Ten Nights Dreaming: and The Cat's Grave
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Ten Nights Dreaming: and The Cat's Grave
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Overview
A scholar of British literature, author Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916) was also a composer of haiku, kanshi, and fairy tales. The stories of Ten Nights Dreaming, which were originally published as a newspaper serial, constitute milestones of Japanese fantasy. Like Sōseki's other writings, they have had a profound effect on readers, writers, and filmmakers. This edition features an expert new English translation by Matt Treyvaud, who has translated the story "The Cat's Grave" for this work as well.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780486797038 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dover Publications |
| Publication date: | 09/16/2015 |
| Pages: | 96 |
| Sales rank: | 692,337 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.40(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Ten Nights Dreaming and the Cat's Grave
By Natsume Soseki, Matt Treyvaud
Dover Publications, Inc.
Copyright © 2015 Dover Publications, Inc.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-486-79703-8
CHAPTER 1
The First Night
The first dream is a relatively straightforward tale whose vivid imagery foreshadows many of the themes running through the collection.
This is what I dreamed.
I was sitting, arms folded, by the pillow of a woman who lay with her face towards the sky. —— I am dying, she said in a quiet voice. Her long, flowing hair spread across her pillow, framing the soft outlines of her oval face. Within the pure white of her cheeks her blood showed its color warmly, and her lips, of course, were red. She did not look about to die at all. But she had said quite distinctly, in her quiet voice, that she was dying. I found myself in agreement with her: she would surely die. —— Are you sure? Are you really dying? I asked, peering down at her face. Her eyes opened wide. —— Yes, she replied. I am dying. Within the long lashes that enclosed her large, moist eyes was the purest black. In the depths of those pure black pupils my form floated vivid and clear.
Gazing at those shining dark eyes, so deep that they were almost transparent, I could not accept that she would die. Lowering my mouth to her pillow, I spoke again. —— You aren't dying, surely. You'll be fine, I said. You'll be fine. —— No, I am dying, the woman insisted in the same small voice, eyes drowsy but not yet closed. There's nothing to be done about it.
—— Well, can you see my face? I asked, watching her closely. —— Why, she replied with a smile, Isn't that its reflection, right there? I straightened up again in silence. Folding my arms, I wondered if she really had to die.
Some time later, the woman spoke again.
"When I am dead, please bury me. Dig a hole with a large oyster shell. Then use a fallen fragment from a star to mark where I lie. That done, please wait beside the grave. I will come to you again."
I asked her when that would be.
"The sun will rise, as you know. After that, it will set. Then it will rise again, and then set again. Can you wait for me, even as the red sun sinks from east to west, east to west?"
I nodded silently.
A new note of determination entered the woman's quiet voice. "Please wait a hundred years," she said. "Sit beside my grave and wait a hundred years. I will come to you, I promise."
I told her simply that I would wait. At once, I saw my form in her black eyes, so vivid and clear, begin to blur and break. Just as it started to run, like a reflection in still water muddled by movement, the woman shut her eyes tightly. A tear spilled from between her eyelashes onto her cheek. She was dead.
I went down to the garden and dug a hole with an oyster shell. The shell was sharp, with a long, gently curved edge. The mother-of-pearl inside the shell glinted in the moonlight with every scoop of earth I removed. The smell of damp earth was in the air too. After a time the hole was complete. I lowered the woman into it. Then I gently covered her with the soft earth. The mother-of-pearl inside the shell caught the moonlight with each scoop.
This done, I went and found a fallen fragment from a star to place on top. The fragment was round. I supposed that its corners had been worn away during its long fall through the sky, leaving it smooth. I felt the warmth of the fragment against my breast and in my hands as I cradled it in both arms and lowered it carefully into place.
I sat down on some moss. So this is how I will spend the next hundred years, I thought, gazing at the round gravestone with my arms crossed. Before long, the sun rose in the east, just as the woman had said it would. It was a large, red sun. Eventually, again just as the woman had said, the sun set in the west. It stayed as red as ever as it sank out of sight. One, I counted.
Some time later the crimson orb slowly rose again. Then it silently sank. Two, I counted again.
I do not know how many such suns I counted. I counted and counted, but more passed overhead than I could possibly count. And yet a hundred years had still not passed. Finally, staring at the round stone, which was by now covered with moss, I began to wonder if the woman had not deceived me.
At that moment a green shoot appeared from under the stone, stretching up towards me at an angle as it grew. The shoot grew longer as I watched, stopping just as it reached my chest. Then, as the shoot swayed from side to side, the single long, thin bud at its drooping tip softly opened its petals. It was a pure white lily right under my nose, so fragrant that I felt it in my bones. A single dewdrop fell onto it from far above, making the lily rock back and forth under its own weight. I leaned forward and kissed its cold, white, dew-moistened petals. As I straightened up again, I happened to see the dawn star twinkling all alone in the distant sky.
