Pathway to Japanese Literature

I wish to leave entirely to you not only whether to publish this manuscript, but also the timing and means of its publication.

You probably know most of the people who appear in this manuscript.
However, even if I were to publish it, I would want you to refrain from adding an index.

I am now living in the unhappiest of happiness.
Yet strangely, I do not regret.
I truly feel sorry for those who have a bad husband, a bad child, and a bad parent such as myself.
Farewell.
I believe I did not consciously engage in self-justification within this manuscript.

Finally, I especially entrust this manuscript to you because I believe you likely know me better than anyone else.
(If you strip away this urbanite’s skin,) I beseech you to laugh at my foolishness within these pages.

June 20, Showa 2 (1927)

Akutagawa Ryūnosuke

Kume Masao

1. Era

That was the second floor of a certain bookstore.
The twenty-year-old he climbed the Western-style ladder attached to the bookshelf and searched for new books.
Maupassant, Baudelaire, Strindberg, Ibsen, Shaw, Tolstoy,...

Before long, dusk began to press in.
However, he continued intently reading the titles on the book spines.
What was lined up there was not so much books as fin de siècle itself.
Nietzsche, Verlaine, the Goncourt brothers, Dostoevsky, Hauptmann, Flaubert,……

He went on counting their names while battling the dimness.
But the books began of their own accord to sink into listless shadows.
He finally ran out of patience and attempted to descend the Western-style ladder.
Then a single unshaded electric light right above his head suddenly flared to life.
He stood on the ladder and looked down at the clerks and customers moving among the books.
They were strangely small.
Not only that, but they also looked utterly seedy.

“Life is less than a line of Baudelaire.”

He surveyed such people from atop the ladder for some time.…

2. Mother

The madmen were all dressed in identical mouse-gray garments.
The spacious room appeared all the more gloomy because of it.
One of them faced an organ and continued earnestly playing hymns.
At the same time, another one of them stood right in the middle of the room, hopping about more than dancing.

He was watching this scene together with the ruddy-faced doctor.
His mother, too, had been no different from them ten years ago.
Not at all—he actually detected his mother’s odor in theirs.

“Well, shall we go?”

The doctor walked ahead of him and proceeded along the corridor to a certain room.
In the corner of the room, several brains were submerged in a large glass jar filled with alcohol.
He discovered a faint white substance on one of the brains.
It was something almost like a small drop of egg white.
While conversing standing up with the doctor, he once again recalled his mother.

"The man who had this brain was an engineer at XX Electric Company, you know."
"He always believed himself to be a large, glossy black dynamo, you know."

He looked out the glass window to avoid the doctor's gaze. There was nothing beyond the brick wall embedded with shards of empty bottles. Yet it was faintly mottled with thin moss, giving it a whitish cast.

3. House

He lived in a second-floor room in the suburbs.
It was a strangely tilted second floor due to the soft ground.

His aunt often quarreled with him on this second floor. These quarrels were not without mediation from his adoptive parents. However, he felt more love for his aunt than for anyone else. His aunt, who had remained single all her life, was already nearing sixty even when he was twenty years old.

He often pondered in the second-floor room in the suburbs why those who love each other torment one another. While sensing some sort of eerie tilt in the second floor all the while.

4. Tokyo

The Sumida River hung heavily overcast.
He gazed at the cherry blossoms on Mukōjima through the window of a small chugging steamboat.
The blossoms in full bloom appeared to his eyes as a row of tattered rags.
Yet in those cherry blossoms—the cherry blossoms of Mukōjima since Edo times—he had come to find himself.

5. The Self

He sat facing a table in a certain café with his senior colleague, ceaselessly puffing on cigarettes.
He did not speak much.
But he listened attentively to his senior colleague’s words.

“Today I spent half the day riding in an automobile.”

“Did you have some business to attend to?”

His senior colleague, still resting his cheek on his hand, replied with utmost nonchalance.

“Oh, just because I felt like riding around.”

