Osamu Dazai's "Flower of the Clown" book review: On... the loneliness behind people's smiles

Dazai Osamu's "Flower of the Clown" is a work with a special writing style. At the same time, in terms of the atmosphere of the plot, this short story is also very memorable.

The protagonist of "The Flower of the Clown" has the same name as the protagonist in Dazai Osamu's other famous novel, "Disqualification in the World" , and they are both called Oba Yezang. Therefore, some people say that this novel is the prototype or writing origin of "Disqualification in the World". The story mainly tells what happened to Ye Zang and a woman who fell into the sea for love but were rescued to a nearby sanatorium, and what happened during their convalescence with friends, classmates and a nurse who came to visit. But what is surprising is that "Flower of the Clown" does not have such a heavy and negative atmosphere as "Disqualification in the World", but the whole novel often reveals a relaxed, natural and happy atmosphere.

But in these smooth, natural and even funny descriptions, we can still feel all kinds of hidden and hidden shadows, lingering in the details of the hearts and actions of these characters.

One of the reasons that makes us feel that this novel is happy and easy to read is that "Flower of the Clown" is not entirely just describing a story, but is often mixed with the "author"'s interludes and comments on the characters. Most of these words that are suddenly inserted in the middle are ridicule of the characters, or self-mockery of their own writing, or what the "author" thinks and feels when describing this passage. Among them, there are a lot of very straightforward and colloquial interjections such as ah, hey, yo, and so on. It was very close to read. At the same time, this kind of narration is also an important description for understanding the characters and plots in the book, because in fact, this narration method makes up for the thoughts that many characters cannot express directly in the dialogue, that is, we mentioned in the previous paragraph. "Shadow". Interlude then becomes a revealing analysis. In addition to exposing the author himself, he also exposes the characters and sets on stage. There are even more words of caution.

"My friends all turned away from me and looked at me with sad eyes. My friend, talk to me, laugh at me... Ah, my friends turn away their faces in emptiness... just look at me with sad eyes." The beginning of "The Flower of the Clown" is also the feeling of disappointment in Ye Cang's heart when he sits on the bed and looks at the vast sea. Although he was rescued at this time, his life was not redeemed because of this, but he fell into a more lonely mood.

The woman with whom he died is dead. After hearing such news, his friends and relatives don't know what to think about him...

If I had to choose a word to be the theme of "The Flower of the Clown", I would think it would be "loneliness" or "loneliness".

This kind of loneliness comes from: no matter how good (or how many) you have with your friends; no matter how deep the blood relationship is with your relatives, it seems that no one in this world can ever feel the pain in their hearts. For Ye Zang, the sad eyes of friends are not the same, but only pity. Their encouragement and deliberate smiles were, to put it bluntly, a polite perfunctory.

Two of Ye Zang's friends came to visit him when they learned that he had been rescued in a sanatorium. However, under Dazai's description, the scenes of these visits are not warm, but full of embarrassment. In order to appease Ye Zang, to cheer him up, or to relieve and ease the embarrassment of visiting. Ye Zang's friends told all kinds of interesting things, such as his failure to make a conversation with beauties, ghost stories and artistic ideas, etc. to Ye Zang, they tried to get along with Ye Zang and make the ward look very happy. . Of course, Ye Zang also laughed and had a normal conversation with them, but these behaviors were just pretending, just like a well-written script on the stage, try not to go in the wrong place and say the wrong dialogue, so as to avoid causing trouble and trouble for everyone in the atmosphere. Awkward.

 "They can't laugh from the bottom of their hearts. Even if they bend over with laughter, they still care about their posture." "Ye Zang is still laughing. He sits on the bed and dangles with his feet in the air, while worrying about the gauze on his cheeks. Is the story really that funny?", "They know a lot of perfunctory words. Even a negation has at least ten different ways of using it. Before we started talking, we had already exchanged glances of compromise. He smiled and shook hands. , while secretly underestimating: pig head!", "Their discussion, rather than exchanging ideas with each other, is actually just for the comfort of the moment. They didn't tell the truth."

These ideas about the world are very negative, and at the same time, their performance in the novel makes us feel very funny. Like several clowns performing on stage. However, as long as we think about it carefully, we will realize that such funny and absurd descriptions and plots reflect the vast emptiness behind these characters and the daily life without goals and achievements. And sometimes, it does remind us of some of our experiences with people.

Dazai Osamu has always been very good at describing the gaps hidden in the human heart, but the way he describes them is often not to cut him directly to let us see. It is a simple and straightforward close-up and description of the characters' external actions and intentions expressed in words, so that people can feel the huge and unbearable emotions in their hearts. Among them, he pays special attention to the posture of the action. Just like in "Disqualification in the World", the reason why the "author" found that the smile of the protagonist Ye Zang in the photo was fake, mainly not because of the feeling that the smile gave him (of course, for the novel's sake) completeness, Dazai still has a simple description of what a smile feels like), but the protagonist in each photo is clenching his fist (you can try to smile while clenching your fist in front of the mirror and see what happens smile). In other words, Dazai paid more attention to the details in his actions and words than using subtle descriptions. Another example is "Disqualification in the World", in order to express the fear of people and the oppression of loneliness in Ye Zang's heart, he only chose to let the protagonist speak like this A sentence: "I will do anything as long as it makes people laugh..." makes people feel a lot of tremors about this character.

