Pernahkah kau mencuri pandang lewat pantulan kaca, entah itu di pintu kaca, jendela kaca, kaca pada jendela mobil, kaca spion, kaca lemari, atau apapun yang bisa memantulkan bayangan? Apa yang kau lihat dan rasakan?Peristiwa ini adalah kisah awal novel ini. Dalam perjalanan ke suatu tempat yang indah alamnya, Shimamura memerhatikan seorang gadis yang ada di depannya dengan melihat melalui pantulan jendela kaca kereta api. Kecantikan gadis itu sungguh memesonanya. Bisa dibayangkan ketika Shimamura melihat ke luar, seharusnya pemandangan pohon-pohon dan pegunungan yang ia lihat, tetapi hal itu masih kalah menariknya dibanding wajah sang gadis. Kawabata menulis peristiwa itu sebagai berikut. Langit di atas gunung masih menyisakan warna merah senja. Setiap benda masih jelas bentuknya di kejauhan, tetapi pemandangan gunung yang monoton, begitu-begitu saja mil demi mil, tampak menjemukan karena kehilangan warna. Tak ada yang menarik di luar sana, dan semuanya mengalir hambar. Tentulah itu karena tertimpa oleh wajah si gadis yang mengapung di atasnya. Pemandangan senja bergerak ajek di sekeliling garis wajah itu. Wajah itu juga tampak bening-tetapi, apakah ia benar-benar tembus cahaya? Shimamura melamunkan bahwa sesungguhnya pemandangan senja terus melintas wajah itu dan tidak pernah berhenti meyakinkannya bahwa memang begitulah yang terjadi.Shimamura adalah seorang pelancong yang saat itu sedang mengunjungi tempat favoritnya. saat itu awal Desember dimana salju sedang turun. Tidak sekedar melancong, ia sebenarnya berjanji menemui seorang perempuan yang tinggal di rumah seorang guru musik Shamisen. Komako sangat bergirang karena kerinduannya terbasuh ketika bertemu Shimamura. Daerah itu ramai dikunjungi pelancong karena sangat menarik untuk melakukan ski dan pendakian gunung. Selain itu, terdapat penginapan air panas, dimana sangat cocok untuk "melawan" rasa dingin yang menyerang. Dan sepertinya-hingga sekarang, tempat wisata ramai (selalu) menyediakan minuman keras (sake) dan wanita (Geisha). Dan Komako adalah salah seorang Geisha di sana.Pada umumnya, orang bisa dekat karena ada kesamaan hobi. Shimamura dan Komako bisa berkenalan dekat karena sama-sama memiliki hobi menari. Hanya saja, Shimamura lebih suka pada tarian barat. semasa mudanya ia kenyang mempelajari tarian tradisional Jepang, dan sejak kecil sudah akrab dengan pertunjukan Kabuki. Namun, bertemu dengan penari-penari muda justru membuatnya tidak cinta pada tari tradisional, ia memilih tarian barat. Namun tarian barat yang ia nikmati bukanlah tarian barat yang ditarikan, melainkan tarian dari khayalnya yang ia sendiri tak pernah saksikan. Hari-hari dimana Shimammura ada disana, menjadi semangat tersendiri bagi Komako. Sesudah Komako menghadiri suatu perjamuan di penginapan lain, maka setelah itu ia pulang dan menyinggahi penginapan Shimamura. Tampaknya Komako hanya membutuhkan teman untuk bercakap-cakap, dan sepertinya ia bosan dengan kehidupan sebagai Geisha di tempat itu. Bagaimana rupa Komako, itulah dituliskan Kawabata sebagai berikut. Hidungnya yang lancip dan mancung memberi kesan sunyi, tetapi bibir mungil di bawahnya membuka dan menutup dengan halus, seperti lingkaran lintah kecil yang indah. Bahkan, ketika ia diam, bibir itu terlihat seperti bergerak-gerak...Garis kelopak matanya tidak naik atau turun. Seolah-olah dengan alasan tertentu, garis itu sengaja ditarik lurus melintasi wajahnya. Ada kesan yang sedikit lucu di sana, tetapi alisnya yang agak menurun dengan bulu-bulu pendek yang tebal sangat pantas menaungi mata itu. Tak ada yang luar biasa pada lingkar wajahnya yang bulat dan sedikit lancip. Kulitnya seperti porselen putih yang dilapisi warna merah muda dan lehernya masih jenjang dan belum menggembung. Dengan semua itu, ia lebih tepat disebut bersih ketimbang cantik. (Hlm 32-33). Selanjutnya, bagaimana Shimamura menempatkan Komako dalam hatinya? lalu bagaimana dengan Yoko, wajah gadis yang memesonanya di kereta api? Bukankah suatu kebetulan dimana ternyata mereka serumah di rumah guru musik Shamisen. Ia tidak memahami, mengapa Komako mampu membuat dirinya tidak lengkap sementara Shimamura sudah memiliki istri dan anak di Tokyo. Baginya, Komako adalah seorang Geisha