Natsume Sōseki on Poe

Natsume Sōseki (1867-1916), the leading novelist of the Meiji period (1868-1912) in Japan, has received credit for being the first to introduce Walt Whitman to Japan but his essays on Poe have received only scant attention by Japanese scholars.¹ Although these essays make critically valid points and show considerable insight, as in Sōseki's comparison of Poe and Swift, they have been neglected by Poe scholars as well as by scholars of Sōseki and comparative literature.² Sōseki appears to be the first critic of Poe to have pointed out the similarities between Poe and Swift (he did so in 1910), and this fact itself must interest Poe scholars of both East and West.³ Sōseki's perception of the relation between Poe and Swift, the latter of whom he admired almost as his alter ego, reveals, besides Sōseki's critical judgment, the affinity he felt for the world of Poe. This affinity supports recent critical views which point to the influence on Sōseki of Western late Romanticism—the pre-Raphaelites in particular—in the early phase of his writing.⁴ It also suggests a fundamental link between Sōseki and the writers of the aesthetic school in the Taisho era (1912-26), the writers who were responsible for the phenomenal "Poe vogue" in Japan.⁵

The aesthetic literature of the Taisho era reflected the receptivity of Japanese writers to Western late Romanticism and Gothic literature, and such writers as Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, Tanizaki Junichiro, Hagiwara Sakutaro and Sato Haruo, all of whom reflect the strong influence of Poe, were in agreement with Sōseki in their criticism of the naturalistic confessional novels which were in vogue in the early part of the twentieth century. Akutagawa in particular admired Sōseki as his literary mentor.

The reasons for the relative neglect of Sōseki's essays on Poe are quite apparent. First of all, Sōseki has long been recognized as a writer who was deeply influenced by eighteenth-and nineteenth-century English novels, especially those of Jane Austen and George Meredith. Such major works of his as Botchan (Young Master, 1906), Sorekara (And Then, 1909), Kōjin (The Wayfarer, 1913), Kokoro (Heart, 1914), and Meian (Light and Darkness, 1916)reflect the influence of realistic English novels and novels of social manners,⁶ and they appear at first glimpse to be quite irrelevant to the world of Poe in their themes, structure and nature of imagination. In fact, Sōseki's very interest in Poe might have surprised many of his readers.

The major theme of Sōseki's literature is the question of the intellectuals in the overly-utilitarian Meiji society, when the nation was single-mindedly engaged in modernizing and Westernizing itself. His works dramatize in well-developed stories the plight of the intellectuals who, in a milieu where new Western ideas came in and out abruptly, attempted to shed their feudal selves and modernize themselves. He dramatized the tragedy of the intellectuals, whose pursuit of the modern self led to a spiritual and intellectual wasteland, and their struggle against the egotism which awaits those attempting to modernize the self. Those critics who traced Sōseki's references to Poe in his works, moreover, found only a few, seemingly inconsequential ones.⁷

Secondly, although translations of Poe's tales appeared even before translations of his poems, the major introducers of Poe to Japan had emphasized his poetry and Sōseki's concern with the tales was outside the main current of Poe studies at his time.⁸ Poe's poetry was most typically appreciated in relation to French Symbolism, particularly to such poets as Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Rimbaud. Sōseki's interest in Poe was, on the contrary, definitely in his tales and particularly in his fantastic and grotesque tales, tales which were to have such a great impact on the subsequent emergence of the aesthetic school. It is my contention that Sōseki's essays on Poe can be most meaningfully appreciated in the light of the development of aestheticism, a development inseparable from the vogue of Poe in Japan.

