The Three Cornered World

Been reading this book, The Three Cornered World by Natsume Soseki, 1906.

It starts off with:

"Going up a mountain track, I fell to thinking.
Approach everything rationally, and you become harsh.  Pole along in a stream of emotions, and you will become swept away by the current.  Give free rein to your desires, and you will become uncomfortably confined.  It is not a very agreeable place to live, this world of ours."


That first paragraph sets off some reflection and a tone that so recalls for me Anne Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,  published in 1974.

I've been reading about Japanese culture, and reading whatever literature strikes me from reviews or recommendations.  I've even read a ton of manga, to get a sense of modern tropes, and obsessions [also I really like the best of the artists and authors].

This book is I think, a life changer.

What is the three cornered world?  From the front-piece: "An artist is a person who lives in a triangle which remains after the angle which we may call common sense has been cut from this four-cornered world."  Soseki


Natsume Soseki, born in 1867, died in 1916, became one of Japan's greatest authors of the 'modern era'.  I qualify that because at the time of his writing so many of his contemporary writers were over whelmed by the influence of Western Culture and virtually abandoned Japanese traditions and styles, so their modernity was Western, unlike Soseki.  From what I've read in the book's preface Soseki was able to create a literary space that was in balance between eastern and western cultures creating a unique modernity.

The Three Cornered World was titled in Japanese Kusa Makura, literally the Grass Pillow, which the preface explains is a common phrase in poetry to indicate a journey.

I've always believed that books, their ideas, attitudes, insights come to me when I'm ready for them, sometimes I must come back to them knowing I've missed the essential on first read.  That may be years later, or simply reading and starting again immediately.  This one feels like it's right on time!

'fer'shure, more to come on this.

~tim

[The Three Cornered World, by Natsume Soseki, in Japan 1906, pub. 1970 by Gateway Editions, translated by Alan Turney and Peter Owen, 1965.  ISBN 978-0-89526-768-9]