yang hebat, mampu memainkan alat musik tradisional shamisen tanpa guru dan bahan-bahan yang memadai. Komako hanya belajar dan partitur dan buku-buku yang dibawakan oleh Shimamura. Sementara Shimamura sendiri, sangat anti dengan ketradisionalan Jepang. Buat Shimamura, tradisional tidak berpihak pada kedinamisan dan cenderung kaku. Komako berhasil meluluhkan kebekuan hatinya seperti air panas yang mencairkan salju. Lewat bahasa tubuhnya, Shimamura menyadari jika Komako sangat menaruh hati padanya. Dan apa yang dirasakan Shimamura adalah ia tidak dapat membiarkan sifat egoisnya. Komako telah menyerahkan semuanya, sebaliknya tak ada apapun yang ia berikan kepada perempuan itu. Sementara itu kesan kuat yang ditinggalkan wajah Yoko pada pantulan senja kaca kereta api, membuat Shimamura merindu. Rindu pada wajah Yoko yang murni dan polos serta suaranya yang bening.Ternyata tempat itu memiliki magnet yang luar biasa kuat tarikannya. Bukan hanya pada salju, pegunungan, pohon sugi, air panas, dan kabut tipis itu. Setiap sudutnya menyisakan ruang yang memesona, terlebih pada kedua perempuan itu. Hati Shimamura seperti terbagi. Dan ia merasa waktu tidak berpihak padanya untuk menentukan...Snow Country ditulis dalam bahasa Jepang, "Yukiguni", yakni nama sebuah tempat, yang dicapai melalui terowongan panjang di bawah pegunungan perbatasan antara Gunma (Kozuke No Kuni) dan Niigata (Echigo No Kuni). Novel ini awalnya dibuat dalam beberapa cerita pendek. Dari kurun waktu tahun 1935 hingga 1948, cerita ini terpisah. Dua bagian di tahun 1935, lima bagian di tahun 1937, dua bagian di tahun 1940, dan difinalisasi pada tahun 1948.Dari penelusuran, diketahui bahwa tokoh Komako itu adalah seorang Geisha bernama Matsuei yang ada di kota Yuzawa, dimana Kawabata tidak memberikan nama pada kota ini di novelnya. Perhatikan gambar di bawah, ciri-ciri yang digambarkan Kawabata mirip dengan foto Matsuei.Di tahun 1968, novel ini berhasil meraih penghargaan nobel di bidang sastra, dan Kawabata menjadi penulis pertama Jepang yang meraih penghargaan ini. Karya Kawabata disebutkan banyak memiliki lirik yang melankolis serta banyak menjelajahi tempat seks dalam budaya, dan dalam kehidupan pribadi, seperti dalam karya Up in the Tree, 1962. Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972), dilahirkan dalam sebuah keluarga sejahtera di Osaka, Jepang. Ayahnya, Eikichi Kawabata, adalah seorang dokter terkemuka, meninggal karena TBC ketika Yasunari berusia dua tahun. Dia yatim piatu karena kematian ibunya pada usia tiga tahun, neneknya meninggal ketika ia berusia tujuh tahun, dan disusul kematian adik satu-satunya ketika dia berumur sembilan tahun. Kematian keluarga Kawabata mengurangi masa kecilnya yang normal. Ia sering mengatakan bahwa dia belajar kesepian dan "tanpa akar" sejak awal. Kemudian dalam kehidupannya, ia menggambarkan dirinya sebagai "anak tanpa rumah atau keluarga." Beberapa kritikus menilai bahwa trauma awal membentuk latar belakangnya akan rasa kehilangan yang tergambar dalam tulisannya. Akhirnya saya berikan 4 bintang, 1 bintang kurang karena saya tidak mengerti dimana tempat ini. Visualisasi saya agak terganggu karena saya tidak bisa merasakan salju (subjektif banget yak).@hws08092010-dibikinkalakantorsepibangetkarenaharikerjaterakhirsebelumlebaran-
This is the story of three different trips by Shimamura up into the Snow Country of Japan. Each trip occurs in a different season, and each in turn reflects his deepening involvement with a country geisha in a small village. While journeying by train there for his second visit he is struck by the beauty of a fellow passenger who by chance is traveling to the same village. As Shimamura gets more deeply involved, at least physically, with the geisha, he remains deeply intrigued by the other woman. Her distance from him, and his lack of knowledge of her, deepens his attraction; yet all the while he remains detached from both, appraising them remotely through a scrim of intellectual aestheticism, even as the depths of the geisha’s world are irrevocably being changed by him. The second woman remains on the fringe of the narrative, though her involvement in the geisha’s life is slowly revealed. In the end, inevitably, as