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The Maze at Windermere

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Gregory Blake Smith

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“Amir then showed off his moonwalk prowess as he started to walk backward toward Tara again. Tara closed her eyes and laughed. She took a sip from her glass and said, “Divaneh!” “I am crazy. Crazy for you!” Amir said with eyebrows raised and still dancing in his spot. Tara sat on the edge of the bed, glass in hand and with the other smoothed a piece of her hair behind her ear. “Did you know that Persian demons did everything backward?” she said. “Did they now?” Amir replied still dancing. “They did. The word for demons, div, comes from the Avesta language meaning ‘a spirit or deity personifying evil.’ They were creatures that wreaked havoc.” “Really?” “Yes, really,” Tara replied with a smile. “And we’ve got Ferdowsi and the old Persian language to thank for the word divaneh too.” “So are you telling me that I’m a demon?” Amir didn’t get where Tara was going as he walked back toward the dressing table.”

IranDemonsZoroastrianismFarsiPersian TheologyMoonwalkAvesta
Book:Tajrish
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“It was Daisuke's conviction that all morality traced its origins to social realities. He believed there could be no greater confusion of cause and effect than to attempt to conform social reality to a rigidly predetermined notion of morality. Accordingly, he found the ethical education conducted by lecture in Japanese schools utterly meaningless. In the schools, students were either instructed in the old morality or crammed with a morality suited to the average European. For an unfortunate people beset by the fierce appetites of life, this amounted to nothing more than vain, empty talk. When the recipients of this education saw society before their eyes, they would recall those lectures and burst out laughing. Or else they would feel that they had been made fools of. In Daisuke's case it was not just school; he had received the most rigorous and least functional education from his father. Thanks to this, he had at one time experienced acute anguish stemming from contradictions. Daisuke even felt bitter over it.”

ValuesEducationYouthMoralityEthicsWesternJapanImperialismModernityCognitive DissonanceConfucianMeijiWesternizationCulture Clash
Book:And Then
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“But once I could look back on it in a calmer frame of mind, it struck me that his motive was surely not so simple and straightforward. Had it resulted from a fatal collision between reality and ideals? Perhaps—but this was still not quite it. Eventually, I began to wonder whether it was not the same unbearable loneliness that I now felt that had brought K to his decision.”

FreedomLonelinessConflictTraditionJapanIndividualismModernityMeiji
Book:Kokoro
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“That Seigo could go into geisha houses, accept luncheon invitations, drop in at the Club, see people off at Shimabashi, meet them at Yokohama, run out to Oiso to humor the elders—that he could put in his appearance at large gatherings from morning to evening without seeming either triumphant or dejected—this must be because he was thoroughly accustomed to this kind of life, thought Daisuke; it was probably like the jellyfish's floating in the sea and not finding it salty.”

BusinessJapanBusinessmanSocial LifeIntroversionSocializingMeijiExtroversionSubmersion
Book:And Then
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“You will tell me that there always exists a chasm between the world depicted in novels and films and the world that people actually live in. It is the chasm between the world mediated by art and the world unmediated by art, formless and drab. You are absolutely right. The gap that my mother felt was not necessarily any deeper than the gap felt by a European girl who loved books and films. Yet there is one critical difference. For in my mother's case, the chasm between the world of art and real life also symbolized something more: the asymmetrical relationship I mentioned earlier—the asymmetrical relationship between those who live only in a universal temporality and those who live in both a universal and a particular one. To make this discussion a little more concrete, let me introduce a character named Francoise. Francoise is a young Parisienne living before World War II. Like my mother, she loves reading books and watching films. Also like my mother, she lives in a small apartment with her mother, who is old, shabby looking, and illiterate. One day Francoise, full of artistic aspirations, writes an autobiographical novel. It is the tale of her life torn between the world of art and the world of reality. (Not an original tale, I must say.) The novel is well received in France. Several hundred Japanese living in Japan read this novel in French, and one of them decides to translate it into Japanese. My mother reads the novel. She identifies with the heroine and says to herself, "This girl is just like me!" Moved, my mother, also full of artistic aspirations, writes her own autobiography. That novel is well received in Japan but is not translated into French—or any other European language, for that matter. The number of Europeans who read Japanese is just too small. Therefore, only Japanese readers can share the plight of my mother's life. For other readers in the world, it's as if her novel never existed. It's as if she herself never existed. Even if my mother had written her novel first, Francoise would never have read it and been moved by it.”

English LanguageTranslationJapaneseModern LiteratureMeijiPost ColonialismLinguistic Hegemony
Book:The Fall of Language in the Age of English
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“Life is a tiring business indeed. Soy sauce runs out. Milk runs out. Dishwashing detergent runs out. Lancôme lipsticks—I thought I had stockpiled several years' worth—run out. Dust underneath the dining table becomes dust balls. Newspapers and magazines pile up, and so does laundry. E-mail and junk mail keep coming. When occasion demands, I make myself presentable and I present myself. I listen to my sister's same old complaints on the phone. I withdraw money for my elderly mother, whose tongue works fine but whose body is a mess. I contact her caseworker. And now I have reached a stage in life when my own health is prone to betray me.”

LanguageEnglish LanguageTranslationModern LiteratureMeijiLinguistic HegemonyEnglish Language History
Book:The Fall of Language in the Age of English
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