Those words liberated him into a world he did not know—a world of “the Self” near to the gods.
He felt some sort of pain.
But at the same time，he also felt joy.

The café was extremely small.
However, beneath the God of Bread’s forehead, a rubber tree planted in an ochre pot dangled its thick-fleshed leaves limply.

6. Illness

He spread open a large English dictionary in the ceaseless sea breeze and searched for words with his fingertips.

Talaria: Winged boots, or sandals.

Tale: Story.

Talipot: A palm tree native to the East Indies.
The trunk reaches heights from fifty to a hundred feet, and the leaves are used for umbrellas, fans, hats, and such.
It flowers once every seventy years.……

His imagination clearly depicted this palm flower.
Then he felt an unfamiliar itch in his throat and inadvertently dropped phlegm onto the dictionary.
Phlegm?
—But that was not phlegm.
He thought of his short life and once again imagined this palm flower.
The palm flower towering high beyond this distant sea.

7. Painting

He suddenly—it was indeed sudden—stood before a bookstore and, while looking through a Gauguin art book, came to understand what painting meant. Of course, that Gauguin art book was undoubtedly a photomechanical print. But even in the photomechanical print, he felt nature vividly rising to the surface.

His passion for this painting renewed his vision. Before long he had begun devoting ceaseless attention to the undulations of tree branches and the swell of women’s cheeks.

One rainy autumn evening at dusk, he happened to pass beneath a *guard* in the suburbs.

Under the embankment beyond the guard structure, a single horse-drawn cart had come to a stop.
As he passed through there, he began to sense that someone had traversed this road before.
Who?
――There was no need for him to ask himself that now.
Within the twenty-three-year-old him dwelled a Dutchman with a severed ear, who kept his sharp eyes fixed intently on this melancholy landscape painting while clenching a long pipe between his teeth.……

8. Spark

He walked on the asphalt, soaked by the rain.
The rain lashed down fiercely.
He caught the scent of a rubberized coat in the spray-filled air.

Then before his eyes, a single overhead wire sent out purple sparks.
He felt strangely stirred.
His coat pocket held the manuscript he was to publish in their coterie magazine.
As he walked through the rain, he looked back up at the overhead wire.

The wire still emitted sharp sparks.
Surveying his life, he found nothing he particularly desired.
But this purple spark—this fierce aerial spark alone—he would have seized even at the cost of his life.

9. Corpses

All the corpses had tags with wire attached hanging from their thumbs.
Those tags recorded names, ages, and such.
His friend bent down and, skillfully moving his scalpel, began to peel the skin from a corpse’s face.
Beneath the skin spread beautiful yellow fat.

He was gazing at the corpse.
It was undoubtedly necessary for him to complete a short story—one set against the backdrop of the Heian period.
But the corpse’s stench, akin to the smell of rotten apricots, was unpleasant.
His friend furrowed his brow and quietly continued moving the scalpel.

“Corpses have been in short supply lately.”

His friend said this.
Then he had somehow prepared his answer: I would kill people without any malice if corpses were in short supply.
But of course, his answer remained only in his heart.

10. Teacher

He was reading the teacher's book under a large oak tree.
The oak tree stood motionless in the autumn sunlight, not a single leaf stirring.
Somewhere in the distant sky hung a scale with glass plates hanging down, maintaining perfect equilibrium.—He felt this scene as he read the teacher's book.……

Eleven. Dawn

Night gradually brightened into dawn. Before he knew it, he was surveying a broad market at a street corner. The people and vehicles gathered there all began taking on a rosy tint.

He lit a cigarette and quietly made his way into the market. Then a slender black dog suddenly lunged at him, barking. But he was not startled. Not only that—he even loved the dog.

At the market's center stood a single hackberry tree, its branches spreading in all directions. He stood at its base and looked up through the branches at the lofty sky. Directly above him in that sky, a single star was shining.

That was his twenty-fifth year—the third month since he had met the teacher.

