Unhuman tour

by Soseki Natsume

CHAPTER VI.

I sat at my desk, as the sun was going down. I had opened wide all the paper screens and doors of my room. The people of the hotel are not many, but its building is extensive. My room is far in the interior, with many turns of passage, separating it from the quarters inhabited by the not many people of the establishment, and no sound comes to disturb my thinking. It has been especially quiet today. I even fancied that the proprietor, his daughter, the young maid and the man servant had all gone away unknown to me. Had they done so, they could not, I thought, have gone to an ordinary place; they must have flown to a land of hazes, or of cloud—so far, far away that it may be reached only after floating lazily on the sea, carelessly and too lazy to steer, until drifted to where the white sail became indistinguishable from cloud or water, and indeed the sail itself could not tell whether it was the cloud or water. Otherwise they must have vanished, swallowed up in the spirit of Spring, the elements of which they are composed returning to an invisible ether, untraceable in the great expanse of space even with the help of a microscope. They might have become the lark and flown to where the evening dusk was deepening into purple, after they have sung out the golden yellow of the rape flowers. Or else they might be sweetly sleeping out the world a captive under a fallen camellia flower, failing to steal its nectar, after having served to draw out lengthily the long Spring day, by turning into a gad-fly. So quiet was the day.

The Spring breeze passed freely through the empty house not necessarily as a duty to those who welcomed it, nor yet out of spite to those who resented it. It came naturally and went naturally, a reflection of the impartial universe. With my chin resting in the palms of my hands, my mind was as free and open as my room, and the breeze would, uninvited, pass in and out with perfect freedom.

You think of treading on, and you fear the earth might crack open under you. You know the sky is hanging over you, and you dread lightning might flash out and smite you. You are urged that you fail your manhood unless you assert your antagonism and the world becomes a place of endless trouble. To him that lives under the firmament that has its East and West and has to walk on the rope of interests, true love is one’s enemy and visible wealth dirt. A name made and honour won may be likened unto honey which wise bees leave behind by forgoing their sting, after making it appear that they were manufacturing and sweetening it. The so-called pleasures all come from love for things and contain in them all kinds of pain. However, the world happens to have its poet and artist, who feed on the essence of this world of relativity, and knows the absolute principle of purity. They dine on heaven’s haze and quench their thirst with dew. They talk of purple and discuss crimson, and no regret detains them when death comes for them. Their pleasures are not to become attached to things, but to become themselves part of things. When they have become things themselves, they find no room for their ego though they may explore the remotest confines of the earth. They rise above worldly dirt and drink full of the boundless air of purity. These things are said not merely to scare those saturated with the odor of the lucre of the city, and alone to pose loftily, but to convey the gospel contained in them and to invite their brother beings to share in its blessings. To tell the truth, art and poetry are principles all men are born with. Most people, who, having counted their summers, are now living their grey winter, will be able to reawaken their past with its joys of seeing light shining in them. He who is unable to recall such a memory is one who has lived a life not worth living.

I do not say that the poet’s joys consist in giving oneself exclusively over to one thing, or surrendering ourselves solely to another. He may, at one time enter and become a solitary flower, or turn into a butterfly at another. Or like Wordsworth become a field of daffodils, with his heart thrown into confusion by the wind. Sometimes again he becomes lost in a scene and is unable clearly to tell what is it that has captured his heart. Some people may call this being possessed by nature. Others may describe it as the heart listening to a music of an unstringed harp. Still others may see in it a lingering in boundless regions or wandering in a limitless expanse, being unable to know or to understand. Say what they like, they are perfectly free to do so. I was precisely in this state of mind as I sat resting half of my weight on my bent elbow that rested on my desk, with my head perfectly vacant otherwise.

It was unmistakably clear that I was thinking nothing, looking at nothing. I could not be said to have become or turned into anything, as there was nothing of striking colours moving within my world of consciousness. Nevertheless I was in motion. I might not be moving in the world; but I was anyhow in motion. Not moved by a flower, not moved by birds, not moved against humanity, still moving as in a spell.