I realized then for the first time that a hundred years had passed.
CHAPTER 2The Second Night
In the second dream, the narrator finds himself a samurai in a Zen temple. Perhaps drawing on his own experiences at Engaku-ji temple in the 1890s, Soseki distorts the imagery and rhetoric of Zen to portray a fundamental misapprehension of the nature of Zen practice.
This is what I dreamed.
Leaving the osho's room, I followed the corridor back to my own and found the ando burning dully. When I half-knelt on a cushion to adjust the wick, the charred tip broke off and tumbled like a flower to the red lacquered stand below. At the same time, the room brightened.
The picture on the fusuma was a Buson. Black willows were drawn densely here and sparsely there below a shivering fisherman traversing an embankment, woven kasa askew. The alcove was hung with a scroll depicting Mañjusri crossing the sea. The fragrance of incense lingered in the room's dimmer reaches. The temple was so large and still that it felt deserted. When I glanced up at the black ceiling, for a moment the pool of shadow cast there by the round ando looked like a living thing.
Still on one knee, I turned up a corner of the cushion with my left hand and reached underneath with my right. There it was, just as it should be. Thus reassured, I let the corner fall back into place and sat down on the cushion heavily.
—— You are a samurai, the osho had said. As a samurai, satori should not be beyond you. Watching you sit there, day after day, with no satori to show for it — well, perhaps you are no samurai after all. Human garbage would be more like it! Oho, now you are angry, he had continued with a laugh. If what I say upsets you, then find satori and bring me proof. With that, he had turned his face away. The insolence!
I would show him. I would reach satori before the clock in the alcove one room over struck the next hour. Having done so, I would return for a second interview with him that very night. And at that interview I would exchange my satori for his head. I could not take his life without achieving satori first. There was no option but to succeed. I was a samurai.
If satori proved beyond me, I would turn my blade on myself. No samurai can live in humiliation. I would die quickly and cleanly.
At this thought, I found my hand slipping under the cushion again. When it came out, it was holding a tanto in a red lacquered scabbard. I grasped the sword by the hilt. The cold blade gleamed once in the dark room as I cast the scabbard aside. Something terrible seemed to stream from my hand, gathering to a single point of murderous intent at the tip of the blade. Seeing the wicked blade mercilessly reduced to a pinprick, driven to a sharpening point at the end of its full nine and a half inches, I felt a sudden urge to drive it deep. All the blood in my body flowed towards my right wrist, and the hilt felt sticky in my grip. My lips trembled.
Returned the tanto to its scabbard and placing it close to me on my right, I crossed my legs into the full lotus position. Joshu said, "mu." But what was "mu" supposed to mean? Pious jackass! I gritted my teeth.
My back teeth ground together so fiercely that my breath came hot and ragged through my nose. There was a painful tightness at my temples. I forced my eyes open twice as wide as usual.
I saw the scroll. I saw the ando. I saw the tatami. I saw the osho's great bald kettle of a head as clearly if it were right in front of me. I even heard the mocking laugh from his crocodilian mouth. Insolent, bald-headed fool! There was no way around it: that kettle had to come off his shoulders. I would attain this satori of his. Mu, mu! I strained at the word from the root of my tongue. But for all my mus, I still smelled incense. How dare mere incense interfere!
I suddenly clenched my fists and battered my head until it hurt. I ground my teeth back and forth. Sweat ran down my sides. My back was stiff as a wooden pole. My knee joints flared with pain. Let them break, then, I thought, but it still hurt. It was excruciating. Mu was yet to make its appearance. Every time it seemed on the verge of appearing, the pain returned. It was enraging. It was mortifying. I was humiliated beyond belief. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I longed for some great boulder I could hurl myself against, dashing body and bone alike to pieces.
And yet I endured, seated and still. An unbearable despair swelled in my breast. It seized me bodily from below and rushed through me, desperately seeking escape through my pores, but every surface was blocked; it was trapped with no exit in the cruelest of circumstances.
My mind began to warp. The ando and the Buson, the tatami mats and the overlapping shelves — all were there and not there, not there yet there. But still there was no sign of ITLμITL. It seemed that I had just been sitting around to no particular purpose And then, without warning, the clock in the next room began to chime.
I started. My right hand went straight to the tanto. The clock chimed a second time.
CHAPTER 3The Third Night
In the third dream, the series takes a turn for the sinister. Some see a connection between the events of this dream and Soseki's own unhappy childhood.
This is what I dreamed.
I was carrying a child of almost six on my back. It was clear to me that he was my son. Mysteriously, however, he had gone blind at some point, and his head was shaved blue. —— When did you go blind? I asked him, and he replied, —— What? I've been blind forever. His voice was unmistakably a child's, but he spoke just like an adult. As an equal, in fact.
Green rice paddies lay to the left and right. The path was narrow. From time to time a heron's form flashed in the gloom.