Twelve. Naval Port

The interior of the submarine was dim.
He crouched within machinery enclosing him on all sides and peered through a small eyepiece.
Reflected in the eyepiece was the bright scenery of the naval port.
"You should be able to see Kongō over there as well."

A naval officer spoke to him in this manner.
While gazing at the small warship through the square lens, he suddenly recalled Dutch parsley for some reason.
The Dutch parsley that faintly scented the thirty-sen beef steak.

Thirteen. The Death of the Teacher

He walked along the platform of a certain new station in the wind following the rain.
The sky was still dim.
On the other side of the platform, three or four railway workers swung their pickaxes up and down in unison while singing something in high voices.

The post-rain wind tore through the workers' song and his emotions.
He felt a pain close to joy without lighting his cigarette.
He kept the "SENSEIKITOKU" telegram stuffed into his coat pocket.
……

From beyond the shadow of Matsuyama there, the 6:00 a.m. upbound train began winding its way toward him, trailing thin smoke.

14. Marriage

The day after their wedding, he scolded his wife: "We can't afford to waste money every single day." However, that scolding was less his own and more his aunt's "Say it" rebuke. His wife apologized not only to him but also to his aunt. She remained before the yellow narcissus pot she had bought for him.......

15. They

They lived peacefully.
Beneath the spreading shade of large banana leaves.
For their house was located in a coastal town a full hour by train from Tokyo.

Sixteen. Pillow

He was reading a book by Anatole France, using skepticism scented with rose leaves as his pillow.
But he never noticed that even within that pillow lay a centaur.

17. Butterfly

A single butterfly fluttered in the wind thick with the scent of algae.
He felt, for just an instant, the touch of the butterfly's wing upon his dry lips.
But the powdery residue from its wings that had brushed against his lips still glimmered there years later.

Eighteen. Moon

He encountered her by chance on the stairs of a certain hotel.
Her face seemed bathed in moonlight even in such daylight.
He watched her walk away—(they were complete strangers)—and felt a loneliness he had never known before.……

Nineteen. Artificial Wings

He moved on from Anatole France to the eighteenth-century philosophers.
But he did not approach Rousseau.
Perhaps it was because one aspect of himself—a side prone to being driven by passion—resembled Rousseau too closely.
He moved toward another aspect of himself—the philosopher of *Candide*, who was close to that aspect rich in cold intellect.

Life held not the slightest brightness for him at twenty-nine.
But Voltaire supplied artificial wings to him in such a state.

He spread these artificial wings and effortlessly soared into the sky. At the same time, the joys and sorrows of life bathed in reason's light sank away below him. He scattered irony and smiles upon the shabby towns beneath as he ascended straight through the unobstructed air toward the sun—just as he had forgotten that ancient Greek who, his artificial wings burned by the sun’s rays, ultimately fell into the sea and died.…

Twenty. Mechanism

The couple came to live in the same house as his adoptive parents.
This was because he had joined a certain newspaper company.
He had relied on a single contract written on yellow paper.
But when he later examined that contract, it turned out the newspaper company bore no obligations while he alone shouldered all duties.

21. Madman's Daughter

Two rickshaws made their way along a deserted country road beneath cloudy skies. That the road faced the sea was evident even from the sea breeze blowing in. He, riding in the rear rickshaw, wondered at his own complete lack of interest in this *rendezvous* while pondering what exactly had led him there. It was definitely not love. If it wasn’t love—then he had no choice but to think, *At any rate, we are equals*, to avoid confronting this answer.

The one riding in the front rickshaw was a madman’s daughter.
Moreover, her younger sister had killed herself out of jealousy.

"There was nothing more to be done."

He had already come to feel hatred toward this Madman’s Daughter—toward her with her overpoweringly animalistic instincts.

The two rickshaws passed by the briny-smelling cemetery.
Within the brushwood fence studded with oyster shells, several stone monuments stood blackened.
He gazed at the faintly glimmering sea beyond those stone monuments and suddenly began to despise her husband—the husband who failed to hold her heart.…

22. A Painter

It was an illustration from a certain magazine.
But the ink painting of a single rooster showed remarkable individuality.
He asked a certain friend about this painter.

