Autumn
Hideo Kobayashi
On a clear autumn morning, I climbed up to the Nigatsudo Hall and sat in a daze. I rested my chin in my arms on the parapet, as if in a state of awe, and looked with narrowed eyes at the shining tail of the Great Buddha Hall, the more beautifully shining leaves of the ginkgo trees, the shadows of the scrolls, the Ikoma mountainsides, and many other things. It had been twenty years. People forget the past so easily. I thought that I had forgotten many things, which also means that I had remembered many things. It seemed that I was like a cat in the sun. I was in a teahouse that looked like a storehouse in the bowels of a temple building.
The ceiling and pillars were sooty, and the many tea kettles were shining black. The tatami mats, which looked as if they have been boiled in grease and sweat, were filled with the bright morning sun. I used to come here to take a nap. On the wall, there were a number of old ema votive tablets. Among them was one that read, "Lifetime prohibition for those who gamble, etc.", and I remember being somewhat amused to see a seven-year ban on people drinking alcohol, with a white proviso at the bottom. I looked up while drinking tea and saw that it was still there. A hanafuda card was aflame, and in front of it, a beautiful man was holding his hands together in a gesture of prayer with a delicate expression on his face. It did not look amusing at all. It looked rather enigmatic. This teahouse was especially cool in the summer. I came here every day to have a cup of tea, and made a single observation, and then I went back to the house.
I ordered a plate of horribly salty stewed meat, then turned over and read Proust. I didn't particularly like Proust. It was the only book I had. At the time, I was like many young men who are constantly dissatisfied with themselves and who, in their heart of hearts, are burning with an unexplainable bitterness. This kept me from getting on with anything, and I was a terrible pain to everyone I met. I pretended to be bored with this work. When I happened to meet Takehiko Ibuki in Kyoto, who was passionate about Proust, he gave me the first two books of his collection as if they were souvenirs. And what did he mean by that? The result was that I only associated Proust with hannya-yu and wild geese. With my limited language skills, traipsing through the dense print seemed to me to be a meagre fraction of a life. It seemed fitting to follow the author's troubling discovery that even the smallest piece of life could be infinitely divided. But always, eventually, a good night's sleep came. Summer was over and I had reached the middle of his second volume. Since then, I have never opened Proust. High-class literature is read by the lowest class. I am not ashamed to say that I have done what is customary in the world, which is that high class literature is read in a very low class. I am not ashamed to admit it. Quite the opposite is often the case.
"In search of lost time" - an eerie phrase, I thought to myself. I tapped it in my head like a key. Immediately, all sorts of random abstract notions of time swarmed forth. "Ah, this must be the case. Isn't the order completely reversed? Proust should have started by inhaling the scent of flowers." I clicked my tongue and puffed on my cigarette. Unexpectedly, a splendid ring of light purple smoke formed, shimmering, and passed silently in a wave of light. It looked as if it were made of particles of time, and I, its faint tone passing through the light. I felt as if I could even hear it. A strange feeling arose and I swam over it. It doesn't matter whether time is an innate form of our perception or a metric quality of the world of the fourth dimension. No one can do the art of sitting still and contemplating an idea that has no ambiguity, and that we have no choice but to think of as such. Eventually, we will whisper that it doesn't matter. There are certain ideas which, at the extremes of their rationalisation and clarification, become unimportant to us. This is not a matter of insignificance. This is where Augustine, in his 'Confessions,' jumped from an understanding of time to a belief in time. As he said, time cannot leave the human soul for any length of time.
The author himself probably knew best the irony of 'In Search of Lost Time.' Time may pass for everyone, but each of us loses it as if we were dropping it at the grave. The skillful loss of time is time itself. And it seems that the past that was skillfully lost is the future that is skillfully gained. When the world thought that the novel 'In Search of Lost Time' had appeared, the author might have meant that he had decided to consume his remaining life with a strange confession, a confession that only death could stop. Yes, that may have been the case. Certainly, this person must have had a certain inner function of unusual richness, producing an endless stream of joys and sorrows that could never be expressed outwardly. And this means that we must constantly maintain an inexhaustible consciousness.
