Cindy/Jiahan's November 15th reading blog post:
War Bride: This is a melancholic, surrealistic and symbolic story (maybe symbolic?). And it is a difficult reading for me (◞‸◟) because I am uncertain about its message, so I could only guess: I don't know what exact meaning does the combo words "War Bride" have, but I come up with two possible interpretations: firstly, (I looked it up) the term "War Bride"(戦争の花嫁、ウォーブライド） usually refers to Japanese women who were married to American men and immigrated in the United States after the Pacific War, so maybe our female protagonist encountered it through a historical textbook while she's in school and adapted this word to herself as she liked it aesthetically, such that it then becomes symbolic throughout the entire narrative? (symbolic in the way that she marries to her lifelong ideal that she shall no longer utter a single word, by which she will never disrupts another's eternity by her speech, such that she alienates and makes herself a stranger to human society around her which relies on words and daily communication, and infuses herself spiritually to the entire world, the sun, the horizon, the sky, and the ground). Secondly, the combo "War Bride" could be chose and used simply because that there is no meaning to the word itself, and that's the best and crucial part because a word that has meanings are more likely to hurt people, or to impact people, on account of which, our protagonist prefers words that have no meanings to those that have. But should we take a critical view of the story or should we just feel it instead of understanding it? It is admittedly true that by keeping one's silence, nothing hurt could be inflicted, but on the other hand, word and languages themselves lose their meaning if people no longer talk to each other, furthermore, faithful emotions and love could not be conveyed, too. In this respect, it is sad to speak no more, but it is also extremely gentle（極めて優しい） to decide to hold one's tongue evermore. And her brittle eyes open more and more. She begins to focus more on the sight when she lets go of sound and speech. This transition is also quite interesting.☺️⊂((・x・))⊃
A "Poor Aunt" Story: This is another Murakami Haruki's short story and I think that I like it as a whole, but the scenario that the weary mother reproaches her daughter and says in her fury that "you are not part of the family any more" lingers powerfully in my mind and makes me feel so sad. The nameless first-person narrator wants to write a story about a poor aunt, who is always there but being ignored all the time, seeming to have no business with her surrounding society at all. Lonely, and banal, to the extent of incurring others' impatience and dislike. But such people exist and the narrator wants to write about them as a group. By doing which, his friend suggests that it means to take up certain responsibility to help this specific group in his writing. (which I understand as making readers be aware of the "poor aunt" surrounding them and encouraging an effort to be more caring and patience towards them.) The enigmatic part is that the certain "poor aunt" that the narrator wants to write about begins to take up a form and literally, stays on the narrator's back but transforms into different things for different observers. What does this supposed to refer? I am not sure but in order to answer this, I regard it as a necessity to talk about the moment when this mysterious "poor aunt" suddenly disappears after the narrator gets off the train. When the narrator witnesses an unpleasant scenario occurs between a mother and her two children, he is glued to his spot, hesitant to offer help fearing an opposite outcome, and finds out how feeble he actually is with his two hands when someone is truly in need of a certain kind of comfort, he is much disturbed and gets off the train, finding suddenly that the "poor aunt" on his back has gone. This makes me feel that the "poor aunt" can never be a real existence and it is something as the narrator says, a "conceptual thing". I think that the "poor aunt" is an incarnation of a benevolent writer's mind which concerns about societal depression, loneliness, sadness, and inferior groups, wishing to offer certain help with his brush or pen, in other words, through the power of words and stories. But on finding out that he cannot even help to comfort a wounded elementary school girl, he began to be in doubt with himself and his ability of truly helping others with his literature. Thus this benevolent feeling or mind falls short due to his inconfidence, and never puts itself together into a story that could be circulated, hoping to make a change for a group identified as "poor aunt". But maybe he is talk about subconsciousness again? If that's the case, I am looking forward to hear more about it in class.(๑╹ω╹๑ )♡
The Great Passage: This is a really cute story! ( ＾∀＾)What a beautiful and warm team is the Dictionary Editorial Department! ( ^ ^ )/🍻I like how Akita finds real value in Majime as a born lexicographer and guides him into his most suitable vocation in life. I also begin to understand how passionate and hard-working dictionary contributors are as they develop, edit, and put together a dictionary through this story. And I think that this is really something valuable in today's world, where everything is so quick and people being impatient and anxious all the time, striving for living and being money-oriented. I remember when I was an elementary schooler in China, I really enjoyed looking up unfamiliar words in dictionaries by Chinese alphabet or by radicals and characters part, but how long have been since I last used a printed paper dictionary! And I am surprised to find out that I seemed to forget the way of how to use a Chinese dictionary, which makes me feel so nostalgic, shocked, and a little melancholic. Nowadays, we can simply look up words in google or by an online dictionary, such as merriam-webster. It almost seems like printed paper dictionary are disappearing in our lives. But this short story makes me think: Dictionary is not only used to explain the meaning of a word, but to help people stretch the limitation of a language and have a chance to express themselves in the clearest way. It is not only a tool, but also a guide that leads us among the deep ocean of words. But I never think in this respect before. I should start using printed dictionaries more!٩( 'ω' )و
The Fall of Language in the Age of English: This is the first treatise we read for the semester, written in 2008. But I resonate（すごく共感できる） with her arguments a lot and I think that they can be applied in 2024, too. She talks about that a computer translation will deprive the original fun of the text, which I strongly agree. When it was October back then and Mulgar Library in our school BU has a selection of spooky tales such as Lovecrafts and so on displayed as October reading. And me and my aunt frequented there, picking up a horror story to read during the nights. Nonetheless, since my aunt is not used to read in English, so she used a translation app to translate the whole page into Chinese as she read and she got bored within half an hour every time. On our way back home, as we shared our reading(our daily horror story hehe), she complains to me about how badly those computer-generated translations are, such that they lack any sense of beauty and make her reading absolutely boring, even intolerable. I feel sorry for her and reflect back on this, even 16 years has past after Mizumura wrote this treatise, yet machinery translations are still done badly nowadays. We might as well have some confident ground to be assured that there are human efforts in humanity studies that an ai or a computer cannot replace since they can not read in-between the lines. (文脈を読めない）。Another thing that I really agree with this treatise is the argument she made that it is not problematic about the simple fact that English has become the sole international language in the 21st century, but what is causing worries is that because of the popularity and universality of the English language in online library and the academia, bilingual scholars are inclined to write true literature only in English rather than write in their mother tongue, which causes a gradual deprivation of serious literature in those diverse national languages and produces a blank such that future generation of (let's say, Japan) lack an approach to the age before them, such as the effect that Natsume Sōseki's text have in bringing people back to the Meiji Period. Mizumura's mentioning of Natsume Sōseki reminds me of another Japanese author, Kafū Nagai, which I want to make a reference here, since he chooses to write about Old Edo period and buildings in his time deliberately in his novels, too.a( ´∀｀)
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