In "Flower of the Clown", the most subtle details buried by Dazai are the secretly budding love between Ye Zang and Nurse Mano. The interesting thing is that Dazai's way of describing the love between the two is very subtle, but also very moving and profound.

As mentioned earlier, most of the dialogues and scenes in this novel are false and empty. We just have to look and know that these guys are just having fun and passing the time with boring crap (though we can still find an important sentence or two sometimes). However, there were three conversations that were not like that. All three conversations took place between Ye Zang and his caregiver, Mano.

The first scene happened when Ye Zang got into bed after being trained by his brother. Other friends and brother go to lunch and visit Enoshima. And only Mano was left to accompany Ye Zang in the ward. I don't know if it was intentional to ease Ye Zang's emotions or just unintentionally curious, Mano asked Ye Zang, "Is that your brother?" When his brother was a few years old, he suddenly frowned and replied, "You're still young ~ thirty-four years old, swaggering, and proud of yourself." Mano noticed Ye Zang's expression, and was also frightened by him, "hurriedly lowered his eyes", Then Ye Zang was silent. Mano didn't leave, she took the knitting tool and sat on the chair beside Ye Zang's pillow, knitting wool until dinner.

The second scene was also when Ye Zang and Mano stayed in the ward alone after being trained by his brother. He was clearly in a bad mood at the time. They had a small conversation ahead of them that didn't make much sense, but Mano didn't respond much. At this time, Dazai also specially described Ye Zang's behavior on the bed that he deliberately turned his back on Mano, and then it might be a lost relationship, Ye Zang suddenly said to Mano: "Let me tell you the story of that woman (that is, he died in love with the protagonist before, but the relationship was lost.) The girl who wasn't rescued)" Mano didn't say yes, but she didn't say bad either, so Ye Zang hurriedly and a little scared to tell what happened between him and the woman. Mano didn't interrupt from beginning to end, just listened so quietly, and then went to sleep on their own (Manno slept on the other sofa bed).

The third scene happened on Ye Zang's last night in a sanatorium. It was not Ye Zang who spoke this time, but Mano. Dazai wrote at the beginning: "Mano was very excited. After falling asleep, he kept talking about his poor family... Finally, Mano began to talk about the scar above his eyes..." Ye Zang did not say anything, the whole At night, he just lay on the bed, still deliberately turned his back to Mano, but quietly listened to Mano's description. When it was very late, he said: "I think you should sleep, you have to be busy in the morning tomorrow." And "Mano, keep silent. We will say goodbye tomorrow. Hey, it turns out that it has nothing to do with each other. Feel ashamed, be ashamed. I should have my pride anyway. She coughed and sighed suddenly. Then she turned over rudely. Ye Zang pretended not to know. The sound of snoring came. Ye Zang couldn't bear the boiling thoughts. He wanted to turn over towards Mano and twist his slender body, but there was a fierce voice whispering in his ear..."

Throughout the narrative, Dazai doesn't explicitly say what "boiled thoughts" are, what "can't say", and why they are "excited". But I think everyone sees it here and understands it. And we can notice that these three dialogues are quite different from the others, which can be found in the details of the description. First of all, unlike other chats with friends, in these three conversations, Ye Zang's words were all warm, slow and had a feeling of loss and hard to say. In addition, in these three conversations, silence often appeared. The two would not respond casually, take over, or perfunctory each other because they were afraid of embarrassment. Small feelings and thoughts are spoken. In the end, there was no laughter, or very little laughter. These are all very different from pretend, deliberate dialogue.

Words that weren't meant to provoke laughter, that weren't fluent, that didn't make a lot of sense (such as the one that was purely emotional in the first scene) became something that really needed to be said and heard. Silence seems to have turned into real communication and exchange.

The next day, in the morning before parting, Mano invited Ye Zang to go to the back mountain to see the scenery. There is nothing else, it is the place where Ye Zang and another woman jumped off the cliff for love at the beginning of the novel.

The novel doesn't say how it ends. The two stood there, "The hazy sky in the east. The morning sun has not yet risen. Pieces of flowing clouds with incredible colors, boiled and settled, and then slowly drifted again after settling... Overlooking the distant sea. At the foot is Gundam. Thirty-foot cliff. Jiangzhidao looks very small right below. In the depths of the thick morning fog, the sea water is slightly rippling."

In this novel, there are no kisses, hugs...not even descriptions of holding hands. But what a deep love he wrote.

The sacrifice of love has always had a special status in Dazai's literature. Here, the novel expresses a deep loneliness through hints and hesitations of love, as well as people's desire to obtain redemption through sacrifice.

Milan. Kundera once said: "Knowledge is the only morality of the novel...and the spirit of the novel is the spirit of complexity. Every novel is saying to his readers - things are far more complicated than you think." In other words, The spirit of the novel is to make one recognize a complex. Although Dazai's words are very straightforward and even tacky, they are full of delicate thoughts. "Flower of the Clown" is not so much a description of the budding of a love, but it is more like to lead us to understand a kind of lonely psychology that wants to abandon the world and sacrifice for love together.

No matter how good (or how many) you have with your friends, no matter how deep your blood ties are with your loved ones, it seems that no one in this world can ever feel the pain in their hearts. However, perhaps only the lover's feelings can make people truly appreciate the loneliness in each other's hearts.

(The article is simultaneously published on the square grid blog platform: the laboratory of literature )