SCRIITORI JAPONEZI ÎN LIMBA ROMÂNĂ: MORI ŌGAI, GÂSCA SĂLBATICĂ
JAPANESE WRITERS IN ROMANIAN: MORI ŌGAI, GÂSCA SĂLBATICĂ („WILD GOOSE”)

Summary/Abstract: Known to the Romanian people only through the historical novels, written towards the end of his creation and life time, Mori Ōgai (1862-1922), one of the great names of modern Japanese literature, has been recently published in Romanian by Humanitas Publishing House with the translation of his latest fictional novel, Wild Goose (Gan, 1911-1915). The current article ("Japanese writers in Romanian: Mori Ōgai, Wild Goose") is intended to highlight the outstanding feature which characterizes the novel signed by the Japanese writer, namely the stereoscopical mechanism of the narrative. The metaphor of stereoscope invoked in the last chapter of the text could be regarded as an up-to-date version of the several gesaku (‚narratives’), where the Japanese writer explains the fact that he found out the story from one of the characters involved in its content, many years after the actual development of the action. It is probably for the first time that Mori Ōgai speaks of his novel in terms of monogatari (‚story’), which proves his indebtment to tradition rather than to modern Europe, according to his own statements from the youth. It might be as well a warning about not getting too close to the narrative and, at the same time, an announcement of the illusory character of the narrative, similar to that provided by the stereoscope. By his fiction, Mori Ōgai has indeed revolutionised Japanese language and has created the modern novel, which develops a reconstructed configuration of perspectives, thus trying to decentralize modern Japanese literature.

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