Open Ikuho Amano Thesis.Pdf
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School Department of Comparative Literature ASCENDING DECADENCE: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF DILEMMAS AND PLEASURES IN JAPANESE AND ITALIAN ANTI-MODERN LITERARY DISCOURSES A Thesis in Comparative Literature by Ikuho Amano © 2007 Ikuho Amano Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2007 ii The thesis of Ikuho Amano was reviewed and approved* by the following: Reiko Tachibana Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Japanese Thesis Adviser Chair of Committee Thomas O. Beebee Professor of Comparative Literature and German Véronique M. Fotí Professor of Philosophy Maria R. Truglio Assistant Professor of Italian Caroline D. Eckhardt Professor of Comparative Literature and English Head of the Department of Comparative Literature _________________________ * Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii Abstract This dissertation examines the significance of the notion of “decadence” within the historical framework of Modernism, especially in Italy and Japan, which were latecomers to modernity. In contrast to the major corpus of fin-de-siècle Decadence, which portrays decadence fundamentally as the subjectively constructed refutation of modern material and cultural conditions, the writers of decadent literature in Italy and Japan employ the concept of decadence differently in their process of rendering the modern self and subjectivity in literary discourse. While mainstream fin-de-siècle Decadence generally treats the subject as an a priori condition for its aesthetics, these writers on modernity’s periphery incorporate heterogeneous spectrums of human consciousnesses into their narratives, and thereby express their own perspectives on the complexities inherent in the formation of modern subjectivity. Examining historical as well as cultural causalities attributable to the conditions of decadence, such as psychological or mental degeneration, immorality, and excessive self-indulgence, this project argues that the perennial phenomena of decadence reflect the prevalence of a regulatory or totalitarian superstructure whose effect is to stifle, and, paradoxically, to promote the birth of self-awareness as modern individualism. The literary discourse of decadence by the latecomers to modernity clearly replaces any fixed singularity of subjectivity by multiplicities of consciousnesses. This dissertation analyzes morphologies of decadent subjectivities in selected works of Italian and Japanese decadent literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the formation of the subject, these works commonly engage issues of the reevaluation and valorization of anti-modern and non-utilitarian thoughts, iv and the incorporation of cultural and ontological heterogeneities into indigenous literatures. These characteristics shed new light on decadent literature’s hermetic mission. The multifarious phases in decadent subjectivities help to articulate modern individuals’ disquietudes about the totalitarian tendencies in modern social life. Under the regulatory framework of the scientific objectification of human beings, these Italian and Japanese discourses of decadence, constructed from the perspectives of the socio-cultural periphery, facilitate our understanding of individuals’ consciousnesses of modernity. v Table of Contents Acknowledgements vi Chapter I Introduction 1 Decadence in Modern Japanese Literary Discourse: Subjectivity, Lapse, and Un-Collated History Chapter II De-Naturalizing the Subject: 34 The Birth of Modern Subjectivity from Decadent Liminality Narrative on Threshold: A Historical Configuration of Morita Sōhei’s Baien and Gabriele D’Annunzio’s Il Trionfo della Morte Chapter III The Decadents’ Phenomenology of Modernity: 84 Dialogues, Intersubjectivity, and Community as the Consciousness of History Giovanni Pascoli’s Visionary Child in Il Fanciullino The Sensibilities of kichōsha Writers: Ueda Bin’s Uzumaki and Nagai Kafū’s Reishō Chapter IV Anti-Modern Consumption of Modern Man: 139 Generosity, Dedication, and Defeat in D’Annunzio’s Il Piacere and Mishima’s Haru no Yuki Chapter V The Hyperbolic Other as an Antidote for Decadence: 187 Sacred-Primitive Figures in Sakaguchi Ango’s The Idiot and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema Conclusion 230 Works Cited 234 vi Acknowledgements Completion of this dissertation would have been impossible without the generous support, encouragement, and guidance offered over the years by my professors, editors, colleagues, friends, and family members. First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to my committee members at The Pennsylvania State University, especially to Dr. Reiko Tachibana, whose consistent support and patience enabled me