#there's sometimes little to no distinction for me between the literary critique (bsd) and whatever literary critique (academic) i'm reading | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kaurwreck · 7 months ago

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I love preordering books because I forget about them until they arrive and once they arrive, I'm all at once surprised, charmed by my own forethought, and as excited as when I first noticed them enough to preorder them.

(Today's title: Beauty Matters: Modern Japanese Literature and the Question of Aesthetics (1890-1930) by Anri Yasuda, the chapters of which include (i) Natsume Soseki's Quest for "A Feeling of Beauty," (ii) Mori Ogai and the "Inner Flame" of Beauty, and (iii) Akutagawa Ryunosuke's Literary Anxietieis and the "Power to Remake.")

#bsd #bungou stray dogs #i should maybe just. have a modern japanese lit tag that i use regularly instead.#but (for now) i'm reading only modern japanese lit & history titles related to or for their proximity to bsd and the bsd relevant histories #so it's as much part of my bsd fandom engagement as anything bsd i post #which isn't to say they're not also separate works and i'm not also very invested in the irl people and their lives separately from bsd too #but focusing on the bsd authors has kept me from becoming overwhelmed and my affection for them began with bsd #and kafka asagiri's dialogue with their legacies #so while I don't tag bsd when i'm talking about only the authors or only the authors' works #there's sometimes little to no distinction for me between the literary critique (bsd) and whatever literary critique (academic) i'm reading #this isn't to say i conflate the characters with the people #or vice versa #but rather to say that i am also engaging in dialogues with the authors that are part of other more abstract conversations #at a conference hosted by asagiri and harukawa #convos which I am dangerously close to escalating by writing my own autobiographical fiction novel #framed within a metaconversation between the fictional author and her impressions of the dead authors #as filtered through time + geographical and cultural distance + translation + the inherently muddled natures of truth and confession #namely because i'm frequently haunted by akutagawa with whom I avoid speaking but to whom I can't bring myself to let go #despite the inherent violence in my presuming to know any amount of him at all #and sometimes because of it

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