Although Baudelaire as well as Poe stands out as an especially significant source of influence on Japanese aesthetic literature in general, the major works of the aesthetic writers took the form of short stories. Among these writers, Akutagawa and Tanizaki especially were innovative and indefatigable story-tellers who, basing their stories on both Western works and on classical Japanese tales and folk legends, explored the grotesque, the aesthetics of the ugly, and the realm of psychic dread. Both of them, besides reflecting the fundamental influence of Poe's imagination in a general sense, wrote stories based on Poe's and developed Poesque themes explicitly in their works.⁹ Akutagawa himself wrote several essays on Poe in which, essentially, he develops the analysis of Poe's method as a short story writer which Sōseki first presented.¹⁰ The interest in the grotesque, psychic dread, and the aesthetics of the ugly in Poe marks the third and most significant stage of Poe's introduction in Japan, following the first casual interest in his strange stories and the second stage of interest in his poetry, and this interest in the grotesque on the part of the aesthetic writers created the Poe vogue in Japan. By regarding Sōseki's treatment of Poe from the perspective of the aesthetic writers' response to Poe, we can evaluate most meaningfully the impact of Western dark Romanticism on Sōseki's own writings and on modern Japanese literature generally.

Many of Sōseki's heroes, including Daisuke in Sorekara, Susuke in Mon (The Gate, 1910), Ichiro in Kōjin, and Sensei in Kokoro, finding no salvation in the world of rational consciousness, commit suicide, become mad, or try to escape from the excruciating confinement of the self into the world of religion. Sōseki's persistent pursuit of the limitations of rational consciousness, of the rationalistic view of self and life, his concern with madness and death, and his own recurring mental breakdowns made it quite natural, contrary to the general impression of Sōseki as an intellectual writer of realism and orthodox social novels, for him to be among the first Japanese writers to be drawn to Poe. They also made it quite natural for Sōseki, without any documentary evidence, to perceive the affinity between Poe and Swift.

It is beyond the scope of this short essay to assess fully the impact of Poe on Sōseki's literature or of Sōseki on the writers of aestheticism. My purpose here is to discuss Sōseki's essays on Poe, to call attention to his comparison of Poe and Swift, and to suggest that his essays provide evidence of Sōseki's indebtedness to dark Romanticism, for it is Sōseki's obsession with the dark side of the psyche which brings Poe and Swift together. At the same time, Sōseki's interest in Poe reveals one of the deep roots from which Japanese aesthetic literature, together with the so-called "Poe vogue," emerged in the Taisho period.

Lafcadio Hearn's lectures on Poe, delivered in 1891 (the twenty-fourth year of Meiji), had a decisive effect on arousing Japanese writers' interest in Poe.¹¹ Sōseki succeeded Hearn in the chair of English literature at the University of Tokyo, and it is natural to assume that Sōseki's interest in Poe's grotesque and the fantastic was strengthened by Hearn's lectures in which, praising the lack of didacticism in Poe's literature, he emphasized the uniqueness of Poe's exploration of the psychic realm and the realm of mystery and grotesque fantasy. Hearn himself was writing fantasies and ghost stories, drawing his inspiration from Japanese folk literature and legends, and thus stimulated renewed interest in the tradition of the supernatural and the grotesque in Japan. Like Hearn, Akutagawa and Tanizaki wrote grotesque tales based on folk literature and the classical tales of the grotesque, besides being inspired by the Gothic tales of the West, particularly by those of Poe. Sōseki's essays on Poe, although they are brief, may well have been as influential as Hearn's lectures in their positive appraisal of Poe's short stories of fantasy and the grotesque, for they were written in Japanese for a wider audience of readers of literature, while Hearn's lectures were delivered in English to a small, elite group of students of English literature. Sōseki's introduction of Poe in Japan, then, like that of Hearn, is directly linked to the Taisho aesthetic literature in its focus on Poe's fantasy.

It must be pointed out, however, that Sōseki's own interest in Poe originated independently from Hearn's lectures: Sōseki's first Poe originated independently from Hearn's lectures: Sōseki's first reference to Poe appeared in his essay "Life" (1886), written when he was a promising but unknown English teacher at a local high school.¹² This was written soon after Poe's first introduction in Japan. Moreover, since his second reference to Poe, an essay devoted entirely to a discussion of Poe, appeared soon after his return from London, where he had lived from 1900 to 1903, it is likely that his interest in Poe was first seriously aroused while he was living in London at the turn of the century, most probably through his study of Rossetti and the pre-Raphaelites.