About a week later, this painter visited him.
That was a particularly remarkable event in his entire life.
He discovered a poem unknown to anyone within this painter.
Not only that—he discovered his own soul that even he himself had not known.

On a certain chilly autumn evening, he suddenly remembered this painter upon seeing a single stalk of sorghum.
The tall sorghum, its coarse leaves trembling, exposed nerve-like slender roots atop the mounded earth.
It was, of course, no different from his fragile self-portrait.
But such discoveries only served to deepen his melancholy.

It was too late.
But when the time came…

Twenty-three. Her

In front of a certain square, dusk was approaching.
He walked through the square with a slightly feverish body.
Several large buildings had their window lights sparkling in a faintly silver-clear sky.

He stopped at the roadside and decided to wait for her arrival. About five minutes later, she approached him with a somewhat haggard air. But upon seeing his face, she said, "I'm tired," and smiled faintly. They walked through the dimly lit square side by side. This was their first time doing so. He felt ready to abandon anything if it meant being with her.

After entering their automobile, she gazed intently at his face and asked, "You won't regret this?" He answered firmly, "I won't regret it." She pressed his hand and added, "Though I won't regret it either." Her face retained its moonlit quality even in this moment.

Twenty-four. Childbirth

He stood by the sliding door, looking down at a midwife in white surgical attire washing the infant. Each time the soap stung its eyes, the infant repeated a pitiful grimace. Moreover, it kept crying in a shrill voice. While detecting an odor from the infant reminiscent of a mouse pup, he found himself compelled to dwell on this thought—"Why was this creature even born? Into this world brimming with earthly suffering. And why must it bear the fate of having someone like me as its father?"

Moreover, that was the first son his wife had given birth to.

25. Strindberg

He stood at the room's entrance, gazing at several somewhat grubby Chinese people playing mahjong under moonlit pomegranate blossoms. Then he turned back into the room and began reading *Confessions of a Fool* beneath a short lamp. But before he'd even read two pages, he let out a bitter smile—Strindberg too had written fabrications not so different from his own in letters to a countess who was also his lover.……

26. Antiquity

The faded Buddhas, celestial beings, horses, and lotus flowers almost overwhelmed him.
He gazed up at them, having forgotten everything.
Even his own good fortune in having escaped the Madman’s Daughter’s grasp.
……

27. Spartan-Style Training

He was walking through a backstreet with his friend when a hooded rickshaw approached head-on from straight ahead. To his surprise, the woman from last night rode atop it. Her face seemed bathed in moonlight even in broad daylight. Of course, they exchanged no greetings before his friend.

"She's quite a beauty," remarked his friend.

While gazing at the spring-clad mountain at the thoroughfare's end, he answered without hesitation:

"Yes, indeed a remarkable beauty."

"Yes, quite a beauty indeed."

Twenty-eight. Murder

The country road carried the stench of cow dung through sunlight.
He wiped his sweat while climbing the steep uphill path.
Along both sides of the road, ripe wheat gave off a fragrant aroma.

“Kill… kill…”

He was unconsciously repeating such words under his breath.
Whom?
——That was clear to him.
He was recalling a servile-looking man with a crew cut.

Then beyond the yellowed wheat, a single Roman Catholic cathedral had appeared with its domed roof before he knew it.……

Twenty-nine. Form

It was an iron sake flask.
He had once been taught the beauty of 'form' by this iron flask with its threaded lid.

Thirty. Rain

He lay on the large bed talking with her about various things. Outside the bedroom window rain was falling. The beach hibiscus flowers seemed fated to rot away in this rain. Her face still appeared bathed in moonlight. Yet conversing with her was not without its tedium for him. Remaining prone, he quietly lit a cigarette and recalled that seven years had now passed since he began sharing his days with her.

“Am I in love with this woman?”

He posed this question to himself.
This answer came as a surprise even to himself—to that self which had been watching over him all along.

“I still love.”

