[Special Feature: New Theory of Reading] "My Classics" Extraordinary Pleasures / Yutaka Yukawa

2020/05/11

What is a classic? For me, I was forced to think seriously about this theme, which could be called audacious, because of a strange incident.

After retiring from a publishing house, someone recommended that I stand at the podium of a university's creative writing department, and it happened there. I was surprised that the students read so few books, and on some occasion, I muttered in the classroom, "You guys don't read the classics, do you?" I was still inexperienced as a teacher.

At that moment, an energetic male student stood up straight and asked, "Professor, what is a classic?" Since I had only muttered it unconsciously, I was at a loss for an answer. Come to think of it, what is a classic? In terms of literature, even if one can give a dictionary-like definition as works that people have modeled themselves after and continued to love for many years, the fundamental question remains: what is a classic for oneself in the first place? I managed to patch things up on the spot, but the question remained within me.

The reason it turned out that way was undoubtedly because, even if I tried to define a classic in a dictionary-like way, I felt that I myself had not read classic works, and therefore was in no position to tell the students anything.

In terms of not reading the classics, the realization flashed through my mind for a moment that I was not much different from the students who think light novels for young people are literature. To confirm this later, I went to the library and looked again at things like the Chikuma Shobo edition of the "Complete Collection of World Classical Literature," and even when compared against that collection starting with Homer, my volume of classical reading was truly meager.

On the other hand, regarding the classics of Japanese literature, I had an experience in high school where I rebelled against my "Classics" teacher, started skipping class, and was threatened with failure by the teacher. That class covered a portion of "The Tale of Genji," but as a result, I turned my back on "Genji" for a long time. It was only after I had been working at a publishing house for a while that I finally felt like facing this great classic.

"Genji" is fine as it is, but looking at the lineup of things like the Iwanami Shoten edition of the "Compendium of Japanese Classical Literature" now, I haven't read any of the Chinese poetry that highlights Edo period literature, nor the vast amount of essays. In other words, I have to say that my classics complex continues even with Japanese literature.

Because of those circumstances, I should not have accepted this manuscript request to talk about "My Classics." I was aware of that, but there was one thing I had been thinking about regarding the classics, and I thought I would like to ask about it.

It is the matter of the fluctuation of "classics."

For example, Mori Ogai and Natsume Soseki used to be included in the "Complete Collection of Modern Japanese Literature." Literary works from the Meiji era onwards were grouped within the framework of the modern era and were not classics. Somehow that has fluctuated, and now there is an atmosphere where not only Ogai and Soseki, but even Junichiro Tanizaki and Naoya Shiga are called classics for some reason. Even if a classic is, as defined by the dictionary at the beginning, "a work that people have modeled themselves after for many years," it seems that those "many years" have somehow become shorter. Accordingly, classics have transcended the framework of time.

How to think about this or how to evaluate it is not necessarily a simple matter.

For example, if we were to call representative works born in early 20th-century Europe, such as Joyce's "Ulysses" and Proust's "In Search of Lost Time," "20th-century classics," one cannot help but feel that it somehow feels right. Behind that must be the enormous influence these two works have had on world literature as a whole. If so, it can be considered a natural progression for the existence of a classic to transcend the framework of time.

Given such a situation, it seems possible to ignore the "classics" positioned by works like literary histories written by university professors, and instead place the question of what a classic is for oneself at the center of one's thinking. Well, the reason I think so is also because, at this age, I no longer have time to read everything listed in the old complete collections of classical literature. Might it not be permissible to honestly (and secretly) recognize what one's own classics were or are, and to reread them or read related books?

Placing Tanizaki's "Arrowroot" next to "The Tale of Genji," or placing Shohei Ooka's "Lady Musashino" next to Stendhal's "The Red and the Black," and taking an extraordinary stroll through the classics that no one else is likely to sympathize with. That is not without its pleasures.