to reach this stage of my career. Dr. Thomas O. Beebee’s guidance with literary theory and critical commentaries on my work has been invaluable. I am greatly indebted to Dr. Véronique M. Fotí, who encouraged my literary study by her philosophical expertise, especially through her discussions of alterity in her seminar on Merleau-Ponty. Without Dr. Maria R. Truglio, whose meticulous commentaries on my interpretation of the Italian texts supported my research, I could not have concluded this comparative study. I would also like to express my gratitude to my Department Head, Dr. Caroline D. Eckhardt, for her continuous encouragement and support since my first year in this graduate program. It is not possible to list all the other people who have supported my work in the Department of Comparative Literature at Penn State, yet I am deeply thankful to the other faculty members, staff, and fellow graduate students. Thanks to their presence, I am very sure that I will always remember this department as my academic home. My final appreciation goes to my mother, Yoshiko Amano, and my sister, Sachiho Amano. I dedicate this dissertation to my father, Minoru Amano, who departed from us without seeing its completion. 1 CHAPTER I Introduction Decadence in Modern Literary Discourse: Subjectivity, Lapse, and Un-Collated History Decadence in Modern Literary and Cultural Discourse Through a comparative examination of the modern concepts of Decadence and its representations in Japanese and Italian literary discourses, this dissertation explores the ways in which decadent subjectivities fill the social and cultural hiatus that was left invisible in the official histories of these nations as well as in the progressivist/rationalist discourse of modernity. Focusing on empirical investigations of the formation and decomposition of subjectivity in narratives illustrative of Il Decadentismo in Italy and of Decadence in Japan, this study aims to elucidate aspects of human consciousness that have been obscured by official histories. Narratives of Decadentism in Italy and Japan often have been understood as offshoots of French Symbolism and Decadence. Traditionally, studies of Decadent literature implicitly disregarded inquiries into subjectivities, as though they were salient, pre-existing conditions that would assume solipsism as the foundational mindset. This study aims to question such blanket assumptions and to instead articulate complexities in the formation of decadent subjectivities through an investigation of narrative and poetry. The locational focus of this project – modern discourses of decadence in Italy and Japan – distinguishes itself from studies of fin-de-siècle Decadent literatures in France and England. The mode of discourse underpinned by the socio-cultural maturity of modernity, as prominently observed in French and British cases, reveals that the modern 2 bourgeois-dominated world is characterized by vulgarized materialism and mental banality and is therefore subject to abhorrence. However, decadent discourses from Italy and Japan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries exhibit a far more fluid view of the contemporary world; they witness the ongoing stages of modernity and thereby accommodate human subjectivities in transition. As one of the most idiosyncratic of modern aesthetic movements, fin-de-siècle Décadence reinterpreted the notion of “decadence” as an epistemological configuration of history that considered its particular moment in time to be the twilight of civilization. This historical consciousness went hand in hand with a psychological “restlessness and a need for self-examination” that anticipated the imminence of an apocalyptic end of the world (Calinescu 154). This awareness inevitably led to a pessimistic world view of the present age as having arrived belatedly and now being in decline, after the peak of an earlier cultural golden age. The irreversibility of history, then, evokes a collective psychological impasse; at a socially visible level, various forms of degeneration invade peoples’ lives. Such pessimistic views are, however, compensated by the soteriological configuration of the world offered by various religions. For example, the Judeo-Christian tradition interprets history as a cycle, although we cannot escape the linear progression of temporality. Following the eschatological end of the world, a long-awaited messiah will restore the whole world. Encouraged by this future-bound imagination, history has accepted the permutations of epochs and their perennial decays. Thus, decadence historically apprehends contemporaneity as a locus of liminal conditions. According to Matei Calinescu, the concept of decadence originates in various ancient civilizations, although the Latin noun decadentia began to circulate