When one thinks of the author's strange confession, that death was the only thing that could stop him and that he had decided to consume the rest of his life, it may well be that this is what he meant. Certainly, this man must have had a certain inner resourcefulness that was extraordinarily rich, producing an endless supply of joys and sorrows that could never be expressed outwardly. And this must have been a constant source of his inexhaustible consciousness.
He must have been forced to constantly read the consciousness that he could never exhaust. For the thought of ever being outside is a kind of dream in which I am awake, insofar as it moves like an external object, independent of my will. All mental images collide or merge in a maelstrom of expectations and memories. As this world is increasingly and involuntarily expanding and becoming more industrialized, I may have sensed in this genius something like the sum total of possible psychology. Or, rather, did it not become his own all-American path? It is an unfulfilling premonition. He should have killed himself. But the cursed privilege of his novelist's talent prevented him from doing so. He was in a desperate situation, at any rate.
I had to make a decision, and I had to make a decision to kill myself, because that was the last thing I could do. I had no idea that I would be able to write, which death would surely bring to an end. No, my imagination moved without my consultation. There was no reason to bemoan my poor imagination. There was no such thing as "my fantasy," just as there was no such thing as "my dream." At least, if you don't believe that, you don't know who "I" am. Geniuses are all out of their minds. But it's worth the wait. This is a convenient but mediocre argument. Proust, who was devoured by fantasy, was not devoured by demons. Fancy is an automatic movement. By effortlessness. Then, enlightenment is the interstitial zone of fantasy.
Wouldn't that be a good thing? Then, a thought suddenly occurred to me. Of course, it was automatic. The inborn form of recognition must have been a cornerstone of Kant's dilemma. He must have had the unenviable premonition of the impossibility of the upper echelons of recognition. I couldn't believe that before I knew it, I was walking by the pond in front of Hakodate-ki, passing behind the Great Buddha Hall. It was a plain pond, but its surface was a strangely subtle shade of what could only be described as the colours of autumn. I wanted somehow to escape from my disturbing fantasies. I walked through the gate and down the dreary yellowish lane of the backstreets as if I were running a foot race. But it didn't seem to be going well. Today's science has painted an astonishing picture of the transformation of things. Everyone knows that some basic properties of matter that were beyond doubt have been destroyed. No one can say anymore that the structure of matter is less varied than the structure of consciousness. Imagination follows man, hunting down the "I."
When the disorder of the universe is no longer tolerated in balance with the disorder of the psyche, a desperate measure, for example, the "cone of light," is born. That is good. But how damnable it is to be endless in such a way. All human inventions are a desperate measure. The greater the invention, the more so. It takes great ingenuity to be in such dire straits. That may be so. But the most basic property common to all inventions in science, philosophy, and art is simply that they manifest some formal order, some semblance of order. What does this have to do with the strange existence of the "I" of the inventor? Artists started using the term "self-expression" about a hundred years ago, but it doesn't seem to have much meaning. There is no such thing as an expression of "I." No one can do that. History is the remains of countless "I"'s that have flown away from the world.
The town ran out, and the road continued through the rice paddies. I was still walking in a great hurry.
Why must the only thing I believe in be so fragile, so fleeting, so ephemeral, so utterly unknown? The fantasy left me, and a bitter, sad feeling filled my heart. Its shape seemed to be the waves of a swaying rice field, the shadow of a cloud passing over it, or the birds fluttering above it. A cow was tied to a stone lantern on the roadside. It was a nice black colour, and well formed. I don't know any cows that can be turned into corned beef, but I know you very well. The Japanese have been drawing you for a thousand years. However, I apologize for today. I can see the forest. It is the forest of Kairyuu-oji Temple, isn't it? Even if I don't go, I know. Five or six pine trees stand in the middle of the forest, and the sutra hall, which looks like a ghost of time, stands in a deserted place.
I was just in a hurry. I was just in a hurry.
(January 1950)