A Fool's Life

by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

  "Am I in love with this woman?"

  He wondered. Even to his self scrutinizing self the answer came as surprise.

  "I still am."

  31. Great Earthquake

  The odor was not unlike that of rotten apricots.

  Walking through the charred ruins, vaguely sensing it, under the burning sky the smell of the dead was not altogether evil. But standing staring at the corpses piled high by the pond the expression "turns one's stomach" hits home. Most moving is the body of a twelve or thirteen year old child. Gazing at it he cannot help being envious. "Those the gods love die young." The phrase comes to mind. The house of his sister and of his half-brother burnt to the ground, his sister's husband, convicted of perjury, his sentence suspended......

  "Better if everyone were dead."

  He stands in the ruins, the thought persisting.

  32. Conflict

  He and his half-brother were pitted against each other. True, because of him his half-brother was under continual pressure. At the same time, because of his half-brother he himself felt tied down. The family kept badgering the half-brother to follow after him.

  Being in the forefront was no different than being bound hand and foot. Locked in struggle, they stumbled off the porch. In the yard where they fell,

  Indian lilac,-----he sees it even now.-----Under a rain laden sky. Flares of scarlet blossom.

  33. Hero

  How long had he been gazing out of the window of

  Voltaire's house, up at the towering mountain? Up on the icy summit not even the shadow of a condor could be seen. Only the stumpy Russian stubbornly continuing up the slope.

  After darkness had closed Voltaire's house, under a bright lamp he began composing a poem. In his head the figure of the mountain climbing Russian emerging. . . .

  Above all others you

  Kept the Decalogue,

  Above all others you

  Broke the Decalogue,

  Above all others you

  Loved the people,

  Above all others you

  Despised the people.

  Above all others you

  Burned with ideals,

  Above all others you

  Knew the real.

  You, born of our Orient

  Weed scented

  Electroloco motive.

  34. Color

  Thirty years old, he had for some time been in love with a vacant lot. A ground of moss, on it broken bricks, fragments of roof tile. But in his eyes a landscape by Cézanne.

  He remembered his passions of seven or eight years ago. That seven or eight years ago he hadn't understood color, he realized now.

  35. Manikin

  Not to care when he died, to live a life of intensity was his desire. But actually his life was one of constant deference to foster parents and aunt. This submissiveness formed both the light and shadow of his being.

  He studied the manikin standing in the tailor shop window, curious as to how much he resembled it. Or consciously so.-----His other self had already settled the question. In a short story.

  36. Tedium

  With a university student he was walking through a field of tall tufted weed.

  "You still have a lusty desire for life, haven't you?"

  "Right,-----and so do you....."

  "I don't have it. A desire to work, that's about it."

  That's how he felt. For a long time now he had lost all interest in life.

  "But a desire for work and a desire for life, aren't they the same?"

  He did not answer. Over the field of the red tufted weed, a volcano. The fiery mountain arousing in him an envy. But just why, he couldn't say......

  37. The Northerner

  He happened to meet a woman who was his intellectual match. Only through writing poetry, like

  "The Northerner," did he manage to avoid a crisis. It was painful, like watching frosted glittering snow drop from a tree's trunk.

  Sedge hat whirled by the winds,

  Falling by the way

  Who cares for my fame?

  Yours matters

  38. Revenge

  Among budding trees, a hotel veranda. He was drawing, amusing a child. The only son, of the madwoman he had cut relations with, seven years ago.

  The madwoman, lighting a cigarette, looked on.

  Oppressed, he kept right on drawing trains and aeroplanes. It was a good thing the child was not his.

  Being called "Uncle" was bad enough.

  After the child wandered off, the madwoman, puffing at her cigarette, teasingly, turned to him.

  "He does take after you, doesn't he."

  "He does not. In the first place...."

  "Oh? You do know, don't you? about prenatal influence."

  He turned away. Silent. Deep inside was a desire to strangle this woman. That the cruel urge was in him, he could not deny......

  39. Mirrors

  He and his friend were in a corner of a café, talking.

  His friend, eating a baked apple, was remarking on the recent cold, etcetera. He, in the midst of the small talk, suddenly became aware of contradictions.

  "You're still single, right?"

  "No. Getting married next month."

  He had nothing more to say. Inlaid in the café's walls countless mirrors reflecting his image. Icily.

  Somehow menacingly......

  40. Catechism

  You attack the present social system, why?

  Because I see the evils born of capitalism.

  Evils? I didn't think you discriminated between good and evil. In that case, how about your own life?

  -----The discussion was with an angel. Impeccable.

  In a silk hat......

  41. Sickness

  He began suffering from insomnia. His strength was beginning to fail. A number of doctors diagnosed his sickness.-----Acid dyspepsia, gastric atony, dry pleurisy, nervous prostration, chronic conjunctivitus, brain fatigue,.....