31. Great Earthquake

It bore some resemblance to the scent of overripe apricots.
He walked through the scorched ruins and faintly detected this odor; he even found himself thinking that the stench of corpses rotting under the blazing sun wasn’t as bad as one might expect.
But when he stood before the pool piled with corpses, he discovered that even the word “gruesome” was no sensory exaggeration.
What particularly moved him was the corpse of a twelve or thirteen-year-old child.
He gazed at this corpse and felt something akin to envy.
“Those beloved by the gods die young”—he recalled such words.
Both his sister and his half-brother had their houses burned down.
However, his sister’s husband was on probation for committing perjury.……

“It would be good if everyone died.”

He stood amidst the scorched ruins, unable to keep from earnestly thinking this.

32. Quarrel

He grappled in a fight with his half-brother. His younger brother was undoubtedly prone to receiving oppression because of him. At the same time, he too had undoubtedly lost his freedom because of his younger brother. His relatives kept telling his younger brother, "Get used to him." However, for him, that was no different from being bound hand and foot. They continued grappling with each other until finally tumbling onto the veranda. In the garden beyond the veranda stood a single crape myrtle tree—he still remembered it—its blossoms glowing crimson beneath rain-laden skies.

Thirty-three. Hero

He gazed up at a high mountain from the window of Voltaire's house one day.
On the glacier-hung mountain, not even the shadow of a vulture was visible.
Yet a short Russian man kept climbing the mountain path alone with tenacity.

After night fell at Voltaire’s house as well, he would write such tendentious poems under the bright lamp.
He recalled the figure of the Russian who had climbed that mountain path.
...

――You who kept the Ten Commandments more than anyone else
You who broke the Ten Commandments more than anyone else.
You who loved the people more than anyone else
You who despised the people more than anyone else.
You who burned with ideals more than anyone else
You who knew reality more than anyone else.
You are what our Orient gave birth to―
You are an electric locomotive that gives off the scent of plants and flowers.
――

34. Color

He at thirty had come to love a certain vacant lot without realizing it.
There was nothing but moss growing over scattered fragments of bricks and roof tiles.
But to his eyes, it was no different from a Cézanne landscape painting.
He suddenly recalled his passion from seven or eight years prior.
At the same time, he discovered that seven or eight years prior, he had known nothing of color.

35. Clown Puppet

He intended to live so fiercely that he would have no regrets whenever death might come.
But he still continued leading a life of excessive deference toward his adoptive parents and aunt.
That created both light and shadow in his life.
He saw a clown puppet standing in a tailor’s shop and considered how close he himself was to being a clown puppet.
But the self outside his consciousness—or rather, his second self—somehow embedded such feelings into a certain short story.

36. Weariness

He walked through a field of silver grass with a certain university student.

“Do you still harbor such vigorous desires for life?”
“Yes—but even you…”
“But I don’t have it.
Though I do have a creative drive.”

That was his true feeling.
He had actually lost interest in life without realizing it.

“But a creative drive is still a form of life desire, wouldn’t you say?”

He gave no answer.
The field of silver grass at some point clearly revealed a volcano atop its red ears.
He felt something close to envy toward this volcano.
But even he himself did not understand why.…

37. Passerby

He encountered a woman who could match him in intellectual prowess. Yet by writing lyric poems like "Passerby," he narrowly escaped this crisis. It left him with an aching sensation—like glittering snow frozen to a tree trunk being shaken loose.

Of a sedge hat dancing in wind's embrace,
What might yet fall upon this path?
Why should my name be held dear?
Yours alone deserves that craft.

38. Revenge

It was a certain hotel veranda nestled among budding trees.
While painting there, he let a boy play.
The boy was the only son of the Madman's Daughter with whom he had severed ties seven years ago.

The Madman’s Daughter lit a cigarette and watched them play.
He kept painting trains and airplanes in that oppressive mood.
The boy was fortunately not his child.
But being called “Uncle” by him pained him more than anything.

