Customer Reviews:
 Beauty feeds the soul, but not the body April 5, 2006
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
"And Then" ("Sore Kara") is a perfectly beautiful novel. Soseki always writes with an elegant clarity, tackling complex emotions and situations that creep up just like life. Nothing seems forced or unreal.
The plot reminds me of a quote I heard once. "I was a soldier so that my children could be merchants, and their children could be artists." The main character, Daisuke, is a dilettante, an appreciator of life's fineries who has never turned his hand towards anything seriously in his life. His father was a famous soldier during the Russo-Sino war, and his older brother is successful in business, and neither of them can understand this luxury object of a younger sibling that they both maintain financially. Seeking to find some value in him, his family attempts to pressure him into an advantageous marriage, which Daisuke's refinements does not permit. Love, however, will destroy everything.
The story floats along at Daisuke's pace, with nothing hurried or in crisis. Inside of this veneer are heavy issues of family obligation, the distaste of working for food as opposed to working for pure artistry, and most of all the undeniability of love, something that none of us can choose for ourselves.
Like all of Soseki's novels, "And Then" lingers long after the last page is turned, forcing us to evaluate our own lives and wonder what we would do in similar circumstances. How much of our own dreams have been sacrificed for necessities, and what does it mean to be human besides eating, sleeping and making more humans?
"These sunless afternoons I can't find myself." March 17, 2005
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
And Then, a novel by Natsume Soseki, opens with an image of extreme isolation: Daisuke, the protagonist, has woken up, and stares blankly at the ceiling with his hand on his chest, feeling his heart beat. He belongs to a wealthy family, has a cultivated aesthetic taste, is well-read, knows multiple languages, and has graduated from a prestigious university, at a time in Japan's history when universities were so new that the government had to hire Western expatriates to teach in them. It seems that Daisuke could get anything he wanted from life. Surely he was ambitious in his university days; it's difficult to imagine how a talented, educated, proud young man couldn't see himself as headed for greatness. But, by the time the book begins, Daisuke lives in seclusion, without an occupation, continuing to depend upon his rich father. He is about thirty years old.
The novel poses the following question: How could a man who showed all the promise in the world ultimately come to naught?
In his university days, Daisuke had two friends, who also had great plans for the future. But, when the thirty-year-old Daisuke meets them again, he learns that their hopes fell short of their mark. One of them, Hiraoka, sought to forge a brilliant career in Japan's civil service system, but fell into conflict with his superiors, mismanaged the money entrusted to him, and was fired. Daisuke's other friend, Terao, intended to become a world-renowned novelist, but failed to find a sponsor, and found himself having to scrounge, day by day, for one-time deals writing articles for cheap rags, or translating documents from English, in order to survive. Both men are now consumed with the fear of dying in poverty.
Daisuke has a strong sense of dignity, emerging from his refined aesthetic sensibilities. To him, such fear is degrading; his idleness becomes the only way to preserve his clarity of thought. Consequently, his reluctance to enter the "world of men" is confirmed in his mind, widening the gulf between him and his former friends, who view him as lazy and sheltered. When Daisuke writes to an acquaintance about a certain book he had sent, the acquaintance politely thanks him for the gift, but says, with regret, that he no longer has time to read. Soseki writes, "As he put the letter back in the envelope, Daisuke felt keenly the fact that this old friend, with whom he once shared the same inclinations, was now playing a different tune, governed by thoughts and actions that were nearly the precise opposite of those of the past."
Daisuke is adrift without ties to history. Unlike his father, he has no attachment whatsoever to traditional Japanese society; his education has given him the knowledge that the world is too vast to be confined to the boundaries delineated by tradition. Furthermore, Daisuke cannot help but notice that his father is motivated by selfish, ulterior motives as much as by any sense of obligation to tradition. Unlike his friends, however, Daisuke also cannot form a connection to modern society, which views education as a means to advancement in a bureaucratic order. He has no roots anywhere; one might say that he remains standing still at a crossroads after all other passersby have left. When Daisuke considers the occupations that he might be qualified for, were he to look for a job, he concludes that he would be incapable of doing anything other than begging on the street.
