Six years later, Ryunosuke Akutagawa committed suicide by taking a lot of sleeping pills in his bedroom. The suicide notes for family and friends are neatly placed on the table. Among them, there is a suicide note telling his sons, which reads as follows:
In fact, these exhortations contain a lot of information. If you don't know about Ryunosuke Akutagawa's life experience, you will be confused about "not relying on your family" and "inevitably neurotic" mentioned in the suicide note, and you will also be puzzled by this writer who was highly hoped by Sosuke Natsume but committed suicide at 35.
What do you think of Ryunosuke Akutagawa as a "genius"? Is it the film Rashomon directed by Akira Kurosawa? In fact, in the Japanese literary world, there are not many people whose debut is the peak, and those who can have a great influence on future generations at a young age are even rarer. Around Akutagawa, there are a series of identities and roles. For example, he is the most famous disciple of Soseki Natsume, a literary opponent of Junichiro Tanizaki, a close friend of Kan Kikuchi, an idol after Osamu Dazai's death, and a key case of Kawabata Yasunari talking about suicide. Akutagawa's literary talent is extraordinary, and his works have had a great influence on the literary development of Japan and even the world. However, his writing style is completely different from other writers of the same period.
The first is the difference in position. 19 17 years, Japanese proletarian literature took root after the October Revolution, and Akutagawa began to create works reflecting real life. For example, Orange eulogizes innocent and lovely rural girls, General mocks Nogi Maresuke who started the war, Monkey criticizes Japanese militarism, and Hell Change exposes the disregard of power for human life. Even in 192 1 Shanghai, he always pays attention to people's living conditions and lashes out at the ugliness and evil of capitalism.
Secondly, the creative theme is different. Akutagawa was not optimistic about the popular "private novels" at that time. He thinks it is absurd for a writer to "take himself as the protagonist and shamelessly write his private affairs to others". His approach is to extract the story frame from his familiar classics, history, myths and religious legends, and combine his own experience of insight into human nature to create exquisite works full of rhythm, story and philosophy. Different themes made Akutagawa devote all his time and energy to observing people's lives, which was a very maverick practice at that time.
Finally, there are different creative techniques. Anyone familiar with his works knows that Akutagawa is not too sympathetic or strongly negative about some characters when describing them. His detached attitude and cold style often make his works reveal pessimistic and skeptical views, and this kind of thinking is the real feeling brought to Akutagawa by the chaotic social outlook.
If you say he is a favored son of heaven, fine! He did become famous at a young age, but he also suffered from hereditary mental illness; If you say that he was adopted at birth with the help of noble people, he has always been the "adopted son" of Akutagawa family, and his unique creative style comes from Akutagawa's complicated and absurd growth experience. Today, we will talk about the life of Ryunosuke Akutagawa.
1892, a baby boy, Shinhara Minzo, was born in the home of a milkman in Tokyo. Because the baby was born on this day of the year, it was named "Dragon Interface". Six months later, Ryunosuke's mother, Fukuko, suddenly became mentally ill, and then Ryunosuke was sent to his grandmother Akutagawa's house to be raised by his mother's brother Akutagawa Dojo. Who knows, even after leaving family of origin, it is said that Akutagawa, a teenager, will still have a slight neurotic performance, which is why he has been worried about whether he and his descendants will have psychotic symptoms in the future.
At that time, the Akutagawa family served as tea party officials in Edo City for generations and became a large local family very early. Under such a family style, the children of the gentry have been exposed to art, fine arts and literature since childhood, and floral art, tea ceremony, ancient books and operas are even more common. In such a home full of strong literati atmosphere, Akutagawa has an awkward identity-"adopted son". As the adopted son of Akutagawa family, he never dared to be willful at home, which also made him realize that he should strive to stand on his own feet and not rely on his family.
Due to his filial piety to his adoptive parents, he has been obedient since he was a child, achieved excellent results, and is familiar with various documents at home and abroad. As an adult, he entered Imperial University of Tokyo to study English literature. At the end of 19 15, he published Rashomon, and under the introduction of his classmate Lin Jiansan, he took Natsume as his teacher. Akutagawa was only 23 years old.
192 1 year, he went to China as an overseas observer, during which he fell ill and began to have symptoms such as neurasthenia, rash, stomach cramps, enteritis and tachycardia. At 1927, Akutagawa's sister's house was completely burned down, and her brother-in-law committed suicide by lying on the rails because he could not stand the suspicion of fire at home. After the death of my brother-in-law, my sister's usury became a burden to Ryunosuke Akutagawa, so he ran around, causing neurasthenia and insomnia to become more and more serious, and even began to have hallucinations. Lying in bed, he wrote:
In his last work, Gear, Akutagawa profoundly depicts the hero's dying mental state, including persecution paranoia, nervousness and hallucinations. Exhausted by mental breakdown and recurrent medical diseases, he finally committed suicide in the early morning of July 24th, 927/kloc-0.
In my mind, the most representative work of Akutagawa's life is Hell Change, which tells a bloody tragedy. The daughter of Liang Xiu, a bully painter in Horikawa, failed, so he framed Liang Xiu's father and daughter. He burned Liang Xiu's daughter alive by locking her in a sedan chair, so as to stimulate Liang Xiu to draw the most horrible painting in the world-The Screen of Hell. After this painting, Liang Xiu hanged himself. In this work, Akutagawa expresses two meanings, which not only exposes the ugliness of the powerful and the fisherman, but also depicts the great pressure he bears on the road of exploring beauty. The superb writing style, coupled with stories with strong artistry and impact, made Akutagawa's works a classic epitome of society at that time.
Akutagawa's death shocked the whole Japan. The literary world is extremely sad They believe that Akutagawa's death marks the end of a literary era. Miyamoto Kenji commented: "His literature is a concrete manifestation of gradually rising to self-denial. His nihilistic spirit has a certain degree of progressive significance in the development of class society. " Another critic, Huang Zhengren, said:
Today, a hundred years later, the world treats Akutagawa's works, and now his sentences have been widely circulated.