Kenzaburō Ōe

Kenzaburō Ōe () is a writer Japan board born the January 31st 1935, prize winner of the Nobel Prize of literature. This last devoted that “which, with a great poetic force creates an imaginary world where the life and the myth condense to form a diverting table of the delicate current human situation. ”

Biography

It was born and grew in a village of the island of Shikoku. As of the elementary school it was interested in the foreign cultures (through the literature), discovering thanks to his mother the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn of Mark Twain, initially in a Japanese translation which it by heart learned before discovering the text in original version at the time of the American occupation. Its opening was reinforced by the knowledge of the work of Kazuo Watanabe. At eighteen years, it leaves to study the French Littérature with the Université of Tōkyō. It is still student which it starts to write in 1957, strongly influenced by the contemporary literatures American Frenchwoman and, and in particular, those of Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, on which will carry its report of end of studies. He also studied the work of Louis-Ferdinand Céline which he recognizes as being one of his major influences.

The experiment of the war, birth of his/her handicapped son: Hikari in 1963 and several visits with Hiroshima forge its posture of writer definitively.

After having received the Nobel Prize of literature in 1994, Ōe announced that he would not write any more novels, while alleging that his/her son, type-setter, had from now on his own voice, and that he did not need thus more him to provide one via his work of fiction of them.

It was marked by the damage caused by the Nationalisme. Defender of the Democracy, it militates with other intellectuals so that the Japan does not call into question the article 9 of its constitution.

Its work

The work of Ōe, complex and dense, occupies a whole special place in the contemporary Japanese literature. The extreme originality of its style marks out a tormented, picturesque writing, rich in metaphors, seizing negligible perceptions of reality and contradictory flows of conscience in catch with affectivity, the human relations antagonistic and the policies power struggle. In Agwîî the monster of the clouds (1964), the writer evokes his autistic son who will become a recurring character in his works, well-known as of his faithful readers: Hikari (" lumière" in Japanese) is there generally a stellar symbol, a metaphysical figure comparable with the god sun of the Empire of raising. A long variation of topics of various origin (the sacrifice, the nation, death, time, the memory, nature, the Mystique) come to be interlaced in a more or less romantic way in a set of references to Dante, William Blake and Malcolm Lowry where the naturalism and mythology côtoient the literary theories specific to the author, its political and ecological considerations like its inclinations for the philosophy existentialist. The latter is expressed in the opening of the individual, very powerful subject, with the environment and the world then by the report/ratio, at the same time distant and close, of the creator-demiurge vis-a-vis his representations and to its work. The universe of the novelist is characterized by a seizure of autobiographical fragments mingled with a plentiful imagination, without equal to the Japan. The dream supplements there the reason, the history accompanies dimension there by the myth and the imaginary one underlines there, without never being opposed to it, the reality retranscribed in several opposite layers the ones with the others. Far from being occidentalized, provocative and to inflict an ill treatment with conventions of the literary language as much affirmed, the Japanese of Ōe, like that of Kawabata Yasunari, juxtaposes various registers stylistics in a language full and distanciée and constantly reflexive, like the east the English of Henry James or the French of Marcel Proust. Its texts, altogether, reconcile a romantic tradition realistic with a current close to the Symbolisme mallarméen.

Its most famous works are: Play of the century (1967), Flood extended until my death ( Kôzui wa waga tamashii nor oyobi , 1973), contemporary Play ( Dôjidai gêmu , 1979), the Women who listen to the tree of rain ( Reinstsuri O kiku onnatachi , 1982) and Lettres of the years of nostalgia (1989)

It was gratifié:

  • of the Akutagawa price, the highest Japanese literary reward, at the 23 years age,
  • Prix Europalia 1989 for the whole of its work,
  • of the Nobel Prize of literature in 1994,
  • of the Cultural Order of Merit Japanese in 1994 (refused),
  • of the title of Doctor Honoris Causa of INALCO (National institute of the languages and Eastern civilizations) in 2005.

See too

French books

  • funny of work (奇妙な仕事, Kimyō Na shigoto, 1957)
  • an animal to nourish (飼育, Shiiku, 1958)
  • Tear off the buds, shoot at the children (芽むしり仔撃ち, Memushiri kōchi, 1958)
  • Ainsi died the teenager politicized (政治少年死す, Seiji syōnen shisu, 1961)
  • Agwii, the monster of the clouds (空の怪物アグイー, Sora No kaibutsu Aguii, 1964)
  • Notes of Hiroshima (ヒロシマ ・ ノート, Hiroshima nōto, 1965) (tests)
  • a personal business (個人的な体験, Kojinteki Na taiken, 1965) (Romance)
  • Say to us how to survive our madness (われらの狂気を生き延びる道を教えよ, Warera No kyōki wo ikinobiru michi wo oshieyo, 1966) (new)
  • play of the century (万延元年のフットボール, Man' in gannen No futtobōru, 1967) (Romance)
  • play of the synchrony (同時代ゲーム, Dōjidai geimu, 1979)
  • Réveillez you, O young people people of the new age (新しい人よ、 眼ざめよ, Atarashii hito yo mezameyo, 1983) (new)
  • a quiet existence (静かな生活, Shizuka Na seikatsu, 1990) (Romance)
  • M/T and History of the wonders of the forest
  • Letters at the years of nostalgia
  • a family in the process of cure (account)
  • Me, of ambiguous Japan (あいまいな日本の私, Liked Na Nihon No watashi, 1995)

Reference

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