The Unreality of Love. Time and Death in Kawabata's Lyric Poem

Abstract

K -, I NO TSURAYUKI, the compiler of the first imperial anthology of poetry, the Kokin wakashbi, describes in his preface to that work the occasions on which men, in search of consolation of soul, feel themselves moved to compose poetry. One of these occasions which awaken the flow of emotion and poetic inspiration is, according to him, 'When someone who has been deeply loved is abandoned in forgetfulness.'l Such is perhaps the motivation which floods the pages ofKawabata's Lyric Poem.2 The story concerns a woman in twofold solitude, abandoned by her loved one and separated from him by the irreparable remoteness born of death. She indulges in nostalgic musing and from her lips escape, with growing intensity, words fraught with pain and pleasure. She experiences more than a dream-like encounter with her loved one in her reverie, for she imagines that he has returned to life in the form ofan early bud of a red plum-tree. This is a poem of deep lyricism and, in attempting to interpret its meaning, I am afraid of interrupting the poetic reverie with my words. A lyric poem is not to be explained; it is to be intuited, to be savored in silence. On the other hand, these pages of Kawabata do not offer a mere lyrical aestheticism, empty of objective content and serving as pure ornament. Quite the opposite is true; for they enclose profound ideas, whose roots, buried in the earth broken in that distant time of I932, have transmitted their sap and grown into a giant trunk, invading with its strong branches all the later writings of Kawabata even until today, thirty-nine years later. As I see it, Lyric Poem is a basic work in the literature of this author. Anyone sufficiently familiar with his writings will be able to appreciate this point, and Kawabata himself graciously confirmed my opinion in one of the recent conversations I had with him in his residence at Kamakura. Lyric Poem is a work for which, as he writes in Bungakuteki 7ijoden, he has a deep affection.3 He mentioned to me that the writing of the piece took him only