The dancer from Izu
The Dancer of Izu ( Japanese 伊豆 の 踊 子 , Izu no odoriko ) is a short story by the Japanese writer Kawabata Yasunari from 1929. The German translation by Oscar Benl appeared in 1942, then under the title Die kleine Tänzerin von Izu .
In Japan, the story is one of the imperishable modern classics: it has been filmed six times - starting in 1933 as a black and white silent film with Tanaka Kinuyo as the dancer.
The story
M: Mishima , N: Numazu , Sh: Shuzenji, Y1: Yugashima,
Y2: Yugano, S: Shimoda,
1: Tōkaidō Line , 2: Izu Line ,
3: Ridge
(1) On a hike from north to south through the Izu Peninsula, the twenty-year-old first-person narrator meets a theater troupe moving from place to place, first in Yugawabashi, then in Shuzenji and again in Yugashima. He notices the pretty little girl who carries the big drum. He catches up with the troops in front of the Amagi Pass when they stop in a tea house. The little dancer has noticed him and seems to be a little in love with him. The landlady engages him in a conversation while the troops leave.
(2) At the tunnel under the Amagi Pass , the narrator catches up with the troops. Behind the tunnel it goes downhill on the Kawazu river until you reach Yugano, where everyone stops for the night. The troops are accommodated in a simple inn, the narrator finds better accommodation. The man from the troop starts talking to the narrator and reports about himself. The troupe has their performances in the evening, heavy rain sets in.
(3) The next morning the man wants to pick him up at the bathhouse. However, the narrator stays in his room and later sees the young girls of the troupe in the bathhouse, with the little dancer waving at him nakedly at ease. In the evening, the narrator plays with a guest who is a paper dealer, Go , and to distract himself into the night.
(4) The next morning it should actually go on, but the troupe still has an appearance. The man from the troupe tells: his name is Eikichi, the oldest of the three girls, Chiyoko, is his wife. Her younger sister, the little dancer, is Kaoru. Then there are Yuriko and the strict mother. Eikichi is called and performs a ballad in the next room, the little dancer is called outside to perform.
(5) On the third day, the troupe and the narrator continue along the Kawazu River until one can see the sea and Ōshima. The narrator suggests the shorter route to Shimoda, but which leads over the mountains. Soon he will be ahead of the others alone with the little dancer. When they arrived thirsty at the top, they looked for a source. The others come, the march continues. The narrator hears the woman behind him saying about him: "He is a good person."
(6) The troop with the narrator reaches Shimoda . The troops are quartered in a hostel at the beginning of the village, where other traveling people have already stayed. The narrator finds a room in another inn. In the evening he visits the troops, says that he must leave the next day, when he is invited to visit the troops on their home island of Ōshima . He invites the girls in the company to go to the cinema with him, but his mother forbids it. So he goes alone, but soon leaves the cinema, bored, and returns to the Gashof, where a few tears well up.
(7) Early the next morning, Eikichi visits the narrator. He excuses the other members of the troupe and buys fruit and cigarettes for the narrator. He is asked to look after an old woman with grandchildren, which he then promises. On the ship he lies down a little, is sad. Not because of an accident, but because of a farewell, he answers a passenger's question. In the dark he cries, "but feels something like a sweet feeling of happiness."
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The content could be summed up in two sentences: the young Kawabata goes on a hike, torn apart, on which he meets so-called simple people who master their lives. They recognize in him, the son from a wealthy house, the good person, so that he returns home comforted. But that does not, of course, cover the atmospheric, the first falling in love.
Kawabata worked on the text for a long time with the help of his notes from the hike and only published it as a narrative nine years later. He chose the form of a first-person narration . This literary type has been around for a long time in Europe, but was still new in Japan at the beginning of the 20th century. - The first paragraph in Kawabata's story shows a completely Japanese style: It consists of only one sentence. This first movement ( 冒頭 , Bōtō ) gives, well formulated, the background for the narrative that follows.
While Kawabata divides his text into seven numbered sections, the translator Benl not only dispenses with the numbering, but gives the narrative its own structure. Benl occasionally abbreviates the half-sentence sequences, which give Japanese texts their own elegance but can be very long: the overall meaning is of course not lost. Benl has revised the text a little compared to the first edition, whereby he has made some dialogues more fluid.
In his knowledgeable epilogue, Siegfried Schaarschmidt goes into the prehistory. After his hike in the fall of 1918, Kawabata published an abridged version in a school magazine in 1919, a short report with the little dancer in the center. Another version before the one mentioned above remained unpublished.
Used book editions
- Kawabata, Yasunari: The Dancer from Izu . Rev. Translated from d. Japan. by Oscar Benl . With an afterword by Siegfried Schaarschmidt. Reclam 1969.
- Kawabata, Yasunari: Izu no odoriko . With an afterword by Mishima Yukio . Shincho-sha, 1950.
- Oscar Benl, translator u. Ed .: The little dancer from Izu . In: Fleeting Life. Modern Japanese stories. Robert Mölich Verlag, Hamburg. 1948.
annotation
- ↑ With the actress Hibari Misora .