A Tanizaki Feast: The International Symposium in Venice by Adriana Boscaro & Anthony Hood Chambers

Author:Adriana Boscaro & Anthony Hood Chambers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Michigan Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies

The Double Face of Writing

Anne Bayard-Sakai

It is not legitimate to say of an author that he takes particular care over his choice of titles, since no one can profess to be a writer who does not pay close attention to what is the emblem, if not the face, of a text. Nevertheless, with Tanizaki, the title is a strong element of the work itself and perfectly fulfills its paratextual role.1 Moreover, Tanizaki attached great importance to the choice of names for his characters, a choice he exercised most meticulously. This is why the reader cannot fail to be surprised and intrigued to find in this author’s bibliography a title like “A to B no hanashi” (The Story of A and B). Here is a title of the most trivial and insignificant kind; it retains only the most meager of the possible functions of a title—serving only as an index—and seems, in relation to the work, to be no more than a pleonasm. Furthermore, A and B, as the names of the characters themselves, amount to little more than indices, again of the poorest variety, since they seem to be no more than a borrowing of the first two letters of the alphabet without carrying any special meaning.

Bearing in mind this sort of double insignificance, and using the example of “The Story of A and B,” we might examine the play in Tanizaki’s work of “A and B rhetoric,” or a rhetoric of the double face.

* * * * *

“The Story of A and B,” published in 1921, presents two cousins, A and B, who were brought up together and have become writers as adults.2 Linked though they are by a shared past, they are poles apart, as A personifies good and B evil. These moral identities extend to aesthetic doctrine; one is a humanist writer who employs literature for the power of good, while the other is an exponent of the literature of evil. Having begun by providing this information, the text sets up situations that all ask the same question: which of the cousins will get the upper hand? The text states that a literature of evil is by definition impossible, and so B finds himself gradually having to abandon his schemes and settle for a simple existence sworn to evil. Meanwhile, A achieves success as a writer, but, dedicated to his cousin’s salvation, he cannot bear to see B’s moral decay. Upon his release from prison, where his misdeeds have led him, B demands that A prove his desire to redeem him by surrendering to him all his talent and renown. Thenceforth B appropriates all the texts A has written, without anyone—even A’s wife—being told of the swindle. Only upon B’s death is all unraveled, but without really unraveling. On his deathbed, B returns A’s work to him, but A refuses to break his word and maintains the mystery, though he cannot help but reveal it to his wife. The piece ends with this sentence: “Did A win,

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