Mandarins by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Author:Ryūnosuke Akutagawa [Akutagawa, Ryūnosuke]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Short Stories (Single Author), Psychological, Literary
ISBN: 9781935744122
Google: jzcGhDyPHosC
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2011-03-22T19:37:05+00:00

Though he too was choked with dark grief, Otsushū could not but feel unease at what seemed amidst it all to be an excessive display or, at the very least, to put it more cautiously, a certain lack of self-restraint. Yet such may well have been no more than a purely rational judgment, for now, whatever his reason might say, his heart was suddenly moved by Seishū’s lamentation, and his eyes were filled with tears. His discomfort at the other’s outburst—and, in turn, shame at his own—remained unchanged. But still he gave way to the full flood of emotion. His hands resting on his knees, he sobbed in spite of himself. In this, he was not alone: the very air of that hitherto cold and grimly silent room quivered, as in near unison even those disciples who had sat demurely at the foot of Bashō’s bed broke out in fitful sniffling.

Amidst all these mournful voices, Jōsō, his bodhi prayer beads still dangling from his wrist, quietly resumed his place. Sitting directly across from Kikaku and Kyorai was Shikō, who now took his turn. But Tōkabō, known as a cynic, did not appear to suffer in the least from the sort of distraught nerves that would cause him, induced by the sentimentality all around him, to shed vain tears. As he unceremoniously moistened the lips of the master, there was on his swarthy face the same familiar expression: a mélange of mockery and a strange haughtiness. Yet it is, of course, indisputable that even he was filled with a measure of emotion.

Cutting to the quick,

(“Here I leave my bones to bleach . . .”)

The harsh autumn wind.5

Four or five days before, the master had said: “I had long thought that I would die stretched out on the grass, with earth for my headrest. I could not be happier than to see the hope for a peaceful end here fulfilled on this splendid bed.” This he had oft repeated as an expression of his gratitude, though whether he was now lying on a withered moor or in the rear annex of Hanaya Nizaemon’s residence was of no significant difference.

In fact, up until three or four days before, the very person now moistening the lips of the dying man had worried that his master had not yet composed his last verse; just the day before he had contemplated how he might compile a posthumous book of his hokku. Now today, just a few minutes before, he had been intently observing the old man as he rapidly slipped into the arms of death, seeking anything in that process that might be of poetic interest. Indeed, to advance one step further in cynicism, one might even suppose that behind his watchful gaze was the hope of finding inspiration for at least one line in an account he would later write of these last days and hours. Even as he was ministering to him in these final moments, his mind was obsessed with the renown he

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