After the boy had gone off somewhere, the Madman’s Daughter spoke to him coquettishly while smoking a cigarette.

“Doesn’t that child resemble you at all?”

“He doesn’t.
In the first place…”

“But there’s also such a thing as ‘prenatal education,’ you know.”

He averted his eyes in silence.
Yet deep in his heart, he wasn’t without even a cruel desire to strangle her.……

39. Mirror

He was talking with his friend in a corner of the Katsufē Café.
His friend ate a baked apple and talked about things like the recent cold weather.
He suddenly sensed a contradiction in this conversation.

“You’re still single, right?”

“No, I’m getting married next month.”

He involuntarily fell silent.
The mirror embedded in Katsufē’s wall reflected countless selves of him.
Icy coldness, as though threatening something.
……

40. Q&A

“Why do you attack modern social systems?”

“Because I see the evils capitalism has produced.”

“Evils? I thought you didn’t acknowledge any distinction between good and evil.”

“Then what about your life?”

He had this exchange with the angel.
However, with an angel wearing a silk hat unashamed by anyone.……

41. Illness

He was assailed by insomnia.
Not only that, but physical strength also began to decline.
Several doctors each offered a few diagnoses for his illness.
—Hyperchlorhydria, gastric atony, dry pleurisy, neurasthenia, chronic conjunctivitis, brain fatigue,…

However, he himself knew the source of his illness.
It was a feeling that made him ashamed of himself and afraid of them.
Them—the society he despised!

On a certain snow-clouded afternoon, he sat in a corner of the Katsufē Café with a lit cigar between his teeth, listening to music flowing from the phonograph across the room.
It was music that seeped strangely into his very being.
He waited for the music to end, then resolved to approach the phonograph and examine its record label.

Magic Flute——Mozart

He understood in an instant.
Mozart too had suffered for breaking the Ten Commandments—there was no mistaking that.
But surely not like him—… He hung his head and quietly returned to his table.

42. The Laughter of the Gods

Thirty-five years old, he was walking through a pine forest bathed in spring sunlight.
While recalling the words he himself had written two or three years earlier: "The gods, unfortunately, cannot commit suicide like us."…

43. Night

Night pressed in once more.
The storm-tossed sea ceaselessly threw up spray in the dim light.
Under such a sky, he entered his second marriage with his wife.
This brought them joy.
Yet equally it brought suffering.
Their three children watched the distant lightning alongside them.
His wife held one child and seemed to be stifling tears.

"Do you see that ship over there?"

"Yes."

"A ship with both masts broken."

44. Death

Taking advantage of being alone in bed, he tried to hang himself by looping his sash over the window lattice.
But when he put his neck into the sash, he suddenly began to fear death.
It was not at all because he feared the pain of death's moment.
The second time, he took a pocket watch and attempted to time his hanging.
After a moment of suffering, everything began to blur.
If only he could pass through that point once, he would have certainly entered death.
He examined the watch's hands and discovered that the duration of his suffering had been about one minute and twenty-some seconds.
Outside the window lattice, it was pitch dark.
But within that darkness, the harsh crow of a rooster could also be heard.

45. Divan

Divan attempted once more to impart new strength to his heart.
It was an "Oriental Goethe" he had never known.
It was.
He saw Goethe standing composedly beyond all good and evil and felt an envy bordering on despair.
In his eyes, the poet Goethe was greater than the poet Christ.
In the heart of this poet, even Arabian roses bloomed beyond the Acropolis and Golgotha.
If he had possessed even a modicum of power to follow in this poet’s footsteps—after finishing the Divan and waiting for that terrible emotion to subside—he could not help but feel profound contempt for himself, born a eunuch of life.

46. Falsehood

The suicide of his sister's husband suddenly crushed him.
This time, he also had to look after his sister’s household.
His future, at least to him, was as dim as twilight.
He continued reading various books as usual while feeling something akin to a sneer at his spiritual bankruptcy—(he was fully aware of all his vices and weaknesses).
However, even Rousseau’s Confessions was filled with heroic falsehoods.
When it came to Shinsei in particular—he had never encountered a hypocrite as cunning as the protagonist of Shinsei.
Yet François Villon alone seeped into the depths of his heart.
He discovered "the beautiful bull" in several of the poems.

