, see SZS 18:638 642.

Four years later, in Following my Brush, Shiki wrote a long prose account of Noritō’s death and funeral. The piece is an early example of Shiki’s emotionally powerful prose style, and his gift for focusing on poignant details. The Shiki scholar Kamachi Fumio wrote that when he read this piece as a young man, he felt that he “was right there with Shiki at his friend’s bedside, praying for his recovery… [and] feeling as if I had lost a friend myself.” 13 When the boys filled Noritō’s coffin with star anise, 14 Shiki wrote how the dead leaves brushed cruelly against Noritō’s exposed and swollen flesh.

13 「少年の日に初めてこれを読んだ私は、子規と共に彼の病床の傍にある思いがして、その病気の回復を念じ、読み進んでその死を知った時には、自分の親友の死にあったような一種のショックを受けたのを覚えている。」

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Noritō’s “true nature.”

As a late blooming variety, eight layered cherries would not have begun scattering in Tokyo until a few weeks after Noritō’s funeral in early April. 18 Perhaps this was when Shiki first wrote the poem, prompted by the sight of the blossoms to an early moment of remembrance after the initial shock of the death and funeral had subsided. Or, more likely, he simply plucked the flower from his still rudimentary poetic lexicon and invested it with the memory of his friend.

16 Shiki Masaoka, “Shimizu Noritō Shi,” in Shoki Zuihitsu, vol. 10, 25 vols., Shiki Zenshū (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1975), 274 82. 282.

Shiki’s haiku about the eight layered cherry is included neither in his long letter to Noritō’s brothers nor in this prose account of Noritō’s death. But something like the image of the layers of the cherry scattering one by one is there in these lines towards the end of the latter essay: “After the funeral, everyone scattered in different directions, heading to their respective homes [mina chiri-jiri ni kaerisarinu]. What a sad world it is, I thought. The cherry blossoms were at their height, but I knew they would fall soon enough.”

17 Ibid.

15 In recent years, he laments, “the month of his death goes by without anyone noticing.” 16

19 It appears most famously in an early eleventh century poem by the court lady Ise no Taifu, written on the spot at the request of the powerful regent Fujiwara no Michinaga to celebrate the gift of such a cherry brought by a bishop from the ancient capital of Nara to the court in Kyoto, where the capital had moved in 754 A.D. In Joshua Mostow’s translation: The eight petalled cherries from the Nara capital of the ancient past

15 The word for “photograph” in Japanese consists of two characters meaning “capture” and “true nature.” Shiki pulls the word apart here to form the negation (皆真を写さず).

18 See the article on “late blooming cherries” [osozakura] in this indispensable guide to seasonal words: Kenkichi Yamamoto, Kihon Kigo Go Hyaku Sen (Tokyo: Kōdansha gakujutsu bunko, 1989). 158.

In classical waka, the eight layered cherry is typically written about at its height and not when it scatters; more a symbol of the glory and abundance of spring than its passing. 19 Shiki’s mournful focus in this

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haiku on the scattering of the petals thus offers a haikai twist on the classical tradition. If the flowers were in bloom during his funeral, the poet wished that their scattering would be as long and drawn out as possible, as if to keep the memory of his friend present to his mind. After recording the poem in his notebook three years later in 1889, he may have referred back to it again while writing the long account in Following my Brush in 1890. Shiki also chose to include it in his Scarecrow Collection, the earliest selection of poems by himself and others in his circle that he compiled and edited in the early 1890s. 20 In later years, the haiku’s expression of the poet’s desire that the eight layered cherry take as long as possible to scatter would have served as a reminder both of the tragic suddenness of Noritō’s death, and of the season when he died. 21

Of course, Kyoshi was right to say that this haiku was not among Shiki’s best. It relies too much on wordplay and there is no more hackneyed trope in Japanese literature than the scattering of cherry blossoms as a symbol for life’s impermanence. But for the eighteen year old Shiki, who had just begun to write haiku, and who had begun his study of waka the previous summer, the poem clearly meant a great deal. The fact that he preserved it in his notebook and kept returning to it over the years shows how even today nine layers thick have bloomed within your court!

