Biography
Japanese writer Kobo Abe was famous for metaphorical novels "Woman in Sands", "Box Man" and "Alien Face". The works of the author who was working in the second half of the twentieth century, discovered the Western reader a specific world of the literature of the rising sun. The Japanese texts cannot be called entertaining: they are addressed to connoisseurs of intellectual prose and raise the philosophical questions of the human being in the world, finding the meaning of the existence and understanding of themselves.Childhood and youth
The classic of Japanese literature was born in 1924 in the north of Tokyo, in the region of China. In his native language, the name of the writer sounds like kimifus, and Kobo is a pronunciation for Chinese way. Childhood Abe passed in the Middle Kingdom: In Mukden, the province of Manchuria, a boy has studied at school until 1940. The child's father was engaged in medicine at the university of this city. The Japanese culture of the young man truly began to join when he returned to Tokyo to graduate from Sage School. Then the graduate decides to go in the footsteps of the Father and get a profession of a doctor at the university.
It can be said that the guy grew in the multicultural space: the direct influence of China, where he lived, was complemented by the impact of world literature, the interest in which Kobo retained for life. The greatest impression was made by the Russian classic with her "damned questions" of Being and the search for the meaning of life. Critics have repeatedly noted the influence that Fedor Dostoevsky and Nikolai Gogol had their own on the work of the Japanese author.
Having studied at the university for 3 years, the young man returns to Manchuria and here in 1946 cares of father. There is a difficult period when the family remains without a breadwinner, nevertheless the future writer is restored to the university and receives a doctor's diploma in 1948. However, the specialty Kobo Abe does not work for any day. While still a student, the young man begins a creative biography, debuting the collection "anonymous poems."
Books
Having written the philosophical memories poems still in youth, the writer a little later turns to prose. And it is taken not for stories like most novice authors, but immediately for the novel. In 1947, Kobo ends the book "Clay walls" - the history of the hero, which is decided to break all connections with society, but in the process of the wanderer it is in captivity. Already here, a novice writer raises difficult questions about that there is genuine freedom and whether it is possible at all.
Abe's manuscript handed over to the teacher from Sages and the school, and he, being deeply impressed, contributed to the publication of the text in literary magazines. Later, the work will be published by a separate publication called "Pointer at the end of the road". Having received the first portion of fame, the young author enters into the creative association "Night", and in the 1950s creates its own - "Century".
The next book is a "wall", which includes several stories and the story "wall. Crime S. Karma ", awarded the prestigious literary Akutagava award. In this early text, writer's style features are already clearly shown: it is far from realism, his worlds are large metaphors to help comprehend the alienation of a person from society and the global loneliness of the person in the world. The hero of the "walls" will be deprived of the name and after that it becomes someone else surrounding, and then himself. In this transformation there is something resembling the "transformation" of Franz Kafa.
In the 1950s, Cobo Abe writes a story and plays, some of them become theatrical productions and films. For the works of the Japanese, a dozen filmmaker was supplied, and the adaptation of the director Hiroshi Tassigahara is considered the most bright. The director is taken for the novels "burned Map", "someone else's face", "Woman in Sands", the last work brings 2 nominations for Oscar.
The second novel of the writer was the "Fourth Ice Age", and with the appearance in 1962 "Women in the Sands" about Cobo Abe began to speak as a large writer with a world name. The hero of the book, against the will planted in a pit to save the village from falling asleep sand, trying to rebel against the system. Here, on the one hand, the protest against the state car, for which the personality is only a screw in the overall mechanism, on the other - the reluctance to bury his will in the routine of everyday life.
Submissivity to fate personifies the meek woman who becomes a neighbor of the character. It shows another way and another philosophy of life, which affects the evolution of the hero and on the decision that he accepts in the final. And in the string of the novel typical for the author the history of the disappearance, which is used by him and in subsequent works. Disappearance as a border guard, when you disappear for the usual world and appear in another - one of the main philosophical topics of creativity. The other becomes the confrontation of life and death.
Serving people are opposed to egoism and desire to assert in the text "Alien face", where the hero, hiding the worried skin, loses identity, then itself and turns into a monster. The novel opens the psychological trilogy, which also entered the "burned map" and "man-box". Cobo Abe characters live in a semi-infantastic world, which does not conflict with real, and coexists with it in parallel. The space of the allegory allows you to reveal the conflict, in which the personality is trying to overcome loneliness, without sacrificing individuality.
The penultimate creation of the writer is "a secret date" - it turned out in 1977. Completes the bibliography of the master Roman "entered into the ark." Japanese classic wrote everything with a dozen works, but most of them entered the treasury of world literature.
Personal life
About the personal life of the prose famous a little. The writer himself confessed that he feels a single and does not suffer from this, noting that all people themselves are only afraid to admit it. Perhaps so he had no close friends, wives and children. The theme of the loneliness and isolation of the person in the world became central in the work of the Japanese. Thus, by saying the quotation of Kobo Abe, "the literature reveals the author's face."The man occupied a clear civil position, becoming a member of the Communist Party of Japan in the 1950s, but with time disappointed. The writer made criticism for the entry of Soviet troops in Hungary in 1958 and in 1962 left the ranks of the Communists.
Cobo Abe organized an experimental theater that brings his name. The team existed for about 10 years and put the plays that the founder wrote. Truppes tours enjoyed success around the world, but in Japan, their creativity was recognized too avant-garde.
The magazine of the Japanese was not limited to the literature and the theater: he was fond of photography, classical music and even computers, becoming one of the first writers who have signed the works on the hardware text processor. An interesting fact - a man knew how to play a synthesizer and even wrote music to the tool for his own theater.
Death
Cobo Abe was impossible to be called a public person. Despite the writer glory and worldwide recognition, in recent years the author continued to lead a secluded life at the Hakone mountain resort. The man avoided journalists, and all sorts of foreign people, focusing on literary writings.
In 1992, the masters nominated for the Nobel Prize in the field of literature, but received a reward of the poet of Derek Walcott from the Caribbean Island of St. Lucia. In December of the same year, working on the wrist, Cobo Abe lost consciousness. A stroke happened to the prose, and he was taken to hospital with extensive hemorrhage. After returning from the hospital, the patient's condition began to deteriorate, and on January 22, 1993, a 68-year-old man stops the heart, which becomes the cause of death.
COBO ABE is considered the most "European" among Japanese contemporary writers. His creativity, on the one hand, is based on the hieroglyphic model of the world of Japan with its intricateness and symbolism, on the other, the legacy of Western philosophy and culture is harvested.
Quotes
"Indeed, labor helps a person to reconcile with running time, even when it runs aimlessly." "Not an iron gate, not a deaf wall, and a small eye in the door of the camera - this is what the most reminds a person about the captivity." "The desire to become a writer is the most Ordinary egoism: the desire to become a dice and thereby separate yourself from the rest of the puppets. "You can't do it to infinity to hide from the rain under a strangers."Bibliography
- 1947 - "Pointer at the end of the path"
- 1951 - "Wall"
- 1959 - "Fourth Ice Age"
- 1962 - "Woman in Sands"
- 1964 - "Alien face"
- 1967 - "just like a person"
- 1967 - "burned Map"
- 1973 - "Man-box"
- 1977 - "Secret Date"
- 1984 - "Entered the Ark"