Osamu Dazai was born into a landlord family in Aomori Prefecture, Japan, and his real name is Ma Xiuzhi. He got excellent grades in middle school and was determined to become a writer. In high school, he was hit hard by Ryunosuke Akutagawa's suicide and betrayed his family, so he was close to the left in thought. At the age of 2 1, Osamu Dazai entered the law department of the University of Tokyo, met the novelist Masuji Ibuse for the first time, regarded him as a lifelong teacher, and started the road of literary creation.
Judging from the artistry of literature, Osamu Dazai wrote with the theme of "the distress of life". Because most of his works are based on his own personal experience, his novels are defined as "shattered" and "private novels" in the history of literature, but they are called "rogue schools" in the literary trend of thought. The word "hooliganism" comes from the protagonist's declaration in Osamu Dazai's Pandora's Box: "I am a hooligan, resisting bondage".
Therefore, on the surface, the life and behavior of this group of writers are dissolute and decadent, but in fact, they get rid of the bondage and strive for freedom through this abnormal way. This school rose in the late 1930s, which was a period when Japan's political dictatorship and war of aggression were launched, and it was also a period when proletarian literature and neo-sensationalism suffered setbacks. This school of writers opposes naturalism and expresses the truth of people and literature through "drama", so it is also called "new drama school". As the standard-bearer of "Rogue School", Osamu Dazai's writing style not only has a great influence on the post-war school such as Taijun Takeda and the "third newcomer" such as Jixing Chunsuke, but also has a great influence on Osamu Dazai's works today.
Osamu Dazai is a prolific writer, and he left over 140 works for later generations. According to his writing style, it can be divided into early (65,438+0933-65,438+0937), middle (65,438+0938+0945) and late (65,438+0945-). 1933 The train, formerly known as Osamu Dazai, was published in the early stage, and the autobiographical novel Memories was published in the same year. The first collection of works, Old Age, contains more than 30 works in the early stage. As can be seen from the title of the anthology, although Osamu Dazai was in his youth during this period, the sun in his inner world had turned into a sunset. This is related to Osamu Dazai's unusually sensitive temperament.
Convinced that he was not born by his parents, he was born with the consciousness of "sin" such as "I was born in this world, which was originally a wrong beginning" and "sin was born at the time of birth". In order to cover up this consciousness, Taizai "please" people in a "pipeline" way. Most of the early works describe the psychology and behavior of vulnerable groups. In some works, the hero's suicide is also a "grooming" means for hooligans. In his three works, Flower of Daoism, God of Wild Talk and Beauty of Fiction, Osamu Dazai uses three unique themes: falsehood, evil and ugliness to set off the values of truth, goodness and beauty in the form of antithesis. This can also be regarded as the characteristic of theme expression in his early works.
Osamu Dazai's mid-term creation coincided with the Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War. Although he was in a war and his literary creation was restricted, Osamu Dazai still became one of the few "rogue" writers who did not cater to the war. He created 90 works with rich themes, vivid contents and humorous health, which comforted readers in the war. This is also a way for Osamu Dazai to "resist bondage". He drew a clear line with war literature and finally saved his art kingdom.
During this period, he also created a kind of self-talk style, such as "Female Students" and "leapfrog litigation", which was directly narrated to readers in rhythmic vernacular. In the work "Cutting Tongue", he wrote a rich but mediocre grandfather. One day, a sparrow asked him, "Why did he come to this world?" Grandpa replied, "I'm here to tell the truth."
But grandma mistakenly thought that grandpa's decadence was caused by sparrows, so she cut off the sparrow's tongue. Grandpa and sparrow here are undoubtedly the writer's two places at once: Grandpa is decadent and dissolute on the surface, but his real inner world is noble and flawless. Because the purpose of his life is to pursue "telling the truth". Sparrows pay the price of cutting their tongues to explore the meaning of existence, which is exactly the portrayal of the warrior Osamu Dazai. The grandmother who cuts off the sparrow's tongue at will represents the dictatorship that deprives others of the right to speak. Grandpa and sparrow can also communicate in silence, from which we can see that the writer pursues "true" literature that is not influenced by politics.
During this period, Osamu Dazai also created a masterpiece describing deep friendship, Run! Meles. A survey in Japan shows that readers' familiarity with it has surpassed the disqualification on the earth, ranking first. The work tells the story of the tyrant Deonis who kept killing people because of distrust, and was influenced after witnessing the friendship between Meles and Celinu Dehouse on the execution ground. The works eulogize the virtue and sublimity of human mutual trust, and express the belief that Osamu Dazai's great soul can overcome all evils.
After the war, the Japanese people generally realized the political fool and deception they suffered before and during the war. Osamu Dazai also wanted to make people reflect on the guilt of participating in the war through his works. He even thinks that creating works to comfort readers is an act of participating in the war. Therefore, he abandoned the healthy and lively style of writing used in the war and used "rogue", anti-secular and anti-social writing techniques to confront the chaotic and addicted society after the war. Therefore, "decadence" became the main theme of Osamu Dazai's later works, and Sunset and Human Disqualification were the representative works of this period.
Sunset is called the Japanese version of Cherry Garden, which describes the tragedy of the decline of an aristocratic family-the mother who endured hardships but still maintained the aristocratic demeanor died in poverty, and the younger brother who could not find a way to survive after entering the war chose to commit suicide. On the contrary, the sister in the work challenges the cruel and ugly reality and has an affair with the decadent writer, a friend of her brother. Regarding my sister's heart, Osamu Dazai wrote: "I seem to feel that there is one thing that I can't give up, and that is, in order to survive, I intend to fight against the world regardless of meanness." .
The four main characters in the work are endowed with Osamu Dazai's ideal and reality. From this, we can see that the author's inner world is shaken, confused and distressed by various contradictions, the root of which is as sakaguchi ango commented: "The greater the soul, the deeper the distress".
Disqualification on Earth is an autobiographical novel published by Osamu Dazai before his death. The first note in it begins like this: "My life is full of shame". Through the confession of the protagonist Ye Zang, the work tells the process that the court gradually "lost its qualification to be a man" and expresses the profound theme of "why people are alienated and isolated by others". Just as Osamu Dazai once said, "For those who have committed many crimes, love is deep." What the Grand Court wants to convey to us is that only those who realize their sins will have a deep understanding of love and be kind to others.