"We've reached the paddies, then," the child on my back said.
"How did you know?" I asked, twisting around to see him.
"The herons — can't you hear them calling?" he asked.
At this a heron did indeed let out two short cries.
I was beginning to fear this child, son of mine though he be. Who knew what lay in store for me, carrying something like him on my back? Wondering if there was somewhere I could dump him, I saw a large forest in the darkness that lay ahead. No sooner had I thought That might do it than I heard a chuckle from my back.
"What's so funny?" I asked.
The child did not answer me. "Am I heavy, Father?" he asked.
"No," I replied. "You're not heavy."
"I will be," he said.
Keeping the forest in sight, I walked on in silence. The path through the paddies was irregular and winding, never quite leading where I wanted to go. Finally we arrived at a fork in the road. I paused for a moment right where the roads parted to catch my breath.
"There should be a stone marker," the boy said.
Just as he said, a small pillar of stone stood nearby, eight inches square and as tall as my waist. According to the pillar, the left fork led to Higakubo and the right to Hottahara. Dark as it had gotten, the red lettering was clearly visible. The characters were the same red as a newt's belly.
"You'll want to go left," the boy ordered. Looking left I saw the forest from before rising into the sky, casting its dark shadow down over our heads. I hesitated.
"Don't hold back on my account," the boy said. Seeing nothing else for it, I began walking towards the forest. There were no more forks in the path now. Sure knows a lot for a blind kid, I thought to myself as we drew near the forest, and then heard the voice from my back again: "I know it makes things difficult, my being blind."
"I'm carrying you, aren't I? What's the problem?"
"I appreciate that, but I won't put up with mockery. Especially from my own father."
I couldn't stand any more of this. I quickened my pace to get to the forest and dump him as soon as I could.
"You'll understand a little further on," the boy said from my back. Then he spoke again, as if talking to himself. "It was an evening just like this, come to think of it."
"What was?" I asked, strain in my voice.
"'What was'!" the child sneered. "As if you didn't know!" And with this I began to feel as if I did know, somehow. I couldn't quite put my finger on what had happened, but I was sure it had been an evening just like this one. I also felt that I would, indeed, understand a little further on — and that this understanding would be a terrible thing, so it was imperative that I dump the boy, quickly, before it could arrive. I walked even faster.
It had been raining for a while now. The path grew darker by degrees. But the little boy clinging to my back shone like a mirror from which nothing escaped, casting a merciless light on every part of my past, present and future. What's more, this boy was my own son. And blind, at that. It was unbearable.
"This is the place, right here. Right at the root of that cedar."
I heard the boy's voice clearly through the rain. Before I knew what I was doing, I had stopped. We had entered the forest at some point. The black thing a few paces ahead, I had to admit, looked like a cedar tree, just as the boy said.
"It was at the root of that cedar, wasn't it, Father?"
"Yes," I replied, without thinking. "It was."
"The fifth year of Bunka — the Year of the Dragon."
Fifth year of Bunka, Year of the Dragon: this sounded right to me.
"It was exactly a hundred years ago that you killed me."
As soon as I heard these words, the knowledge burst into my head: one hundred years ago, in the fifth year of Bunka — the year of the dragon — on a dark evening just like this, I had killed a blind man at the root of this very cedar tree. I'm a murderer, I realized at last, and as it hit me the child on my back was suddenly as heavy as a roadside statue of Jizo.
CHAPTER 4The Fourth Night
The central figure of the fourth dream, as Sasabuchi Tomoichi points out, appears to be a cross between a Taoist immortal and a Meiji street peddler.
In the middle of a large room with a floor of pounded earth stood something like a bench surrounded by little folding stools. The bench was a glossy black in color. An old man sat drinking by himself in the corner at a square zen tray with a small dish of nishime stew on it.
The old man was already quite ruddy with drink. Beyond that, his face positively shone with vitality, without even a wrinkle. The only thing that revealed his age was his long white beard. Still a child myself, I wondered just how old he might be. Then the proprietress came in, wiping her hands on her apron and carrying a small wooden bucket which she must have just filled with water at the bamboo kakei out back.
"How old are you, ojii-san?" she asked.
The old man's cheeks were bulging with food, and he had to swallow before he could reply. "I can't remember," he said at last.
The proprietress tucked her hands into her narrow obi and stood where she was, looking across at the old man's face. The old man threw back a mouthful of sake from a large cup that looked like a rice bowl and then let out a long, audible exhalation through his white beard. As he did, the proprietress spoke again. "Where do you live?" she asked.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Ten Nights Dreaming and the Cat's Grave by Natsume Soseki, Matt Treyvaud. Copyright © 2015 Dover Publications, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of Dover Publications, Inc..
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Table of Contents
Contents
Translator's Note, vii,Foreword, ix,
Introduction, xi,
Ten Nights Dreaming, 1,
The Cat's Grave, 61,
