From Cannetti to Eliot (via Yeats): “Exaltered by that prize that- with the exception of Yeats- was bestowed upon none of those who would have deserved it and I witnessed the fame of this miserable creature”
From Yeats to Tagore: “I have carried the manuscript of these translations about with me for days, reading it in railway trains, or on the top of omibuses & in restaurants, & I have often had to close I lest some stranger would see how much It moved me. These lyrics- which are in the original, my Indians tell me, full of suntlety of rhythm, of untranslatable delicacies of colour, of metrical invention- display in their thought a world I have dreamed of all my long life.”
From Lessing to Pamuk, Naipaul & Coetzee: "I have been looking at the speeches by some of your recent prizewinners. Take the magnificent Pamuk. He said his father had 500 books. His talent did not come out of the air, he was connected with the great tradition. Take V.S. Naipaul. He mentions that the Indian Vedas were close behind the memory of his family. His father encouraged him to write, and when he got to England he would visit the British Library. So he was close to the great tradition. Let us take John Coetzee. He was not only close to the great tradition, he was the tradition: he taught literature in Cape Town. And how sorry I am that I was never in one of his classes, taught by that wonderfully brave, bold mind."
From Oe to Kawabata & Yeats: Kawabata Yasunari, the first Japanese writer who stood on this platform as a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, delivered a lecture entitled Japan, the Beautiful, and Myself. It was at once very beautiful and vague. I have used the English word vague as an equivalent of that word in Japanese aimaina. This Japanese adjective could have several alternatives for its English translation. The kind of vagueness that Kawabata adopted deliberately is implied in the title itself of his lecture. It can be transliterated as 'myself of beautiful Japan'. The vagueness of the whole title derives from the Japanese particle 'no' (literally 'of') linking 'Myself' and 'Beautiful Japan'.
The vagueness of the title leaves room for various interpretations of its implications. It can imply 'myself as a part of beautiful Japan', the particle 'no' indicating the relationship of the noun following it to the noun preceding it as one of possession, belonging or attachment. It can also imply 'beautiful Japan and myself', the particle in this case linking the two nouns in apposition, as indeed they are in the English title of Kawabata's lecture translated by one of the most eminent American specialists of Japanese literature. He translates 'Japan, the beautiful and myself'. In this expert translation the traduttore (translator) is not in the least a traditore (betrayer).
Under that title Kawabata talked about a unique kind of mysticism which is found not only in Japanese thought but also more widely Oriental thought. By 'unique' I mean here a tendency towards Zen Buddhism. Even as a twentieth-century writer Kawabata depicts his state of mind in terms of the poems written by medieval Zen monks. Most of these poems are concerned with the linguistic impossibility of telling truth. According to such poems words are confined within their closed shells. The readers can not expect that words will ever come out of these poems and get through to us. One can never understand or feel sympathetic towards these Zen poems except by giving oneself up and willingly penetrating into the closed shells of those words.
Why did Kawabata boldly decide to read those extremely esoteric poems in Japanese before the audience in Stockholm? I look back almost with nostalgia upon the straightforward bravery which he attained towards the end of his distinguished career and with which he made such a confession of his faith. Kawabata had been an artistic pilgrim for decades during which he produced a host of masterpieces. After those years of his pilgrimage, only by making a confession as to how he was fascinated by such inaccessible Japanese poems that baffle any attempt fully to understand them, was he able to talk about 'Japan, the Beautiful, and Myself', that is, about the world in which he lived and the literature which he created.
It is noteworthy, furthermore, that Kawabata concluded his lecture as follows:
My works have been described as works of emptiness, but it is not to be taken for the nihilism of the West. The spiritual foundation would seem to be quite different. Dogen entitled his poem about the seasons 'Innate Reality', and even as he sang of the beauty of the seasons he was deeply immersed in Zen.
(Translation by Edward Seidensticker)
Here also I detect a brave and straightforward self-assertion. On the one hand Kawabata identifies himself as belonging essentially to the tradition of Zen philosophy and aesthetic sensibilities pervading the classical literature of the Orient. Yet on the other he goes out of his way to differentiate emptiness as an attribute of his works from the nihilism of the West. By doing so he was whole-heartedly addressing the coming generations of mankind with whom Alfred Nobel entrusted his hope and faith.
To tell you the truth, rather than with Kawabata my compatriot who stood here twenty-six years ago, I feel more spiritual affinity with the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature seventy one years ago when he was at about the same age as me. Of course I would not presume to rank myself with the poetic genius Yeats. I am merely a humble follower living in a country far removed from his. As William Blake, whose work Yeats revalued and restored to the high place it holds in this century, once wrote: 'Across Europe & Asia to China & Japan like lightnings'.
During the last few years I have been engaged in writing a trilogy which I wish to be the culmination of my literary activities. So far the first two parts have been published and I have recently finished writing the third and final part. It is entitled in Japanese A Flaming Green Tree. I am indebted for this title to a stanza from Yeats's poem Vacillation:
A tree there is that from its topmost bough
Is half all glittering flame and half all green
Abounding foliage moistened with the dew ...
('Vacillation', 11-13)
In fact my trilogy is so soaked in the overflowing influence of Yeats's poems as a whole. On the occasion of Yeat's winning the Nobel Prize the Irish Senate proposed a motion to congratulate him, which contained the following sentences:
... the recognition which the nation has gained, as a prominent contributor to the world's culture, through his success."
... a race that hitherto had not been accepted into the comity of nations.
... Our civilization will be assesed on the name of Senator Yeats.
... there will always be the danger that there may be a stampeding of people who are sufficiently removed from insanity in enthusiasm for destruction.
(The Nobel Prize: Congratulations to Senator Yeats)
Yeats is the writer in whose wake I would like to follow. I would like to do so for the sake of another nation that has now been 'accepted into the comity of nations' but rather on account of the technology in electrical engineering and its manufacture of automobiles. Also I would like to do so as a citizen of such a nation which was stamped into 'insanity in enthusiasm of destruction' both on its own soil and on that of the neighbouring nations.
As someone living in the present would such as this one and sharing bitter memories of the past imprinted on my mind, I cannot utter in unison with Kawabata the phrase 'Japan, the Beautiful and Myself'. A moment ago I touched upon the 'vagueness' of the title and content of Kawabata's lecture.
From Eliot to Russell:
Dear Burtie,
I wanted to write you a line before Tuesday- as I should not, of course, be able to present, as unfortunately on previous occasions. I am glad to hear that Bosanquet and others have turned out so well- I think that is awfully gratifying. Demos told me that he had been giving you bibliography on behavioursim. I am not convinced that Watson and those people are really very important. But the avenue of investigation which you suggested to me in a conversation a few weeks ago impressed me very deeply, and I hope you will go in for it very hard. It struck me as important as anything to be down; besides, it would be very amusing to stand the biological sciences on their heads that way.
With all sincerest good wishes.
Yours as ever
Tom
