Cloudy day
Chilly day
Watching the World Cup, I still think that Messi of Argentina is a genius. If it were baseball, it would be Otani, if it were golf, Tiger Woods. Even if they are not that outstanding, all professional athletes seem to be geniuses. Or rather, they are geniuses.
But are there really geniuses among novelists? Kazuo Ishiguro? Haruki Murakami? Proust? Dostoevsky?
I feel a little uncomfortable calling them geniuses.
I recall a famous critic (I forget who) once described Yukio Mishima as “not a genius, but someone who toiled and toiled to the death. Mr. Takaaki Yoshimoto also said something to the same effect about Ryunosuke Akutagawa.
The critic, however, did not mean to belittle either Yukio Mishima or Ryunosuke Akutagawa, but rather to recognize their talent and appreciate their efforts. He said that such effort is the key to a writer’s art.
Therefore, I feel that the phrase “diligence and hard work” is an appropriate one for a writer and a great writer.
There are people who write prodigiously in their time and era. Long ago, it was Sei Shonagon (too old, sorry), and now it is Yoshimoto Banana. However, just as words change with the passage of time, so too do their genius writings fade with the times.
Perhaps the authors who left literary works that remain today and are called classics were treated as “geniuses” at the time of publication.
However, today, both Mori Ogai and Natsume Soseki are called “great” but not “geniuses. And I am sure that they themselves would be much happier to be called “people who worked hard and painstakingly” than to be treated as “geniuses.
I think it is aesthetic to play the genius card by saying, “I just licked my brush and wrote a novel,” while on the outside looking cool, even though behind the scenes they are working hard and toiling to the point of death. After all, it is the same for athletes and businessmen, isn’t it?
Fingering what I can do in a short day