Daisuke's peace of mind is dependent on such artificial circumstances that it essentially rests on the head of a pin, where the slightest vibration will send it tumbling down. The more intent he becomes on continuing to be a detached observer, the more difficult it is for him to do so. His family has long given up hope that he will do anything with himself, and is willing to support him for the rest of his life, but demands in return that he get married, and threatens to disown him if he doesn't comply. Daisuke prefers to deliberately take a self-destructive path by categorically rejecting his family's demands and falling in love with Hiraoka's wife Michiyo.
Of all Japanese writers, Soseki, the father of contemporary Japanese literature, is the most inscrutable. His works cannot be called "beautiful" in the same way Kawabata's works can; "precise" is a more appropriate adjective. Kawabata's books overflow with beautiful, painfully fragile imagery of nature, glass, fabric, arranging these things in a way that creates a mood of deep melancholy. Soseki, however, is concerned above all with his characters' thoughts, which he faithfully records with painstaking levels of detail. They are not told in interior monologue, or any other such device, but rather conveyed straightforwardly in the third person. The book is absorbed in Daisuke's situation, yet simultaneously detached from it. One may find this style of writing to be pedantic, even artificial, but it enables Soseki to describe emotional truths that are complicated to the point of abstraction.
Soseki's writing is not without flourishes. Until the very end, Daisuke regards his circumstances with a charmingly carefree air, and is witty in conversations with his family, which makes him quite likable. Soseki also uses colours to symbolize his themes. There is a recurring image of white lilies, perhaps representing an ideal of frail beauty that, as it turns out, is impossible to attain, and the novel's ending is painted in bright, fiery red, carrying an air of beautiful, tragic finality, conveyed in sharp, concise language.
And Then is the greatest work by Japan's greatest novelist. Like all of Soseki's works, it moves very slowly. There is no real action in it, and yet, when it ends, one feels that a great upheaval has occurred. This is not a book to read when one is living a peaceful, wholesome life; however, in times of personal crisis, when one is driven to sleepless self-analysis, there is no book more relevant than this one.
And Then December 25, 2000
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
Let me start off by saying that I cannot do this novel sufficient justice. The words I have put down are those of a fan. Soseki is regarded most highly by literary critics, in as many ciruits as they run, and to this I can only toss in my own small verbal confetti. For more adroid renderings, please see Donald Keane, Edward Seidenstiker, and Norma Moore Field.Of all modern Japanese writers, Soseki is one of my three most favorites. Of his books, I have read Kokoro, The Three Cornered World, Grass by the Wayside, Light and Darkness, and, And Then. Of these, And Then, is by far my most favorite. I probably love it for different reasons than most. Whenever I begin re-reading it (I have read it four times now), it is initially for the feeling of being transported into Daisuke's beautiful, if fragile world, where he set against a cast of lovable if predictable characters. His lazy houseboy, Kodono ("is that right, Sensei?"), his niece, Niu ("I'm warning you, you'd better watch out") who changes her hair ribbon several times daily, his sister in law with her love of Western music and concern for Deisuke's future and keeping the peace with Father, and so on. But as the novel evolves, the imagery takes on stronger substance, while retaining the light touch of a master. Of the lighter: the time when Daisuke and Kadono strip down to their waists and toss water around in the garden; when Daisuke fills a bowl with water and floats white lillies to offset a pounding headache, how he sets off to take a trip (in an attempt to avoid facing the pressure from his family to choose a bride) and never quite goes anywhere, and his foolish mishandling of his personal affairs. Daisuke sees no point in trying to overcome his enui and take a stand of any kind, nor to try and resolve a series of issues that offer no simple resolution. Daisuke is a man with his feet planted in neither the past nor the future, and as the story comes to crisis, he loses his already delicate equilibrium, and plunges into a near mad state, where, since he cannot conceive of hurting anyone else, he runs headlong into trouble. It is unfortunate that my copy gives no credit to the translator, for the prose is of exceedingly high calibre. I highly recommend this book.
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