This essay by Sōseki, his first lengthy discussion of Poe, was included in the preface to a collection of translations of Western stories published in 1908 and edited by Honma Hisashiro.¹³ In this essay, Sōseki introduces Poe as the "founder of the short story" and emphasizes the uniqueness of the world Poe creates in his short stories. He praises the richness of Poe's imagination, the imagination which envisions a fantastic, wild world, alien to the world of everyday life and rational thinking. Above all, Sōseki praises Poe's ability to create a well-constructed world of fantasy, calling the reader's attention to the fact that Poe's "fictional lies" are presented with scientific accuracy and precise, realistic description. Thus he calls Poe's a "constructive imagination," one which explores the region of wild fantasy and renders it in concrete description. Although Sōseki talks in the same essay of the profound and mysterious inner world created in "The Raven," it is clear that he was fascinated by Poe primarily as a short story writer. Sōseki's originality lies in his grasp of the combination of the fantastic world and realistic description in Poe's short stories; he was fascinated by the vivid evocation of the imagined, anti-rationalistic world rendered by Poe's trompe d'oeil technique.

By the time this essay was written, Sōseki had returned from his stay in London, during which he suffered from his first severe mental breakdown, and had begun writing novels. Although the major works of his early period are typically aloof satires in which he mocks society and shallow, petty intellectuals, as can be seen in Wagahai wa neko de aru (I Am a Cat, 1905) and Botchan,¹⁴ such works as London Tower (1905) reveal the dark chaos he experienced during his sojourn in the alien city and foreshadow his later, fully-developed treatment of the anxiety, loneliness and madness of modern man. Recent Sōseki scholarship has revealed the influence upon him of the neo-Romanticism of the late nineteenth century.¹⁵ This scholarship shows Sōseki's affinity to the pre-Raphaelite writers and, considered in conjunction with the interest in the King Arthur legends reflected in his early works, provides evidence that Sōseki was a writer baptized in Western Romanticism. Sōseki's first lengthy essay on Poe provides important documentation to support the contention of vides important documentation to support the contention of this scholarship.

It is in his second major essay on Poe (and his third reference to Poe) that Sōseki draws a comparison between Poe and Swift. This essay, entitled "Poe's Imagination," appeared in 1910 in Eigo seinen (The Rising Generation), a leading magazine for students and scholars of English language and literature.¹⁶ In this essay, Sōseki restates Poe's uniqueness as a short story writer and proceeds to elaborate upon his "amazing, precise imagining," his unique combination of fantasy and "mathematical, exact" expression. Sōseki states that Poe's "clear imagination" is quite similar to Swift's, whose allegorical fables are presented with "exact," "objective" descriptions in much the same manner as Poe's imaginative world. Like Poe's, Swift's world of imagination is created by the surprising juxtaposition of the fantastic and the realistic. Both worlds, Sōseki says, are described with concrete dimensions, sizes, and proportions to present realistic images of things fancied or existing in the world of imagination. These descriptions, he says, "give the reader a strong feeling (kannen) of numbers." Sōseki sees clearly both writers' unusual fascination with numbers and with the alchemistic effects of the numbers, which tempt the readers' minds and thus lead them to the world of fantasy. As a fictional technique, the numbers and scientific precision used in describing the dream-world bring out its grotesque, ominous quality. In comparing the two authors' "scientific imagination" and their love of "mathematical exactitude" for the description of details in the imagined world, Sōseki argues that Poe is more technically expert than Swift, who appears to be an "amateur" before Poe. According to Sōseki, Poe develops Swift's mathematical description to its extremity.

