Ōe Kenzaburō: A Personal Matter

[sirena]

Few years ago I discovered my interest in Japanese literature. Until now, I’m ashamed to admit, I only read Haruki Murakami’s works (I’m not through with him, yet) and started some Yukio Mishima’s stories, which I didn’t finish, God knows why. I can’t remember what the titles were, either.

In any case, now, I’m more than prepared to rectify my "past mistakes".

A Personal Matter is my first "encounter" with Kenzaburō Ōe’s works. The story is based on a writer’s personal experience as a father of a brain-damaged child.

Bird, the main character, is a 26th year old, more of a lethargic and messed individual, who lives “split life”. Outside: he’s married (not so happily; his wife is pregnant) and works as a teacher in a school for exam preparation (his father-in-law sets him this job up). Inside: he dreams of traveling to Africa and learns Swahili. Finally, he becomes a father. However, the child is born with a brain hernia. It’s one more problem (though, the hugest one) in Bird’s, already, unsatisfied life. What to do?

There’re two options:
1. To divorce his wife and flee away with his ex-girlfriend Himiko, equally confused character, to Africa
2. To confront his problems (marriage, loss of a job, possibly mentally disabled child)

The theme of this novel is one of my favorite themes: facing a personal dilemma, struggling of a soul. This is maybe the reason I like Dostoevsky’s works so much.

I like the way Ōe concludes the story. Especially the appendix, in which, the writer explains that “real life” is determined with coercions which show you the path of living a proper life.

 

[Daniel del Real]

The theme of this novel is one of my favorite themes: facing a personal dilemma, struggling of a soul. This is maybe the reason I like Dostoevsky?s works so much.

It's a great theme indeed. However it reminds me more of the French existentialists from mid XX century than Dostoievsky. Let's not forget that Kenzaburo had a literary formation into French literature, he actually studied it in Tokio University graduating with a paper about Jean Paul Sartre. He have also mentioned he had a great influence by Camus.

The story of the handicaped child it's a constant in Oe's ouvre. He examines the relationships between disabled people and their environment.
A really good book and writer.

 

[john h]

yeah, this is very good. Next to "The Silent Cry", it's Oe's best book. I read some reviews where people thought the ending was unexpected but I didn't feel that way at all.

 

[DouglasM]

I didn't feel the ending as unexpected, either.

[spoilers]
Finished reading it last week, it's indeed a great book. It is a good thing when you nourish some kind of emotion towards a character. I hated Bird from start to finish. But it's an interesting experience to be there accompanying his personal growth (A Personal Matter), from a daydreamer alcoholic fueled by wanderlust until finally he accepts the circumstances of his current situation. And even though the book ends with him accepting the whole situation with the baby, it's a completely egocentric insight. He's disgusting.

Rated it 4 stars out of 5.

 

[sirena]

As I see it, the "child situation" helped Bird to become more focused in life, to separate important things from those which aren't, to "embrace" his roles and responsibilities in life. To grow up, so to speak.

 

[Daniel del Real]

I didn't feel the ending as unexpected, either.

Finished reading it last week, it's indeed a great book. It is a good thing when you nourish some kind of emotion towards a character. I hated Bird from start to finish. But it's an interesting experience to be there accompanying his personal growth (A Personal Matter), from a daydreamer alcoholic fueled by wanderlust until finally he accepts the circumstances of his current situation. And even though the book ends with him accepting the whole situation with the baby, it's a completely egocentric insight. He's disgusting.

Rated it 4 stars out of 5.

I know it could be quite obvious for some one who knows a bit from Kenzaburo's biography but anyway, careful with the spoilers!

 

[Bartleby]

In today’s virtual meet-up we were talking about the accuracy of translations, and I was reminded of once comparing the English and the (brazillian) Portuguese versions of A Personal Matter and how different they were, in terms of the sentences’ structures and some details that seemed to have been here omitted, there added on the pt edition. Knowing no Japanese, I wonder which of the two is closer to the original.

These are the opening paragraphs in both EN and PT (I could attempt to translate the latter into English, but I guess putting the excerpt on google translate does the job; but I’ll point some things out):

“Bird, gazing down at the map of Africa that reposed in the showcase with the haughty elegance of a wild deer, stifled a short sigh. The salesgirls paid no attention, their arms and necks goosepimpled where the uniform blouses exposed them. Evening was deepening, and the fever of early summer, like the temperature of a dead giant, had dropped completely from the covering air. People moved as if groping in the dimness of the subconscious for the memory of midday warmth that lingered faintly in the skin: people heaved ambiguous sighs. June—half-past six: by now not a man in the city was sweating. But Bird’s wife lay naked on a rubber mat, tightly shutting her eyes like a shot pheasant falling out of the sky, and while she moaned her pain and anxiety and expectation, her body was oozing globes of sweat.”

