Snow Country - Yasunari Kawabata
Writing about Snow Country, the immediate metaphor that comes to mind is that of a Haiku. The reviews at the end of the book alluding to it, and the Japanese connection, though definitely existent, are not the cause of this comparison; rather the fact of it being a short piece pregnant with such numerous possibilities that prompts it. Also similar to Haiku is the challenge thrown to the reader – of figuring out the complete picture from the description of a small and yet significant portion. The description would allow many explanations, but in very few of those would the described event carry such weight. Snow Country to an extent can be seen as an exercise in figuring out the unknown at various levels; plot, character and even the geography.
Yet Kawabata does leave us with some clues; for he thus outlines the content of his description very early in the novel:
“In the depths of the mirror the evening landscape moved by, the mirror and the reflected figures like motion pictures superimposed one on the other. The figures and the background were unrelated, and yet the figures, transparent and intangible, and the background, dim in the gathering darkness, melted together into a sort of symbolic world not of this world.”
It is this world of juxtapositions and shifting realities, this quicksand of human emotions that Kawabata endeavors to describe.
Snow Country is primarily the tale of two women, Yoko and Komaku, and futility of their relationship with one man, Shimamura. While the theme of a decaying beauty waiting for its beloved is not new, it is Kawabata’s characterizations which lend the novel its uniqueness. Yoko and Komaku provide the buttress for each other characters and the counterpoint for Shimamura’s, much like a haiku again – it is through description of Komaku’s activities that we are asked to deduce Yoko’s character, while their undying flames of passion are contrasted against the cold lassitude and timidity of Shimamura. His annual bouts of remembrance and return to the snow country are beautifully set against the changing seasons. While saying nothing explicitly, the entire setup of the novel points towards one inexorable end.
The only problem with Kawabata is that the reader needs to extremely culturally sensitive. Since the actions described are often mundane, the text can become boring and as a consequence the reader can miss some action that is not culturally significant. However, for if invested with adequate patience Snow Country can be an extremely enriching read.
The Renaissance: A Short History - Paul Johnson
Renaissance has unlike numerous other academic labels of history, remained etched in the public imagination. This single word elicits at once, the awe of viewing the entire spectrum of limits of human achievement and, the fervent hope of all good and great that is yet to come in its image. Its utterance immediately brings to life an age when knowledge was acquired for knowledge’s sake, patrons acquiesced to the primacy of the creator and not their baser desires and the creator was as free to choose the content and delivery of his ideas without fear of sanction from higher authorities. Renaissance means a lot many things in the mind of the general public and in this book of fewer than two hundred pages, Paul Johnson manages to reinforce and buttress with facts why it has an undying place in our collective imagination.
In The Renaissance: A Short History, Johnson outlines the achievements of this period by first considering literature, and the works of Dante, Boccaccio, Machiavelli and Chaucer before moving onto the visual arts which he further categorizes into sculpture, architecture and painting. Johnson acknowledges that this mode of presentation may be confusing since most renaissance artists crossed the boundaries between categories and the major studios of the day where they worked contributed in all the fields but the alternate chronological approach would be unenlightening. For a book of this size, Johnson could have very well written a catalogue of the primary figures in Renaissance, with their birth dates and their primary works. However, within each category he defines a starting point and from then on traces the advancements in techniques and modes of presentation achieved by the different masters and with each pushing the envelope a little further.
The book’s true brilliance lies in uncovering the underpinnings of the movement (if we may call it so). Johnson lays great emphasis on three things that were responsible for the creative outpouring of this age. Firstly, the patrons acceding to artists in all matters concerning art and to a great extent tolerating the individual quirks of artist gave the artist freedom to innovate for “each time they commissioned a master, they were striving to help him push forward the frontier of knowledge and skill a little further – or in some cases a lot further”. Second was the spirit of competition, especially in visual arts. Military and commercial rivalries between cities of Florence, Venice and Milan boiled over to the arts and overall led to greater number of commissions. Also, the rise of the cult of individual artist demanded every artist sets the mark a little higher in “a race within generations and between them”. Lastly, the preeminence of the church and the lack of significant opposition to the Vatican allowed the ecclesiastics to turn a blind eye towards the broadening of subject matter (Boccaccio’s Decameron) and mode of portrayal (nudes in painting). In fact, the Vatican itself became one of the primary commissioners of the Renaissance masters.
However, the hold of Renaissance on popular imagination is primarily due to the characters that populated this age and not so much because of the superlative works they produced. In Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello and many others, we have men for whom the word genius was created. While Johnson never gives a biography of these great men, whose achievements he outlines with such skill and veneration, he nevertheless cannot resist mentioning some individual quirks. Coupled with the simple language used, this makes the book an extremely light and enjoyable read.