he’s a family man and had no intention of forging a permanent relationship, he leaves the village for the last time. His leaving coincides with the apparent death by fire of the other woman, and the revelation of how deeply the geisha was attached to her. Shimamura drifts through the narrative safely ensconced within his own fantasies and projections, yet nevertheless he manages to grasp the trailing fringe of fleeting authentic love and beauty; human love and beauty. If he doesn’t actually cross the abyss from pure abstracted aesthetic appreciation to an appreciation of the raw human fires at the heart of aesthetics, from a contemplation of distant stars to the reflective gleam in the eye of the woman before him, he does hear the cries of life’s entangled souls traversing that abyss. But do those cries only serve to deepen (by saddening with subtle tragedy) his solipsistic aestheticism? Only Shimamura knows in the end, and isn’t that how it must be? doesn’t that only serve to make more profound the intensity of encountering the sublime, the fact that we can’t fully grasp it, that we can’t even understand it?One summer when I was nine I developed a deep attachment to a girl who was about my age. Even then I couldn’t specify why I was so attracted to her. Her exoticism helped, as she was from California, and California was as exotic as it got for a young small town Delawarian. She was living with her aunt for the summer, so consequently she knew no one, had no friends; not that she showed any signs of loneliness. I spent all my childhood summers at the pool – the mornings at swim team practice, the afternoons playing in the water and eating Nekot crackers and lemon ice. What a lovely carefree time it was. The summers felt endless, not that I even bothered to feel that they were endless, let alone think it. Thoughtlessly they were so.The diving boards were a big attraction for kids, but while I was a very good swimmer the boards terrified me. On a good day I had the courage to walk very carefully out to the end of the board, and then without disturbing the board too much I would jump (never dive!) into the deep end. One of the reasons I admired this girl was her fearless diving ability. Ever the voyeur I would swim to the edge of the deep end and pretend to play with the strand of plastic floats separating it from the rest of the pool while she dove. And when she hit the water I would mirror her by going under myself where I watched her blurry form trailing bubbles.She was blonde, slender, tan, and very cute; but my attraction wasn’t physical in that way. Even now I can’t say what attracted me to her. Maybe it was her solitary grace, her silent solitary grace and confidence, as I was a terribly shy and socially awkward child. While she exuded confidence, I don’t ever remember hearing her talk. All I remember is her body arcing off the board and into the water, and her wet walk back to the ladder and back up on the board, and diving again. An eternal cycle. I could’ve watched her all summer, and in my memory it’s as if I did, as if I spent all summer with my head just above water level watching her. She totally consumed me, but as summer neared the end she left town; went back to California.I must’ve told my mom about my attraction to this girl. At the time I rarely spoke myself, even to my family, so even if I only mentioned her once my mom’s curiosity would’ve been piqued. My mom must’ve known of my attraction to this girl because that fall, just a couple months beyond the end of summer, she told me that soon after returning to California this girl died in a house fire. I was devastated, shocked really, shocked by how the intensity of my memory of her contrasted with the fact that she no longer existed. Even now, as I think of her, my memory touches on the eternal; I see her bright and dripping body in an endless dive, lit by a sun that never sets.I can’t remember her name. I never even spoke to her. Yet she’ll inhabit my mind until I die. Am I now and was I then living only in my own fantasies and projections? Most certainly. But that in no way detracts from the profundity of my love for her, from my apprehension of her grace and beauty. My solipsism most definitely crossed the abyss and contacted authentic, even eternal, love and beauty.
