Five modern No plays / by Yukio Mishima ; translated from the Japanese by Donald Keene.Five modern No plays / by Yukio Mishima ; translated from the Japanese by Donald Keene.
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Auteur
Titre
Five modern No plays / by Yukio Mishima ; translated from the Japanese by Donald Keene.
Collection
Notes
Includes bibliographical note.
Contenu
Sotoba Komachi ; 8 characters (5m, 4w).-- The damask drum ; 8 characters (5m, 3w). -- Kantan ; 6 characters (3m, 3w). -- The Lady Aoi ; 4 characters (1m, 3w). -- Hanjo ; 3 characters (2m, 1w).
Sommaire
SOTOBA KOMACHI : A poet meets Komachi, a repulsive-looking old woman, at a Tokyo park at night. She expresses the memory of when she had been lovely 80 years ago. She reminisces on a night in the 1880s, and together with the help of the poet (who acts the part of the Military Officer with whom she fell in love), they relive that night. The poet realizes that she is still beautiful, and sees past her ragged clothes and wretched body. But expressing her beauty can only result in death.
THE DAMASK DRUM : An old man becomes enamored with a neighbor. The neighbor and her associates play a trick on the man by challenging him to sound a drum. If he can make the drum sound, he will earn a kiss. However, this drum is made of damask, and is only a prop, incapable of making any sound.
KANTAN : A youth who sees no meaning in anything, wonders what will happen if he sleeps on a magical pillow which makes the dreamer realize what he already understands, the futility of existence.
THE LADY AOI : In the backstory, Prince Genji, who was married to his wife Lady Aoi at a young age, has taken a mistress, Lady Rokujo. Lady Rokujo had been married to the crown prince, but his death had left a much less powerful widow. Rokujo had previously destroyed another mistress of Genji through a jealous apparition. Following an episode in which she is humiliated in public by Lady Aoi, Rokujo is enraged to discover that Aoi is pregnant. Genji begins ignoring Rokujo, and in her jealousy her living spirit leaves her body and possesses Lady Aoi, resulting in Aoi's falling sick – the starting-point of the play. The action of the play focuses on a miko (female shaman) and a priest summoning and exorcising the spirit of Lady Rokujo from her attack on the body of Lady Aoi. Aoi does not appear on stage - rather, an empty kimono serves to represent her. Rokujo initially appears in a sympathetic vein, lamenting the transience of life and beauty: “We are brittle as the leaves of the bashō / As fleeting as foam on the sea...now I wither like the Morning Glory”. Then, seized with anger, she renews her attack on Aoi, whose deteriorating condition leads to the summoning of the priest/saint and his incantations finally lay Rokujo’s angry spirit to rest.
HANJO : a lovely woman waits eternally at a train station for a lover who promised to return. She lives with a female artist who is infatuated by her beauty, both of them imprisoned by unfulfilled longing.- Sam Marlowe, Time Out London
ISBN
0804813809
0804813809 (pbk)
Sujets
Collaboration
Cote
D M678 1967
Exemplaires
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