If I must explain this state of being somehow less oracularly, I should say that my soul was moving with the Spring. I should say that an etherial essence, obtained by compounding all the colours, forces, substances and sounds of Spring into an esoteric electuary, then by melting it in dews gathered in the land of immortals, and by finally evaporating it in the sunshine of fairyland, found its way into my pores before I became aware, and put me into my present state. Ordinarily an absorption is accompanied by a stimulus, which will make the process pleasant. In my case, how I came to it was quite hazy no stimulation accompanying it. Because of this absence of stimulation, there was something indescribably profound in my joy, which was quite different from those that are transparent and noisy, and occasion superficial excitement. Mine might be likened unto a great expanse of ocean, moving from its unseen fathomless depth from continent to continent, except that there was not quite as much active vitality. But I was the more fortunate because of this deficiency, as the manifestation of great vitality must needs anticipate its exhaustion some day. There is no such worry in the normality of things. My mind was presently in a state more airy than normal and I was not only free from all anxiety that strong activity might wear out, but I was above the common level of indifferent normality. By airiness I mean simply elusiveness, and do not imply any idea of over-weakness. Poets speak of melting airiness or downy lightness, and the phrase exactly fits the condition I am describing.

I wondered next, how it would work to make a picture of my fancy. I doubted not for a moment that it would not make an ordinary picture. An every-day painting is a mere reproduction, on a piece of silk or canvas of what one sees around, as it is, or else after filtering it through an æsthetic eye. A picture has done its part, when a flower looks the flower it is, the water as it reflects in the eye, and human characters animate as in life. If one is to rise above this common level, one must let live on the canvas one’s theme, with touches that utter sentiments exactly as one feels about it. Since the artists of this order aim at working the special impressions they have received into the phenomena they have caught, they may not be said to have produced a picture, unless their brush speaks, at its every sweep, of those impressions. Their work must bear out their claim that their manner of perceiving this way and feeling that way has in no way been influenced by or borrowed from old traditions or those going before them, but that nevertheless theirs is the most correct and beautiful. Otherwise they are not entitled to call the work their own.

Workers of the two classes are one in waiting for definite outside impulses before they take up their brush, whatever differences there may be in their depth and in the manner they treat their subjects. But in my case, the subject I wished to treat was not so clearly defined. I roused my senses to the highest pitch of wakefulness; but I looked in vain for a shape, colour, shade, and lines thick and thin, in the objects without me, to suit my fancy. My feelings had not come from without; but even if they had, I could not raise my finger and point at their cause as such distinctly, as they formed no definite object of perception. All that there were, were only feelings, and the question was how those feelings might be depicted to make a picture, nay how I might give them expression so that others might, by looking at my production, feel as I was feeling as nearly as possible.

An ordinary picture requires no feeling, but only the object to reproduce. A picture of a higher order necessitates there existing the object and feeling; one of the class still higher has nothing for its life but feelings, and an object that will fit in with such feelings must be caught to make a picture. But such an object is not easily forthcoming, and even if it came, it would be no easy work to arrange it appropriately. Even if arranged successfully, its presentation would take such a form as would sometimes make it appear totally different from anything in nature, so much so that it would make no picture at all for ordinary people. The artist himself would not recognise that his production represented anything in existence, but that his was only an attempt to convey, however fractionally, his feelings at the very moment when his fancy was aroused. He would consider it a most creditable achievement if he, after scouring the length and breadth of the country, with not a moment of forgetfulness, comes suddenly, at the cross roads upon his lost child and folds it in his arms, not giving time even for lightning to flash, saying, “Why you were here, my child.” But that is where the rub comes in. If I can only work out this tone, I shall not care what others may say of my picture. I shall, with the least concern, let them say it is not a picture at all. If my combination of colours, gave expression to my feelings even in part; if the straight and curve of the lines spoke for a fraction of this spirit; if the general disposition of the picture conveyed any of the superprosaic thoughts, I shall not mind if the thing to assume a shape in the picture should happen to be a horse, or a cow or something neither a horse nor a cow. No, I shall not mind; but the trouble was nothing would come forth to fit my fancy. I laid my sketch book open on my desk and looked down upon it until my eyes almost fell through it. It was useless.