The Setting Sun - Page 32

It is painful for the plant which is myself to live in the atmosphere and light of this world. Somewhere an element is lacking which would permit me to continue. I am wanting. It has been all I could do to stay alive up to now.

When I entered high school and first came in contact with friends of an aggressively sturdy stock, boys who had grown up in a class entirely different from my own, their energy put me on the defensive, and in the effort not to give in to them, I had recourse to drugs. Half in a frenzy I resisted them. Later, when I became a soldier, it was as a last resort for staying alive that I took to opium. You can’t understand what I was going through, can you?

I wanted to become coarse, to be strong—no, brutal. I thought that was the only way I could qualify myself as a “friend of the people.” Liquor was not enough. I was perpetually prey to a terrible dizziness. That was why I had no choice but to take to drugs. I had to forget my family. I had to oppose my father’s blood. I had to reject my mother’s gentleness. I had to be cold to my sister. I thought that otherwise I would not be able to secure an admission ticket for the rooms of the people.

I became coarse. I learned to use coarse language. But it was half—no, sixty per cent—a wretched imposture, an odd form of petty trickery. As far as the “people” were concerned, I was a stuck-up prig who put them all on edge with my affected airs. They would never really unbend and relax with me. On the other hand, it is now impossible for me to return to those salons I gave up. Even supposing that my coarseness is sixt

y per cent artifice, the remaining forty per cent is genuine now. The intolerable gentility of the upper-class salon turns my stomach, and I could not endure it for an instant. And those distinguished gentlemen, those eminent citizens, as they are called, would be revolted by my atrocious manners and soon ostracize me. I can’t return to the world I abandoned, and all the “people” give me (with a fulsome politeness that is filled with malice) is a seat in the visitor’s gallery.

It may be true that in any society defective types with low vitality like myself are doomed to perish, not because of what they think or anything else, but because of themselves. I have, however, some slight excuse to offer. I feel the overwhelming pressure of circumstances which make it extremely difficult for me to live.

All men are alike.

I wonder if that might be a philosophy. I don’t believe that the person who first thought up this extraordinary expression was a religious man or a philosopher or an artist. The expression assuredly oozed forth from some public bar like a grub, without anyone’s having pronounced it, an expression fated to overturn the whole world and render it repulsive.

This astonishing assertion has absolutely no connection with democracy, or with Marxism for that matter. Without question it was the remark at a bar hurled by an ugly man at a handsome one. It was simple irritation, or, if you will, jealousy and had nothing to do with ideology or anything of the kind.

But what began as an angry cry of jealousy in a public bar assumed a peculiarly doctrinaire cast of countenance to strut among the common people, and a remark which obviously had no possible connection with democracy or Marxism attached itself before one knew it onto political and economic doctrine and created an unbelievably sordid mess.

I imagine that Mephisto himself would have found the trick of converting such an absurd utterance into doctrine so great an affront to his conscience that he would have hesitated over it.

All men are alike.

What a servile remark that is. An utterance that degrades itself at the same time that it degrades men, lacking in all pride, seeking to bring about the abandonment of all effort. Marxism proclaims the superiority of the workers. It does not say that they are all the same. Democracy proclaims the dignity of the individual. It does not say that they are all the same. Only the lout will assert, “Yes, no matter how much he puts on, he’s just a human being, same as the rest of us.”

Why does he say “same.” Can’t he say “superior”? The vengeance of the slave mentality!

The statement is obscene and loathsome. I believe that all of the so-called “anxiety of the age”—men frightened by one another, every known principle violated, effort mocked, happiness denied, beauty defiled, honor dragged down—originates in this one incredible expression.

I must admit, although I was entirely convinced of the hideousness of the expression, that it intimidated me. I trembled with fear, felt shy and embarrassed, whatever I attempted to do, throbbed ceaselessly with anxiety, and was powerless to act. I needed more than ever the momentary peace that the vertigo of drink and drugs could afford. Then everything went astray.

I must be weak. There must be a serious deficiency somewhere. I can just hear the old lout saying with a snicker, “What’s all this rationalizing for? Anyone can see that he’s a playboy from way back, a lazy, lecherous, selfish child of pleasure.” Up to now when people have spoken of me that way I have always nodded vaguely in embarrassment, but now that I am on the point of death, I would like to say a word by way of protest.

Kazuko.

Please believe me.

I have never derived the least joy out of amusements. Perhaps that is a sign of the impotence of pleasure. I ran riot and threw myself into wild diversions out of the simple desire to escape from my own shadow—being an aristocrat.

I wonder if we are to blame, after all. Is it our fault that we were born aristocrats? Merely because we were born in such a family, we are condemned to spend our whole lives in humiliation, apologies, and abasement, like so many Jews.

I should have died sooner. But there was one thing: Mama’s love. When I thought of that I couldn’t die. It’s true, as I have said, that just as man has the right to live as he chooses, he has the right to die when he pleases, and yet as long as my mother remained alive, I felt that the right to death would have to be left in abeyance, for to exercise it would have meant killing her too.

Now even if I die, no one will be so grieved as to do himself bodily harm. No, Kazuko, I know just how much sadness my death will cause you. Undoubtedly you will weep when you learn the news—apart, of course, from such ornamental sentimentality as you may indulge in—but if you will please try to think of my joy at being liberated completely from the suffering of living and this hateful life itself, I believe that your sorrow will gradually dissolve.

Any man who criticizes my suicide and passes judgment on me with an expression of superiority, declaring (without offering the least help) that I should have gone on living my full complement of days, is assuredly a prodigy among men quite capable of tranquilly urging the Emperor to open a fruit shop.

Kazuko.

I am better off dead. I haven’t the capacity to stay alive. I haven’t the strength to quarrel with people over money. I can’t even touch people for a hand-out. Even when I went drinking with Mr. Uehara, I always paid my share of the bill. He hated me for it and called it the cheap pride of the aristocracy, but it was not out of pride that I paid. I was too frightened to be able to drink or to hold a woman in my arms with money that had come from his work. I used to pass it off by saying that I acted out of respect for Mr. Uehara’s writings, but that was a lie. I don’t really understand myself why I did it. It was just that being paid for by other people was somehow disturbing. It was in particular intolerably painful and repugnant to be entertained with money gained by another person’s own efforts.

And when I was reduced to taking money and belongings from my own house, causing Mama and you to suffer, it didn’t bring me the slightest pleasure. The publishing business I planned was just a front to conceal my embarrassment—I was not at all in earnest. For all of my stupidity I was at least aware that someone who could not even stand being bought a drink would be utterly incapable of making money, and there was no use in being earnest.

Kazuko.

We have become impoverished. While I was alive and still had the means, I always thought of paying for others, but now we can only survive by being paid for by others.

Kazuko.

Tags: Osamu Dazai Fiction
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