The shotgun
Yasushi Inoue
Editions Le Livre de Poche
Yasushi Inoue
Editions Le Livre de Poche
My Chronic beautiful book by Yasushi Inoue, published in the May issue of the BSC News Magazine. U n epistolary novel which tackles the tragedies of love with intensity and restraint.
Happy reading!
"Now that Mother is dead, only you know. And the day you leave this world, no being on this earth imagine that such love has ever existed. So far, I thought that love was like the sun shining and victorious, forever blessed by God and men. I thought that love was gradually in power, like a limpid stream that sparkles in all its beauty in the sunlight, quivering with a thousand wrinkles raised by the wind and protected banks covered by grass, trees and flowers. I thought it was love. How could I imagine a love that the sun does not illuminate and running from nowhere to nowhere, deep intruded into the earth, like an underground river. "
The book opens with an eponymous poem by the author, published in Hunter's Companion, published by the Society of Hunters of Japan. He discusses, in prose, he observed similarity between a shotgun and isolation of a human being.
The poem went rather unnoticed time of its publication until the author receives a few months later, the letter Josuke Misugi, a man claiming to have recognized in this prose in the person of the solitary hunter. For the author, this is a mixture of pure chance and remember a hunter cross on the mountain some time ago. As evidence of his identity and justify the sense of isolation felt by the hunter's poem, Josuke Misugi sent three letters to the author that form the fabric of this novel. A rather unusual approach, particularly as the man asks the author to please burn those letters after having read them.
But after reading the author can not bring themselves to respect this wish and decides to publish these letters in their entirety. Addressed to Josuke Misugi, they come to the fates of three women linked by a hitherto secret story of adultery.
The first is Shoko, the daughter of his mistress who discovered the existence of their relationship by reading the newspaper from his mother, the second comes from Midori, his wife, who announced his intention to divorce, no longer stand the infidelity of her husband and the third, finally, is the handwriting of the lady herself, shortly before his suicide. She returns to these thirteen years of clandestine love. "I get the punishment deserved by a woman who, unable to simply love, sought to steal the happiness of being loved. "She wrote in a last breath.
Three letters, three women, three psychologies, three different visions and feelings of a single event: a tragic tale of adultery. All express in their own way and with great modesty their sense of betrayal, discomfort, sadness.
"[...] the serpent that lurks within us all is a sad thing. A day, in a book, I met with these words: "The sorrow of being alive, and as I write this letter, I feel such sorrow nothing can assuage. What is this disgusting, this terrible, sad thing that we carry within us? "Must
of Japanese literature, this book has received, in 1950, the Akutagawa Prize - the most prestigious literary award in Japan.
disappointed love, passionate, forbidden, impossible ... If the theme is hardly original, is by its construction and style short epistolary novel that stands out. Poetic letters, intense and moving, yet written with a lot of distance in a very simple language, devoid of frills, the most faithful Japanese style.
A serious and deep history, a short but wonderful time playing.
Melissa Hoffmann The poem went rather unnoticed time of its publication until the author receives a few months later, the letter Josuke Misugi, a man claiming to have recognized in this prose in the person of the solitary hunter. For the author, this is a mixture of pure chance and remember a hunter cross on the mountain some time ago. As evidence of his identity and justify the sense of isolation felt by the hunter's poem, Josuke Misugi sent three letters to the author that form the fabric of this novel. A rather unusual approach, particularly as the man asks the author to please burn those letters after having read them.
But after reading the author can not bring themselves to respect this wish and decides to publish these letters in their entirety. Addressed to Josuke Misugi, they come to the fates of three women linked by a hitherto secret story of adultery.
The first is Shoko, the daughter of his mistress who discovered the existence of their relationship by reading the newspaper from his mother, the second comes from Midori, his wife, who announced his intention to divorce, no longer stand the infidelity of her husband and the third, finally, is the handwriting of the lady herself, shortly before his suicide. She returns to these thirteen years of clandestine love. "I get the punishment deserved by a woman who, unable to simply love, sought to steal the happiness of being loved. "She wrote in a last breath.
Three letters, three women, three psychologies, three different visions and feelings of a single event: a tragic tale of adultery. All express in their own way and with great modesty their sense of betrayal, discomfort, sadness.
"[...] the serpent that lurks within us all is a sad thing. A day, in a book, I met with these words: "The sorrow of being alive, and as I write this letter, I feel such sorrow nothing can assuage. What is this disgusting, this terrible, sad thing that we carry within us? "Must
of Japanese literature, this book has received, in 1950, the Akutagawa Prize - the most prestigious literary award in Japan.
disappointed love, passionate, forbidden, impossible ... If the theme is hardly original, is by its construction and style short epistolary novel that stands out. Poetic letters, intense and moving, yet written with a lot of distance in a very simple language, devoid of frills, the most faithful Japanese style.
A serious and deep history, a short but wonderful time playing.