What do You think about Snow Country (1996)?
I am white, mostly. And cold. And occasionally, weeping. But you don’t see my tears, for they run down the stream and lose their essence at the prolonged kiss of the first sun. But I do not mind. I come alive to die; I bulk up to surrender; I appear to vanish. But I, too, have admirers. Admirers, who eye ephemeral beauty with a stinging lacquer of depleting life, colluding their vision with a bagful of clouded vignettes stroking the air that arises after all is consumed and lost. Visiting Japan in 1935, I met Kawabata-san. He whispered in my drifter ears that he wished to nestle a story under my frosty silhouette. I cast a doubtful glance at him and asked: ‘Are you sure? I am no spring and I am no sun. In my lap, tears appear more tenacious than smiles. And in my heart, I imprison love stories that untangle into laborious passion, reverberating in their incomplete destinies of intertwined desires but scattered existences. Your decision to drop your child in my tutelage may mar its chances of gaining an empathetic visitor.’ But he ran his hand on my granular head and said: ‘Be assured; wasted love is still love, after all.’ I eventually agreed to take his characters in my country. So came, Shimamura and Komako, Yoko and Yukio. You don’t need to know who they are since all lovers in my country appear the same. And this Japan was still under the wreck of unequal rights of labour and dignity. But if you insist, I will oblige. Shimamura was groping for new vistas after a regular life had clutched him tight and Komako was a young geisha who equated new horizons to the skyline that inebriated my edges. When I saw them the first time, they were well-equipped to escape my mirthful sorrow. Shimamura was indulgent without emotion and Komako was wishful without goals. But alas! I am such a wretched stage; people step on me and forget the rest. I kept telling them I am the soft soil that sinks with repeated stamping but the duo, perplexed under the hypnotic rhythm of my robust sheets, dripping body and glistening air paid no heed to my cries. Intoxicated, they spent nights under my shadows and burnt lamps to spring reflections in my eyes; they held their rage and admiration under the chilling blanket I sent their way; they fought their jealousies when I subdued to let the sun cast a scarlet veil on Yoko, the lovely girl who never got bewitched under my spell and they darted viscous glances through my flakes at each pondering pause, rippled from Yukio’s disintegration. Both returned at my every appearance like faithful regulars but the unfulfilled rooms of their lives refused to open to a common hall. Whether other people tricked them into acts they did not intend to commit? I am afraid not. I suspect when I melt, I steal a part of those who hold me in their eyes; and at each return, I bind the stolen things in threads of melancholy despite my intention to dye them in colors of happiness. I can’t help it; my whiteness, under nature’s exponents of aggravation, assimilates all spunk and disperses a reeling blankness unmatched by any buoyant avalanche.But Kawabata-san was a mature man; for when he placed his characters in my world, he also slipped many lyrical skates bearing the mark of mono no aware, handing a robust sailing to his creations and effectively annulling the threats posed by the steep boulders of unrequited love, unfathomable concern, unstoppable heartbeats and unmanageable bonds, compounded further under the burden of my heavy, stoic breathing. He won my heart by comprehending the little corners of my country with a sagacity comparable to someone born in my womb and chiseled them gently to accentuate their hidden beauties. So, the next time someone alights from a rickety train on a faint evening into a land bearing my stamp for as far as the eyes go, he will extend his arms in anticipation of an embrace that will not congeal his thoughts but would set them in riveting motion, softly swaying them in the gust of impermanent realities and navigating them into the warm kotatsu of permanent memoirs.