Although Sōseki's mention of the island of the Liliputians as an example makes it clear that he is referring to Gulliver's Travels, it is not clear which works of Poe he has in mind. "The Black Cat," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Gold Bug," "A Descent into the Maelström," "The Masque of the Red Death," and the Dupin stories are among the works with which Sōseki was familiar, yet it is difficult to surmise whether Sōseki knew of Poe's early satirical "Folio Club Tales" or such adventure tales as "Hans Pfaall," "The Balloon Hoax," and "Gordon Pym," works in which the possible influence of Swift is more discernible and in which there are greater similarities to Swift in the mathematical exactitude with which strange places and creatures are described.

It remains true, however, that Sōseki's understanding of the similarities between the two authors, although his evidence is only inferential, is not only insightful but also deepens our understanding of Poe's satires, hoaxes and adventure tales of imaginary voyages. Indeed, in his essay "Dean Swift in the Works of Poe," Burton Pollin shows the legitimacy of investigating the relation between Poe and Swift, presenting evidence that Swift's works and especially Gulliver's Travels might well have been sources of Poe's satirical tales, hoaxes and adventure tales.¹⁷ Pollin's survey of Poe's actual references to Swift proves Poe's great interest in the exactitude of Swift's descriptions of details and sizes. In fact, Pollin's article shows that it is exactly in this "diddling considered as one of the exact sciences"¹⁸ that Poe was fascinated by Swift and learned from him, substantiating Sōseki's perception of the relation between Poe and Swift.

Sōseki's basic argument in this essay is that although Swift has a much stronger bent for satire, the manner in which the two writers use the intellect to express the antirational world of imagination is fundamentally alike. As Arthur Clayborough observes in his essay on Swift's fantasy and logic, Swift had a strong urge for the grotesque and absurdity, and his satire, going beyond the social-reform concerns of ordinary satire, verges on the grotesque.¹⁹ Both writers' grotesque also stem from their mistrust of life and their basic skepticism of the notion of the progress of civilization. For Poe and probably for Swift, the grotesque was a means for exploring the frontier of consciousness, the realm of pure imagination and dream. Sōseki shares with them a fundamental skepticism with regard to intellectual and rationalistic thinking. Sōseki's perception of this quality in Poe and his comparison with Swift are especially noteworthy considering the limited availability of Poe's works in Japan and the absence of solid Poe scholarship at his time.

Although Swift was probably the only writer with whom one could legitimately compare Poe's mathematical grotesque before the age of Surrealism and of such modern writers of the grotesque as Kafka, Sōseki's own affinity to both Swift and Poe must be the chief reason for his ingenious connection of the two writers. Sōseki's deep interest in Swift as a writer and as a personality akin to himself is reflected in his brilliant essay on Swift (1907) in which he depicts Swift as a frustrated and "mad" writer, one who disliked life and people, especially women. Sōseki's own darkness (including his fear of women), the abyss of madness he came to experience more strongly in his later days, was already expressed in his early interest in the grotesque and in his exploration of the sense of fear and of the psychic dread of life in his early works. Sōseki regarded madness as the barren terminus to which the intellectuals' pursuit of the rationalistic self led. His perception that clear mathematical and intellectual thinking leads unexpectedly to a buried realm of fear and fantasy in both Poe and Swift is thus fundamentally related to his own consciousness. In his later years, Sōseki searched among Chinese philosophies of self-transcendence and in the worlds of religion (Zen in particular) and nature for the solution to man's obsession with his ego. The orthodox view of Sōseki as an aloof, intellectual writer of realism certainly needs careful reconsideration in this light. With his understanding that the exploration of non-phenomenal consciousness represented a possible way out of the dead-end of modern egotism, Sōseki must indeed have felt himself drawn to Poe and his literature. It is this understanding that brings him close to the later aesthetic writers and made him a "literary mentor" of such writers as Akutagawa Ryūnosuke.