“The weak can’t handle reality"

mozu Retweeted

So, why was postcolonial scholarship so slow in waking up to Russia’s empire(s)?

The reasons are complex, and have to do with the nature of postcolonial scholarship itself, and Russia’s specific position in the modern global order.

A thread 🧵

— Dr. Kevork Oskanian (@DrKevorkO) April 29, 2022

核兵器はあっても、Empire　と言うほどの影響力をもっていなかったもんな。 

  「日本文学」女性作家が英語圏で躍進　背景に出版界の潮流変化 2022/4/29

〈美しくも残酷な１０代の少年が自分の胸に座っているような気持ちになる〉（英紙インディペンデント）

???

This makes reading Heaven feel like there’s a beautiful, cruel teenage boy sitting on your chest, carelessly tossing his perfect hair while you are slowly suffocated by your own helplessness

美しくも残酷な１０代の少年が無造作に髪を振り払いながら、わたしの胸の上にまたがって座り込むーわたしは絶望して徐々に息苦しくなっていくのを感じる・・・みたいな感じか？ 

The independent

Mieko Kawakami’s Heaven - review: ‘an unrelenting horror film of one boy’s youth’

Kojima offers a kind of religious, moralistic view, saying that, by allowing the beatings to happen, their physical suffering has worth. “Weakness matters,” Kojima says. “There’s meaning in overcoming pain and suffering.” Momose, though, is nihilistic, telling the narrator, “The weak can’t handle reality. They can’t deal with the pain or sadness, let alone the obvious fact that nothing in life actually has any meaning.” For Momose, the bullying has neither meaningful motivations nor outcomes. Some people simply hurt others because they can, he says casually. And others simply don’t have the will to fight back.

 

NPR 

A Bullied Kid Finds Unconventional Freedom In 'Heaven' May 25, 2021 

Kojima fervently believes that getting bullied is, as she puts it, a "sign." She sees herself and the narrator as designated empaths; their suffering enables them to "know exactly what it means to hurt somebody else," and elevates them to a higher understanding of pain. She welcomes that understanding, and accepts her daily torments as rites of purification.

World literature Today

Heaven: A Novel by Mieko Kawakami

. He is troubled by Kojima’s feeling that their suffering is holy somehow, like some sort of warped sacred ritual that ultimately serves some higher purpose for them and the others.

NYT

  HEAVEN by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd reviewed by Gina Isabel Rodriguez Bullied and Shunned, They Found a New Way to See the Worl 

 When Eyes, lame and stammering, asks one of his classmates why he bullies him, the boy delivers a monologue of his own. “There’s no hell. It’s all made up,” the bully says. “The weak can’t handle reality. They can’t deal with the pain or sadness, let alone the obvious fact that nothing in life actually has any meaning.” The bully is the Nietzsche to Kojima’s Laozi, the ancient Chinese philosopher behind the Daoist principle of wuwei, or inaction.

“We’re letting it happen. We know exactly what’s going on,” Kojima says. “Maybe we are weak, in a way. But that’s not a bad thing. If we’re weak, our weakness has real meaning.” She reveals to Eyes that she chooses to be dirty, to wear torn clothes, to leave her wild hair untamed, even though her stepfather is wealthy. Kojima wraps her philosophy around herself like a force field, turning her torment into the ecstasy of martyrdom, grinning and glassy-eyed as the other girls shove her to the ground.

But the dissonances of the novel align into perfect vision for the breathtaking ending, which is an argument in favor of meaning, of beauty, of life. It is rare for a writer as complex as Kawakami to be so unafraid of closure, to be as capable of satisfying, profound resolution.

Japan Society Book Club

Heaven

He decides to talk with his stepmother about the bullying and makes a potentially life-changing decision the immediate results of which lead him to say, ‘Everything that I could see was beautiful. I cried and cried, standing there, surrounded by that beauty, even though I wasn’t standing anywhere. Everything was beautiful. Not that there was anyone to share it with, anyone to tell. Just the beauty’.

百瀬

苦しみには意味はないが、弱者はそれだとつらすぎるから、意味を創作する。

コジマ

苦しみには意味がある。神は存在する。死んだらその意味がすべてわかる。

NYTの批評が・・・ちょっと・・・いただけないなああ。

百瀬の思想はニーチェ風だが、コジマのは老子風では全然ない。キリスト教風。

で、語り手の少年が斜視の手術をうけてみた風景は・・コジマ風の意味の世界のように解釈しているが・・・

やっぱ、ニーチェ風の神が死んだ世界である。正午ーつまり事物の影はなくなり、しかも、太陽もなくなって一切がそれ自体で輝いている世界。永劫回帰を匂わす表現である。

（これがニーチェだ　永井均　ｐ２００）

ただ、所詮、ブンガクですから、そこらへんはいろんな解釈はありえる。