I have always believed that literature is the strongest. Not only the reading experience, but the very act of writing a novel is wonderful. I believe that it enhances a person’s spirituality and gives an answer to the question, “How should I really live?”
Therefore, I have always recommended “writing a novel” to those who want to express something, to appeal to others, or to those who are searching for what they are.
Literature is also an art form. As the German writer Thomas Mann once said in his novel “Tonio Kregel,” in which the main character says, “There is nothing more painful than a life that messes with art,” art always requires a return in a person’s life.
The more one aims high, the more one pays a tremendous price in terms of life. This is true not only for novelists, but also for actors and painters. Van Gogh is a good example.
When you can no longer live any other way, the possibilities of other lives that you could have chosen become drastically limited. Bet on theater, bet on novels.
If you just say it in words, it sounds cool, and just finding what you want to do may be one accomplishment in life.
However, that can only be said of those who have succeeded (although the definition of success is different for each person). If you are not a martyr to the theater or painting, including those who were appreciated after their death, you will have a miserable life (especially in terms of money).
I don’t think you can accomplish anything without the kind of enthusiasm that makes you not care about such things as money, but I still feel that it is the privilege of young people to be able to say that.
Once you grow up, have a family, and a job to earn money, you can no longer say that. After all, many people naturally put an end to their youthful dreams at a certain point in their lives.
However, those who are truly fascinated by art, true artists who do not even look at their families but only pursue their own art, will never be able to put an end to themselves. They will continue to do it until they die.
I thought that people like me, who are fascinated by literature and storytelling, whether people approve of it or not, have to keep writing for the rest of our lives. I thought that there are various invisible fruits other than money.
However, when I recently lost my mental balance from the stress of working to earn a living and looked back on my life again, I wondered if those invisible fruits had really made me happy. I even wished I had never written a novel. There must have been a more honest way to live. The possibility of a different life.
And again, to quote from Thomas Mann’s “Tonio Kregel,” “The artist is a lonely traveler who cannot rest on his laurels as either a good citizen or a rogue, but is forever wandering between the two.
In Osamu Dazai’s style, an unsuccessful artist would be “a poor Tsuji fiddler in tattered clothes with missing teeth.
However, he adds, “There is a kind of research that only that poor fiddler can perform. I want to believe in that,” he adds, but I am not confident that I can say that now.
In other words, although I still believe that literature is the most powerful, I can no longer say ungrudgingly that everyone should try writing a novel at least once.
True art is like a drug, and if you get into it even in a lighthearted, playful way, it could ruin some people’s lives.
Novels can be written with a computer. That is why it is probably the easiest field to enter as a gate drug to the arts.
This is why art is really scary these days. I have come to think that a work of art in history is like a tombstone erected on top of a pile of dead volunteers.
And that was the soliloquy of a certain Tsuji novelist who is getting old.
See you soon.
