The Quarterly Notebook, Vol. 1: June, 1916 (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

Excerpt from The Quarterly Notebook, Vol. 1: June, 1916

The ambiguities of certain early parts of the play seem mainly due to the fact that the Princess Rokujo, the con crete figure on the stage, is a phantom or image of Awoi-no Uye's own jealousy. That is to say, Awoi is tormented by her own passion, and this passion obsesses her first in the form of a personal apparition of Rokujo, then in demonic form.

This play was written centuries before Ibsen declared that life is a contest with the phantoms of the mind. The difficulties of the translator have lain in separating what belongs to Awoi herself {tom the things belonging to the ghost of Rokujo, very much as modern psychologists might have difficulty in detaching the personality or memories of an obsessed person from the personal memories of the obsession. Baldly: an obsessed person thinks he is Napoleon; an image of his own thought would be confused with scraps relating perhaps to St. Helena, Corsica, and Waterloo.

The second confusion is the relation of the two apparitions. It seems difficult to make it Clear that the benya has been cast out of the ghostly personality, and that it had been, in a way, the motive force in the ghost's actions. And again we cannot be too clear that the ghost is not actually a separate soul, but only a manifestation made possible through Awoi and her passion of jealousy. At least with this interpretation the play seems quite coherent and lucid.

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