  But he knew the cause of his malady. It was his sense of shame before himself, mingled with his dread of them. Them,-----the public he despised.

  On a snow cloud clouded over afternoon in a corner of a cafe, a lighted cigar in his mouth, his ears inclined toward flowing toward him from the gramophone, music. Strangely penetrating music. He waited for its end, then went over to the machine, to examine the label on the record:

  Magic Flute-----Mozart

  All at once he understood. The Decalogue-breaking

  Mozart, after all, also suffered. But, Mozart never,

  .....His head lowered, silently. He returned to his table.

  42. Laughter of the Gods

  Thirty five years old, strolling through a grove of pines struck by the spring sun. "The gods, pity them, unlike us cannot kill themselves." These words of two, three years ago returned......

  43. Night

  Once again night was closing in. The wild sea in the dim light incessantly erupting in spray. He, under such a sky, for the second time was wedded to his wife.

  It was joy. And anguish. Their three children with them, looking out at the lightning in the offing. His wife, hugging one of the children, holding back tears.

  "You see the boat out there."

  "Yes."

  "The boat with its mast broken in two."

  44. Death

  Good that he was sleeping alone. To the window grate he tied a sash. But inserting his neck into the loop, terror of death overwhelmed him. The dread, however, was not of death's agonies. The next try, he held a pocket watch in his hand, to time the strangulation. There was but an instant of suffering, then everything began to blur. If he could just cross over, he would enter death. He studied his watch. The pain had lasted about a minute and twenty seconds.

  Outside the barred window it was pitch black. In the darkness, rending it, the crowing of a cock.

  45. The Divan

  The Divan was going to give him new life. Till now he had been unaware of the "Oriental Goethe." With an envy a
lmost approaching despair he saw Goethe standing on the far shore beyond good and evil, immense. In his eyes the poet Goethe was larger than the poet Christ. The poet's soul holds not only the

  Acropolis or Golgotha. In it the Arabian rose also blooms. If only he had strength enough to grope in the poet's footsteps,-----The Divan finished, the awful excitement abating, there was only contempt for himself. Born a eunuch.

  46. Lies

  The suicide of his sister's husband all at once flattened him. He had now the added responsibility of his sister's family. His future as far as he was concerned was the grey of twilight. Coldly grinning at his own spiritual collapse (fully aware of all his weaknesses and vices) he went on reading book after book. But even Rousseau's Confessions was stuffed full of heroic lies. Worse yet was Toson's New Life, —

  —in it he encountered a hero more slyly hypocritical than any. Only Villon touched his heart. In his poetry he discovered beautiful male.

  In his dreams he saw Villon waiting to be hanged.

  How many times, like Villon, had he wanted to fall to life's bottom. But neither his circumstances nor his physical strength permitted. Bit by bit wasting. Just as

  Swift had seen. A tree rotting, from the top down.

  47. Fire-play

  Her face gleamed. It was like the light of morning sun on thin ice. He liked her. But it was not love. He never even touched her body, not even a finger.

  'You're trying to die, aren't you?"

  "Yes.-----No. Not trying to die. But sick of living."

  Out of this conversation came a resolution to die together.

  "We'll call it Platonic Suicide."

  "Double Platonic Suicide."

  Even to himself his composure seemed marvellous.

  48. Death

  He did not die with her. It was gratification enough not to have touched her body. She, as though nothing at all had happened between them, talked with him from time to time. She handed him her vial of potassium cyanide, saying "This ought to inspire us."

  It was true, the vial did give him reassurance. In his rattan chair, sitting alone looking at the new leaves of the oak he thought of the quiet. Of death.

  49. Stuffed Swan

  Draining what strength remained, he attempted an autobiography. It was harder than he had imagined.

  Self-importance and skepticism and calculation of advantages or disadvantages were all in him. He despised this self of his. At the same time he couldn't help thinking, "Remove a layer of skin and everybody is alike." Dichtung und Wahrheit-----the title of that book would be a fitting title for all autobiography.

  But he also was well aware that works of literature did not move many. His own work would only appeal to those whose lives were close to his; outside of those readers there would be none.-----Such was the feeling working inside of him. He would try, concisely, to write down his own Dichtung und Wahrheit.

  After completing A Fool's Life he happened to see in a junk shop a stuffed swan. It stood with its neck held erect, its wings yellowed, motheaten. Recalling his whole life, he felt a sudden onrush of tears and cold laughter. In front of him was either madness or suicide. In the twilight he walked the street alone, determined, patiently, to wait for his fate, for slowly approaching destruction.

  50. Captive

  One of his friends went insane. Toward this friend he had always felt a particular intimacy. Because of the isolation,-----because he knew the isolation hidden under a mask of lightheartedness. After his friend went insane, two or three times he went to visit him.

  "You and I, we're possessed by a demon. The fin de siècle demon, eh."