20 The name of this collection derives from its preface, where Shiki says of himself that he “has a lot of nerve to put together a collection like this, scarecrow that I am, having as yet no poetic insides to speak of.” 「笑へや笑へや、俳諧の門に佇めども未だ風雅のはらわたをそなへざる案山子の我はがほなるこそをかしけれ。」See SZS 16: 497.

21 Many thanks to Janine Beichman for her helpful comments on this section and the translation of the haiku. My initial version read “One by one, layer / by layer may you scatter / eight layered cherry.” At Beichman’s suggestion, I have revised to reflect the original’s use of an unadorned imperative, and the repetition of “layer.” As she notes, “’Layer sort of suggests ‘later’...palimpsestically speaking, beneath the repeated ‘layer’ is ‘later’...he is saying slow down, guys, I want to keep his image in my mind, that image that was alive when you were too...” In the revised translation, then, the poem makes use of wordplay in English as well.

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Joshua S. Mostow, Pictures of the Heart: The Hyakunin Isshu in Word and Image (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996). 322 323.

Inishie no / Nara no miyako no / yaezakura / kefu kokonoe ni / nioinuru kana 古の奈良の都の八重桜けふ九重に匂ひぬるかな

In 1892, on the sixth anniversary of Noritō death, Shiki wrote this poem, with the headnote “Thoughts on the Morning of April 14th” a skeleton now in the shade of trees viewing gaikotsuflowersto/natte kokage no / hanami kana

骸骨となつて木陰の花見哉 22

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SZS 1: 63. For a discussion of this and many other of Shiki’s poems, see Shigeyuki Kida, “Shiki No Zonmon Zōtō No Ku,” Shiki Kaishi, no. 46 (1990): 1 18.

a mediocre haiku can serve to memorialize a loss no less powerfully than a photograph or a painting.

David Winner, Georgia

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pg. 122 David Winner, Georgia

pg 4 Dina Famin, Granada, Spain

Image Credits

pg. 73 Emily Yoder, Michgan, USA

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pg. 62 Simran Singh, Lisbon, Portugal

pg. 23 Karyn Padilla, Omoa, Honduras

Alexa Drescher (CAS '23) is majoring in Japanese and International Relations. She hopes to go on to study translation in graduate school with the ultimate goal of becoming a translator. While she is currently interested in pursuing manga translation, she is also interested in literary translation. She is currently in the process of applying for internships at Penguin Random House, where she hopes to begin gaining real world experience in translation.

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Demian Choi (CAS, KHC ‘25) is double-majoring in History and Religious Studies with a minor in "Religion in Medicine and Science." A member of BU's Study of Religions Club, Undergraduate History Association, and Undergraduate Philosophy Association, he enjoys discussing such topics as ancient toilets, medieval "magic," historical and cultural healing practices, mysticism, and the philosophy of cannibalism. He also enjoys meditation, long walks, practicing French, dissecting organs or organisms, reading gothic horror, a Russian novel, or French existential novella.

Our Contributors

Dina Famin (CAS ‘23) is triple-majoring in History, Biology, and Comparative Literature, with a minor in Medieval Studies. She has no time to pithily question adding another minor; she should have planned better.

Joanne Chang (CAS ‘25) is an English major with a Biology minor. Her writing and poetry is largely influenced by her Taiwanese American background. Attending boarding school in the US allowed her to explore much of her identity. She is a huge advocate for women’s rights in Asia, mental health awareness, and racial equality in the US. She adores British Romantic literature and poetry above all others. She hopes to find a field of study and career that encompasses both medicine and literature.

(CAS '23) is studying Earth and Environmental Science and Comparative Literature. They love exploring nature, reading and art. Their most current fixation is "solarpunk"... you should definitely look into it, too.