“Lá estava o mapa da África, em exposição no mostruário. Vistoso, belo como um cervo africano. Bird deixou escapar um suspiro abafado. Enfiadas em uniformes e com as partes expostas do corpo arrepiadas de frio, as vendedoras da livraria não lhe deram atenção. Entardecia. Como o corpo de um gigante recém-falecido, a atmosfera em volta da Terra fora perdendo aos poucos o calor daquele início de verão e se resfriara por completo. As pessoas pareciam querer recuperar das sombras do subconsciente a memória do calor do dia, cujo resquício a pele ainda retinha, e suspiravam desoladas. Junho, seis e meia da tarde. Ninguém mais suava na cidade. Exceto sua própria mulher, que àquela altura estaria transpirando intensamente por todos os poros do corpo desnudado. Estendida sobre um lençol de borracha e com os olhos fortemente cerrados, perdiz atingida em vôo e em plena queda. Gemendo de dor, tomada de angústia e ansiedade.”

From the start we see the English version opts for a longer opening sentence, whilst the Portuguese one breaks it down to three. This also happens elsewhere, as in the last sentence in EN, broken down to three again. In PT the allusion to Bird’s wife sweating on a “rubber mat”, seems to make her allusion less brusque by start saying that at that time of day she’d been feeling hot, while placing the other descriptions of her in completely different places of the, in English, single last sentence.

Anyway, if anyone who reads in Japanese can help me out here I’ll be tremendously grateful

 

[Leseratte]

Ōe You awoke my interest in Ōe Kenzaburō. His language seems to be very poetic.
You are right, both translations are very different. On first sight, the English translation seems to flow better. On the other hand, the Brazilian one seems destined for readers, that aren´t used and don´t relish long sentences. I would also like to know, which translation is more faithful.

 

[nagisa]

Thanks to the magic of digital editions, here's the section in question. The English is unquestionably closer to the Japanese text, not splitting any sentences. On that alone, I'd lean towards that translation, as I feel that cadence, prosody are fundamental aspects of an author's style, and this is especially relevant for Oe since his cadence is somewhat at odds with more "traditional" Japanese style, which gives him his special quality. In the first sentence for example, "the map of Africa that reposed in the showcase with the haughty elegance of a wild deer" is characteristic, in that Japanese puts all the modifiers before the noun, and therefore doesn't usually overcharge it, whereas Oe launches into a fairly long 野生の鹿のようにも昂然と優雅に陳列棚におさまっている、立派なアフリカ ---> 地図 for effect. The 立派な, "fine, splendid" is absent in the English for some reason however. Also in the last sentence, "her body was oozing globes of sweat", is missing a little since the original has 体じゅうのありとある汗穴から、厖大な数の汗粒をにじみださせ : a more complete translation would be something like "her body was oozing countless drops of sweat from every pore" (the Portuguese gets it right here). Japanese works with less punctuation, so I'm not mad at the translation for using colons and dashes to vary the effect though.

My Portuguese is (very) limited, but I notice for example that the deer is "African", which does not correspond to the text (the English is correct, it's wild deer 野生の鹿). It's a bit better on the end of the sentence, "deixou escapar um suspiro abafado" which corresponds better to 抑制した小さい嘆息をもらした than the English "stifled a short sigh"; the Portuguese is missing the 小さい "short, small", but "let out/escape a small, stifled sigh" would be more correct in English given the original verb.

I could quibble that both have feminine salesgirls, vendedoras, whereas the Japanese doesn't indicate gender: 書店員たち is just bookstore employees, since Japanese only marks gender exceptionally. But the word ブラウス blouse, and the gender and social circumstances of Japan at the time it was written would make it a fair interpretation. And neither really translate the important だろう at the end of the last sentence, which indicates a supposition: Bird is imagining his wife and how she is "probably, likely" in the position she's in. It's a very natural and common construction in Japanese, but which often translates clunkily.

TL;DR: the English version is better, IMHO.

 

[Leseratte]

Thanks for this interesting survey, Nagisa. I suspected this because of the lyrical flow of the English translation.