  Such were the things his friend spoke of, his voice a whisper. But several days later, he learned from others, his friend enroute to a hot spring had started eating roses. After his friend was committed to the asylum he remembered the terracotta bust he had once given him. It was a bust of the author of his friend's beloved Inspector General. Recalling that Gogol also had died insane, he couldn't help feeling that some power controlled both of them.

  Sick and exhausted, reading the last words of

  Radiguet, he once again heard the laughter of the gods.-----"The soldiers of God are coming to seize me." Desperately he tried to fight off his superstition and sentimentality. But physically he was unable to carry on the battle. It was true, "the demon of the century's end" was even now tormenting him. How he envied those of the Middle Ages with their faith in

  God. But to believe in a God,-----to believe in a God's love, that was impossible. Not even Cocteau's!

  51. Defeat

  The hand taking up the pen had started to tremble.

  He drooled. His head, only after a 0.8 dose of Veronal did it have any clarity. But even then, only for half an hour or an hour. In this semi-darkness day to day he lived. The blade nicked, a slim sword for a stick.

  A Note to a Certain Old Friend

  Translated by Beongcheon Yu

  Probably no one who attempts suicide, as Régnier shows in one of his short stories, is fully aware of all of his motives, which are usually too complex. At least in my case it is prompted by a vague sense of anxiety, a vague sense of anxiety about my own future.

  Over the last two years or so I have thought only of death, and with special interest read a remarkable account of the process of death. While the author did this in abstract terms, I will be as concrete as I can, even to the point of sounding inhuman. At this point

  I am duty-bound to be honest. As for my vague sense of anxiety about my own future, I think I analyzed it all in A Fool's Life, except for a social factor, namely the shadow of feudalism cast over my life. This I omitted purposely, not at all certain that I could really clarify the social context in which I lived.

  Once deciding on suicide (I do not regard it as a sin, as Westerners do), I worked out the least painful means of carrying it out. Thus I precluded hanging, shooting, leaping, and other manners of suicide for aesthetic and practical reasons. Use of a drug seemed to be perhaps the most satisfactory way. As for place, it had to be my own house, whatever inconvenience to my surviving family. As a sort of springboard I, as

  Kleist and Racine had done, thought of some company, for instance, a lover or friend, but, having soon grown confident of myself, I decided to go ahead alone. And the last thing I had to weigh was to insure perfect execution without the knowledge of my family. After several months' preparation I have at last become certain of its possibility.

  We humans, being human animals, do have an animal fear of death. The so-called vitality is but another name for animal strength. I myself am one of these human animals. And this animal strength, it seems, has gradually drained out of my system, judging by the fact that I am left with little appetite for food and women. The world I am now in is one of diseased nerves, lucid as ice. Such voluntary death must give us peace, if not happiness. Now that I am ready, I find nature more beautiful than ever, paradoxical as this may sound. I have seen, loved, and understood more than others. In this at least I have a measure of satisfaction, despite all the pain I have thus far had to endure.

  P.S. Reading a life of Empedocles, I felt how old is this desire to make a god of oneself. This letter, so far as I am conscious, never attempts this. On the contrary,

  I consider myself one of the most common humans.

  You may recall those days of twenty years ago when we discussed "Empedocles on Etna"—under the lindentrees. In those days I was one who wished to make a god of myself.

  Notes

  A Fool's Life

  1-4. Akutagawa Ryunosuke: born in Tokyo 1892. Precocious. Voracious reader. Encyclopaedic knowledge and retentive memory. Immersed in Chinese classics, Japanese history, European thought. Composed many haiku.

  5. Six years his senior: Tanizaki Junichiro. A number of his novels are available in English and have been produced as films. "The Aesthetic, Satanic, Neo-classic, Great Tanizaki."

  8. Shin Shichô, founded by Tanizaki. Magazine of the

  New
Thought group of writers. Akutagawa received recognition with publication of Rashomon in 1915 and

  Hana (Nose) in 1916.

  10-13. While still an undergraduate, adopted as his mentor the pre-eminent man of letters, Natsume Soseki.

  Died of stomach ulcer at age 50. December 9, 1916.

  12. Taught English at the Naval Engineering College, upon graduation from the Department of English Literature of Tokyo Imperial University in 1916.

  14-20. First collection of short stories published, 1917.

  Married in 1918. Second collection of short stories, 1919.

  Resigned from the faculty to devote full time to writing.

  Signed with the newspapers Tokyo Nichi Nichi and Osake

  Mainichi for stories to be published serially.

  24. First son born in 1920, second in 1922, third in 1925.

  26. 1921, March to July. Visited China.

  33. Russian: Lenin.

  51. An overdose of sleeping drugs. Akutagawa's life ended in his home in Tabata, Tokyo, on July 24, 1927 at the age of 35.

  Table of Contents

  A Fool's Life

  Dedication

  1. The Age

  2. Mother

  3. Home

  4. Tokyo

  5. Self

  6. Sickness

  7. Painting

  8. Sparks