—Seemita
Let it be known that this is a terrible translation. I am convinced that I would have enjoyed this book ten times as much if someone other than Edward Seidensticker had bothered to translate it. My reasoning? Kawabata's Palm-of-the-Hand Stories is one best collections of short stories I have ever read. In the back of that book is "Gleanings from Snow Country," the last work Kawabata wrote before he died. It is a condensation of the novel in question. Remarkably, it is not even a rewriting but rather a series of excerpts from the book, reprinted with exact fidelity; Kawabata thought he might "glean" the book for its most important moments but leave them unchanged.The only thing that has changed for us is the translator. Whereas J. Martin Holman, one of the two translators of the stories, creates passages of simple beauty, Seidensticker's writing is academic, dull, and rhythmically wrong. Who knows if he had an ear for Japanese--he did not have one for English.The novel, then, is difficult to see amongst the awkward prose. There are moments of beauty in there but they are tangled up in linguistic ugliness. I have hope that this is a wonderful novel, but I would recommend that no one read it in English until a better translation appears.
—Nick
Vẫn phong cách quen thuộc của Kawabata. Truyện nhạt,có lẽ nhất là với những ai quen đọc văn học Nhật qua các tiểu thuyết của Murakami. Thêm nữa là diễn biến tâm lý các nhân vật trong truyện của ông thường có phần khó hiểu.Tuy nhiên Kawabata lại là một nhà văn mình rất yêu thích và chưa có tác phẩm nào của ông làm mình thất vọng. Tác phẩm của ông luôn rất đẹp và vô cùng tinh tế. Một cái đẹp u buồn, hoài niệm. Một thế giới ảo ảnh, mơ hồ. Nói như vậy nghe thật sáo rỗng và giả tạo quá mức ( có phần giống mấy quyển sách " Để học tốt..." mà mình vẫn chép lia lịa mỗi lần phải soạn bài hồi phổ thông ), nhưng đáng buồn vì khả năng có hạn không biết diễn tả những cảm xúc trong lòng như thế nào.Nhân vật Shimamura trong truyện thường quan sát Yoko, Komako qua tấm gương soi, tấm kính trên cửa sổ toa tàu, hoặc trong ánh sáng hắt xuống của dải ngân hà, ánh trăng...những chi tiết có phần gợi nhớ người đọc tới truyện ngắn Thủy Nguyệt ?Khoảng 10 trang cuối, những đoạn viết về dải ngân hà và đám cháy thật sự tuyệt vời." Nhưng khi chàng muốn tiến lên về phía cái giọng nói gần như mê sảng đó, thì những người đàn ông đã đổ xô lại để ẵm bổng thân hình bất động của Yoko lên khỏi cánh tay nàng, những người đang chen chúc quanh người nàng đã xô đẩy chàng mạnh đến nỗi chàng suýt mất thăng bằng và lặng người đi. Chàng tiến lên một bước để đứng cho vững và trong khoảnh khắc ngả đầu về phía sau, dải Ngân hà chảy tuột vào người chàng trong một tiếng gầm thét dữ dội."
—Anh