The figure of Villon awaiting execution by hanging even appeared in his dreams.
He tried time and again to sink to the depths of life like Villon.
But his circumstances and physical energy did not permit such a thing.
He gradually declined.
Just like the standing tree Swift had once seen, withering from the top down.…

47. Playing with Fire

She had a radiant face.
It was exactly like the morning sun’s light shining upon thin ice.
He held goodwill toward her.
However, he felt no romantic love.
Not only that, but he had not laid a single finger on her body.

“I hear you wish to die.”

“Yes—no, rather than wanting to die, I’ve grown weary of living.”

From this exchange, they promised to die together.

“A Platonic Suicide, then.”

“Double Platonic Suicide.”

He could not help but find his own composure strange.

48. Death

He did not die with her.
That he still had not touched her body with a single finger gave him a certain satisfaction.
She sometimes spoke with him as if nothing had happened.
Not only did she hand him a vial of cyanide she had been carrying, but she also said, “With this, we’ll both feel stronger, won’t we?”

It had indeed strengthened his heart without fail.
He sat alone on a rattan chair, gazing at the young leaves of the sawtooth oak, and could not help but contemplate the peace that death would grant him.

49. Stuffed Swan

He mustered his last strength and attempted to write his autobiography.
However, that proved unexpectedly difficult for him himself.
That was because his self-respect, skepticism, and calculations of gain and loss still remained.
He could not help but despise such a self.
But on another level, he couldn’t help but think: If you strip away anyone’s outer layer, they’re all the same.
The title *Poetry and Truth* often seemed to him like the name of all autobiographies.
Moreover, he clearly understood that no one was necessarily moved by literary works.
The things his works appealed to could not possibly lie outside those people close to him who had lived lives similar to his own.—Such a thought too was at work within him.
For that reason, he decided to try writing his *Poetry and Truth* concisely.

After he finished writing *A Fool’s Life*, he happened to find a stuffed swan in an antique shop.
It stood with its neck raised, though even its yellowed feathers were eaten by insects.
He reflected on his life and felt tears and a sneer welling up within him.
What lay before him was only madness or suicide.
He walked all alone along the twilight street and resolved to await the fate that would slowly come to destroy him.

50. Captive

One of his friends went mad.
He had always felt a particular closeness to this friend.
This was because he understood this friend’s loneliness—the solitude beneath the buoyant mask—more acutely than anyone else could.
After the friend’s descent into madness, he visited him two or three times.

“You and I are possessed by demons, aren’t we?”
“Those fin-de-siècle devils.”

This friend had whispered such things to him, yet it was said that two or three days later, on his way to a hot spring inn, he had even eaten rose petals.
After the friend’s hospitalization, he remembered the terracotta bust he had once given him.
It was a bust of the author of *The Inspector General*, whom his friend had cherished.
Thinking of how Gogol too had died mad, he could not help but sense some force governing them all.

After being utterly exhausted, he suddenly read Radiguet’s dying words and once again felt the laughter of the gods.
It was the words: “God’s privates have come to seize themselves.”
He tried to fight his superstitions and his sentimentalism.
However, no matter what struggle he undertook, it was physically impossible for him.
“The fin-de-siècle demons” were indeed tormenting him without fail.
He felt envious of medieval people who made God their strength.
However, to believe in God—to believe in God’s love—was ultimately impossible for him.
Even Cocteau believed in God!

51. Defeat

His hand holding the pen began to tremble.
Not only that, but drool even began to trickle down.
His mind was never clear except after taking 0.8 grams of Veronal.
Moreover, this clarity lasted barely half an hour or an hour.
He lived a day-to-day existence in dim twilight.
It was as if he used a slender sword, its blade chipped away, as a cane.

(June, Showa 2 [1927], Posthumous Manuscript)