Madison Marano (CAS ‘23) studies Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, but minors in Comparative Literature. One might say variety is both the spice and cortisol inducer of life.

Jessica Mellen (CAS ‘22) is a recent graduate from the History of Art and Architecture program. She would like to thank professor J. Keith Vincent for his guidance and support in writing her paper. She hopes that her paper inspires readers to discover The Pillow Book for themselves.

Cindy Hu (CAS ‘25) is majoring in International Relations (Pardee School of Global Studies) and Psychology. She is interested in history, law, education, human development, and public policy; as a result, she is having a hard time deciding on what she hopes to pursue in graduate school. In her free time, Cindy enjoys climbing trees, roller blading, and reading.VivJohnson

Emma Hardy (CAS ‘25) is majoring in International Relations with a regional focus on North Africa and the Middle East. She has a strong interest for the Arabic language and the literature of the region and hopes to pursue the Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literatures major as well.

Eleanor Moran (CAS, KHC '25) is majoring in English and Classical Civilizations with a minor in French. She loves to read and write, and is very interested in language.

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Timothy Obiso (CAS '22) majored in Linguistics and Chinese Language and Literature and is currently pursuing an MS in Computational Linguistics at Brandeis University. He spends his free time learning other languages, enjoying their literary traditions, and exploring Boston. He is currently working on translating more works by Hu Yepin. Tim has also written a few original short stories in English and is working on writing more and translating those into Chinese.

Karyn Padilla (CAS ‘23) is a first-generation college student, the first in her family to graduate high school, and is Honduran American. As she has grown older, she has developed an appreciation for her native tongue (Spanish). She uses her writing as both an outlet for the inability to express herself that she felt when she was younger due to her lack of Spanish skills and as a way to make peace with some things she experienced in her younger years. She has grown to love her culture and identity, but she is still trying to navigate life as a first-born American with her entire ancestry line originating in Honduras. She loves writing on her own time, and finally feels ready to share some pieces publicly.

Simran Singh (CAS ‘22) is a recent graduate who studied Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literatures with a minor in Psychology. She served as President of the BU World Languages and Literatures Undergraduate Association for the 2021 2022 academic year and enjoys learning languages.

Jasmine A. Richardson (she/her; CGS '23, CAS '25) attends Boston University's College of General Studies, but is planning on enrolling into the College of Arts and Sciences, specifically the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, in 2023, with a major in International Relations and a minor in Arabic.

Zoe Tseng (CAS ‘25) is a Psychology student minoring in Chinese. She has always enjoyed writing and reading creative works. She hopes to always have an outlet for these hobbies in her life.

Emily Yoder (CAS, KHC ‘24) is double majoring in Comparative Literature and History with a minor in Latin. She enjoys studying American and Roman history and literature, and plans to attend graduate school to further study the humanities. Emily also hopes to incorporate research about the history and culture of her home state, Michigan, into her work.

David Winner (CAS ‘23) studies Philosophy and Russian. His academic interests include phenomenology and literary theory; his real interests include coffee making and waterskiing. Against his better judgment, he plans to pursue a philosophy PhD.

J.Keith Vincent teaches in WLL and Women's, Gender, & Sexuaity Studies. He also enjoys running and swimming in ponds. When he is not working on his long overdue book on Masaoka Shiki, he occasionally writes a blog, which can be found at jkeithvincent.com

Rachel Zhu (CAS '23) studies English and Political Science, focusing on religion, public rhetoric, and creative writing. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Crow & Cross Keys, The Twyckenham Notes, and Second Chance Lit, and she was named a runner-up for Stony Brook Southampton’s 2020 Short Fiction Prize. She can be found on Twitter @RachelAZhu.

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Alexandria Issue iv

Articles inside

by Jessica Mellen

by Dina Famin

by Emily Yoder

by Demian Choi

byAlexa Drescher

byJoanne Chang

translatedfrom Chinese by Timothy Obiso

by Viv Johnson

by Emma Hardy

by Rachel Zhu

by Karyn Padilla