Rodica FRENŢIU
Departamentul de Studii asiatice, Facultatea de Litere
Universitatea „Babeş-Bolyai”, Cluj-Napoca
A color is something that the subject to be depicted has in itself; a tone arises from a feeling or sentiment that is induced in the depictor when confronted by the subject.
Nagai Kafū, The Tone and Color of Language
Abstract
The study entitled ”Nagai Kafū, A Strange Tale from East of the River (Bokutō kidan). Tone and color in the novel of interior exile” proposes a hermeneutical analysis of the novel considered the masterpiece of the Japanese writer. Without entirely being a retrospective narrative of the autobiographical type, A Strange Tale from East of the River is, to some extent, a composition of texts such as diary and correspondence, which can also be described altogether as a special type of intertextuality, identified in the technique of the mise en abyme, by introducing the novel-within-the-novel (Shissō/ Disappearance), as events from A Strange Tale from East of the River are strongly connected to the writing of the other novel. A Strange Tale from East of the River becomes therefore a narrative text that permanently oscillates between a pseudo-autobiographical novel (Disappearance), which tends to focus upon the existence of a character, and an autobiographical one (A Strange Tale from East of the River), apparently authentic, which highlights the voice of a narrator. The present analysis tries to point out the characteristics of the narrative strategy that transform the writing of a novel in an act of artistic creation, revealing at the same time the elements shaping the concept of “beauty” at Nagai Kaf.
Key-words: neo-Romantic, the novel of the interior exile, “novel-within-the-novel”, tone, colour
Cuvinte cheie: neoromantic, romanul exilului interior, „roman în roman”, ton, culoare