Siegfried Schaarschmidt Libri

( Phantastische Bibliothek, 65). Neu: 9196 323

Die vierte Zwischeneiszeit, ein realistischer Science-fiction-Roman, der erzählt, wie schnell wissenschaftliche Macht in Ohnmacht umschlägt in einer Zukunft der unbegrenzten Manipulierbarkeit der biologischen Erbmasse.

Yukio Mishima’s Runaway Horses is the second novel in his masterful tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility. Again we encounter Shigekuni Honda, who narrates this epic tale of what he believes are the successive reincarnations of his childhood friend Kiyoaki Matsugae. In 1932, Shigeuki Honda has become a judge in Osaka. Convinced that a young rightist revolutionary, Isao, is the reincarnation of his friend Kiyoaki, Honda commits himself to saving the youth from an untimely death. Isao, driven to patriotic fanaticism by a father who instilled in him the ethos of the ancient samurai, organizes a violent plot against the new industrialists who he believes are usurping the Emperor’s rightful power and threatening the very integrity of the nation. Runaway Horses is the chronicle of a conspiracy — a novel about the roots and nature of Japanese fanaticism in the years that led to war.

The first novel of Mishima's landmark tetralogy, The Sea of fertility Spring Snow is set in Tokyo in 1912, when the hermetic world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders -- rich provincial families unburdened by tradition, whose money and vitality make them formidable contenders for social and political power. Among this rising new elite are the ambitious Matsugae, whose son has been raised in a family of the waning aristocracy, the elegant and attenuated Ayakura. Coming of age, he is caught up in the tensions between old and new -- fiercely loving and hating the exquisite, spirited Ayakura Satoko. He suffers in psychic paralysis until the shock of her engagement to a royal prince shows him the magnitude of his passion, and leads to a love affair that is as doomed as it was inevitable.

Quarto capitolo della tetralogia 'Il mare della fertilità' dello scrittore giapponese. Insieme alla vita dello scrittore, termina anche la storia del vecchio Honda, protagonista dei quattro romanzi, e ora alle prese con i fantasmi della sua esistenza, irretito in un gioco di inganni della mente. Nel giovane Toru ha creduto di vedere la terza reincarnazione dell'amato Kiyoaki, dopo Isao e Ying Chan. E piano piano il dubbio si insinua nel disperato Honda: il dubbio che Kiyoaki e le sue reincarnazioni non siano mai esistiti, che la sua vita sia stata soltanto illusione.

„Eine gut erzählte Geschichte verträgt zehn Münder, oder sie ist keine. Das Tuti Nameh hat wie alle Klassiker tausendundeinen Mund vertragen und strahlt heute in einer Frische, als hätten die genialen Erzähler vor tausend Jahren in Indien unsere Zeit gemeint“, schreibt Rafik Schami in seinem Vorwort zu den /k/Geschichten des Papageien/k/. Siegfried Schaarschmidt hat aus der Fülle der Geschichten, die der weise Papagei dem Sultan Kobad in Damaskus erzählt, die schönsten ausgewählt und sie in eine zeitgemäße Sprache übertragen. Auf diese Weise ist ein verschütteter Schatz orientalischer Märchenpoesie endlich zugänglich geworden.

Die japanische Literatur, eine der vielfältigsten und interessantesten Literaturen der Gegenwart, ist hierzulande immer noch »terra incognita«. Für entdeckungsfreudige Leser bietet der vorliegende Band in einführenden Einzeldarstellungen mit Autorenporträts und einer Bibliographie der nach 1945 übersetzten japanischen Literatur umfassende und übersichtliche Information.