The Beauty of Sorrow in Reading Kawabata Yasunari's "Snow Country"

Yasunari Kawabata is an insurmountable monument in the history of Japanese literature. His literary works show the traditional Japanese culture and the social environment at that time. As an indispensable part of constructing Japanese traditional culture, the thought of material sorrow has become a common medium for Japanese writers to express their sorrows in the scenery. This pessimistic philosophy can also be felt everywhere in Kawabata Yasunari's literary works. Based on his novel " Snow Country ", starting from the traditional Japanese thought of material sorrow, this paper explores the emotion of material sorrow expressed in "Snow Country", and then analyzes and shows Kawabata Yasunari's tradition and self, reality and confusion intertwined, unique and unique. Sad thoughts.

1. The creative background of Yasunari Kawabata's works

1.1 Personal experience

On June 14, 1899, Kawabata Yasunari, who was born in Osaka, lost his orphan at the age of two, his mother at the age of three, his grandmother who raised him at the age of seven, and his grandfather at the age of 15. He was alone in his youth and fell into infinite distress. And gloomy, had a great influence on his future literary creation. Kawabata Yasunari has deep family roots. The nurturing of the family environment made him fascinated by traditional literature, and in the era of great change, Kawabata Yasunari successfully found the point of convergence between Eastern and Western culture and contemporary Japanese literature, and thus derived a product that is both national and global. , a new sense literature with both traditional spirit and modern style.

1.2 Social background

Kawabata Yasunari's work "Snow Country" was created in 1948. It was in a special period of surrender after the war and people's hearts were floating. The social consciousness showed a trend of confusion, anxiety, and seeking a way out. The New Sensation School, represented by Yasushi Kawabata, became active as a new literary force. They advocated that they no longer enter perception through vision and grasp the objective laws to understand the world, but reflect the objective world through deformed subjectivity and describe surreal fantasy. and psychopaths; emphasizing the supremacy of art, believing that there is no art and no beauty in reality, so pursue illusory beauty in a fantasy world.

2. The artistic features and expressive techniques of "Snow Country"

2.1 Analysis of the image of the work

2.1.1 Image Analysis of Shimamura

The image of Shimamura is the medium for Kawabata Yasunari to enter the world of Snowland. All Shimamura's psychological depictions and ideological cages, all emotional entanglements and life experiences are recreated based on Kawabata Yasunari's blueprint. Shimamura's own characters have no characteristics. , but the various entanglements between him and the two women, his incestuous love for Komako, and his subtle affection for Ye Zi are all manifestations of Kawabata Yasunari's own thoughts of grief.

2.1.2 Image Analysis of Komiko

Komako is the most meticulously portrayed character in "Snow Country". She is passionate and courageous, full of girly energy, and at the same time, she is also a hard worker who is full of perseverance and does not succumb to life. Under Kawabata's description, the image of Komako shows a kind of female beauty, not the soft beauty of body and deeds, but a kind of female beauty of love, not asking for anything in return, lingering and courageous, independent and passionate beauty of grief.

2.2 Scene description and character description

First of all, in the description of the environment of the Milky Way, the aesthetic rendering of the Milky Way shows the characteristics of Kawabata's literature's emphasis on excellent sensibility. Compared with the infinite depth of the Milky Way and the small figure of Shimamura, it has a strong sense of sadness. Demonstrates an appreciation for the beauty of nature. This kind of writing style that highlights its own insignificance and forms a strong contrast with the universe, thereby expressing emotion, is direct evidence of being influenced by nihilism, and has the ideological characteristics of "emptiness" and "silence".

Kawabata Yasunari spent a lot of pen and ink when writing the scene "Death of Ye Ye" in the final chapter. In Kawabata Yasunari's eyes, Ye Ye's death is the embodiment of beauty, and her inner life is deformed and turned into something else. Death does not end, because of this beauty of death, leaves are born from this. This Kawabata-style view of death and life endows the leaves with the characteristic beauty of Wusai, and takes death as an image to send out a feeling of beauty. This is the expression of Wumei's thought, and it is also a manifestation of nihilism mixing life and death.

3. Kawabata Yasunari's Thought of Mourning

3.1 Yasunari Kawabata's Inheritance of the Thought of Ai

Murasaki Shikibu mentioned "Ai れ" many times in "The Tale of Genji ", and often used "object" as a prefix. Under the understanding of Nobuyuki Motoju, the basic connotation of Japanese Makui thought appeared: Makui is to face all things in the world. Emotions issued.

The most important thing in the thought of grief is "sorrow", which is the grief for all things in the world, just like in "Snow Country": Butterfly はもつれ合いながら, やがて國隊の山より高く, yellow がwhite くなってゆくにつれて, remote かだった (Butterfly fluttered, flying higher than the mountain at the county boundary for a while, and as the yellow gradually turned white, it flew farther and farther). In the above sentence, under the bland brushstrokes, it depicts the scene of butterflies flying higher and higher, and a simple "remote" can feel this faint unsustainable sadness. It can be said that "Snow Country" is the leader in this field purely from the point of view of the thought of material sorrow.

3.2 The development of Yasunari Kawabata's thoughts on the sadness of things

Death is an inseparable proposition of Kawabata literature. Influenced by his childhood, facing death in writing, turning this pain into nothingness is a major feature of Kawabata Yasunari's literature. Although death is frightening, in Kawabata Yasunari's writing, death is endowed with another meaning, not the end but the new life.

Most of Kawabata Yasunari's descriptions of death are bland and contain strong emotions, expressing a fanatical fascination with the beauty of death, mixed with the touch of the world. From the perspective of expression techniques, by describing the beautiful scenery of the snow country, one can see a strong sadness in the plainness of forbearance. It is a major feature of Kawabata Yasunari's works, and it is more extreme than traditional things.

In addition, in "Snow Country", Kawabata Yasunari has been trying to describe a pure and beautiful snow country scene. In this snowy village, there are also births, old age, sickness and death, blessings and misfortunes, but more expounds the idea of escaping the world and has a negative attitude towards life. Shimamura studies dance and indulges in the illusory world to fill the spiritual emptiness. This pure nihilism complements the thought of material sorrow in the article, and together they build a complete world of "Snow Country".

Conclusion: In Kawabata Yasunari's thought of material sorrow, the concept of nothingness and impermanence is obviously integrated. In "Snow Country", Shimamura has a beautiful sensory enjoyment for the death scene of leaves. Facing the impermanence of life and the transformation of life and death, this kind of sadness and aesthetic appreciation is the core of Kawabata Yasunari's thoughts on sadness. Kawabata Yasunari is good at writing about death, seeing life from death, and living toward death. Yasunari Kawabata's aesthetics of death is not simply a pessimistic thought, but witnesses beauty in death and preserves it forever, thus achieving a new life in the sense of aesthetics.

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