Jest coś niebywale ujmującego w tych luźnych i z perspektywy czasu dość booomerskich zapiskach Tanizakiego. Pochwała cienia to kwintesencja albo nawet więcej – to czysta esencja japońskiej estetyki wyrastającej z etyki Wschodu, tak różniącej się od tej zachodniej.
Zachwycający w swojej szczerości esej o zmaganiu się tradycji z modernizacją, a fragment o wychodku jako miejscu kontemplacji i zadumy wspaniały!

Có lần, chị họ hỏi tôi rằng thiền mang tới nhận thức mới mẻ nào. Tôi thành thật trả lời rằng chẳng có gì mới, vẫn y như những cái mình vốn biết, chỉ là mình cảm nhận khác đi. Trước đây, mình tách biệt với nó, giờ thì mình là nó. Chị hỏi có phải như một asana, mình biết rõ lý thuyết, luyện tập mỗi ngày, nhưng phải rất lâu sau, vào một ngày nào đó, mình bất chợt nhận ra, "A nó là vậy"? Đúng là thế. Cuốn sách này của Tanizaki cũng là chia sẻ về một trải nghiệm như vậy, về bóng tối.

Vài ngày trước khi đọc cuốn sách này, trong một chiều muộn sau khi làm việc xong, tôi tắt đèn và ngồi thừ trên ghế. Khi trời tối dần, tôi chợt thấy chữ "bóng tối" ở bìa sách lóe sáng trên bàn. Tôi đã có cuốn sách này từ lâu và hẳn cũng đã biết chữ "bóng tối" mạ trắng nhưng không bận tâm, cho tới lúc này. Một khoảnh khắc rất ngắn ngủi, một trải nghiệm rất bình thường, kể ra thì nghe càng tầm thường, nhưng thật sự làm tôi rúng động. Khi đọc sách, Tanizaki cũng nhiều lần nói về trải nghiệm này, gọi nó là "xuất thần". Thiền có lẽ sẽ gọi là "kiến tánh". Hay nếu lãng mạn thì như Trịnh Công Sơn gọi là "những giờ phút mặc khải muộn màng về đời sống của nhau".

in my solitude you haunt me

Yazar kendi ülkesinin batılılaşma merakı yüzünden , hangi geleneklerini kaybettiklerini anlatmakta ama bakıldığında bu her toplum için geçerli . İnsan ırkının estetik kaygısı nedeni ile yaptığı icatların toplum üzerindeki etkisini anlatımı çok iyiydi. Son olarak kitabın kapağını günlerdir birşeye benzetememiş ben, kitabı okuyunca eski iyidir mantığı ile neden böyle bir seçim yapılmış olduğunu anladım. Bu ilizyonu sevdim .

کتاب نگاهی بدیع و عمیق به سایه ها و بازیشان با نور در زیبایی شناسی ژاپنی و در کل میتوان گفت زیبایی شناسی شرقی دارد.
مقاله ی کم حجمی ست و پیشنهاد میکنم مطالعه ش کنید.

The quality that we call beauty must always grow from the realities of life, and our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, presently came to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows towards beauty's ends

(If you don't have time to read the whole of my review, go ahead and skip the next two paragraphs)

There is a practice essay prompt in the US College Board's guide to the SAT book that goes something like "Do changes that make our lives easier always make them better?". This is one of my favourite prompts, as it captures a real tension. It's easier to drive to the supermarket for a loaf, but wouldn't we be better off walking, saving petrol (and the money it costs), breathing some fresh air, enjoying the glorious Autumn day and (assuming they're in working order) stretching our legs? Might it not be even better if we used some of the organic whole spelt flour in the cupboard to make real honest-to-goodness home-baked bread? Take your frustrations out on an unfeeling lump of dough, save still more money, avoid additives and enjoy the fruit of your own labour! But we are time-poor, we are tempted, we drive to the supermarket after all.

Another common experience is sadness as an enjoyable technology is superseded. For decades after my mother stopped using her Singer sewing machine it sat in the corner taking up space, its implacable beauty defying anyone to suggest throwing it out.

This is Tanizaki's elegy for the aesthetic superiority of vanishing inconvenience and dirt. The Japanese house crouches in the deep shadow of its roof, lit by the mournful and meagre glow trickling through its paper walls. In this dimness, its simplicity and its natural materials, slowly gathering oily grime and wearing away (and thereby growing ever more beautiful), make sense; they provide the balance and poetry and mystery that make the quotidian details of life so pleasurable. Soup served in lacquer bowls so you can't see what's in it properly and chilly outdoor toilets are infinitely preferable, aesthetically speaking, to pale ceramic dishes and sparkling tiles.

My point in making light here is that Tanizaki sells it, even if I am repelled by his remarks on skin colour and dubious about the idea of a stable 'national character'. A writer who can make me yearn, spine tinglingly, for a wooden outhouse instead of a cosy en suite can only be a genius. There is a rich thought here about the subjectivity of experience that is missed by Western aesthetics. We plan our lighting for mood, but only for the stage consider how it will create the scene. When Tanizaki describes 'darkness lit by candlelight' or the gold costumes of the Noh glowing in dimness, he makes us aware that every banal drama of the day takes its character from its illumination. But he makes an even stronger point, a superb, thrilling point:

how different everything would be if we in the Orient had developed our own science. Suppose for instance that we had developed our own physics and chemistry: would not the techniques and industries based on them have taken a different form, would not our myriads of everyday gadgets, our medicines, the products of our industrial art - would they not have suited our national temper better than they do?

To take a trivial example near at hand... if the [fountain pen] had been invented by the ancient Chinese or Japanese it would surely have had a tufted end like our writing brush... and since we would have found it inconvenient to write on Western paper, something near Japanese paper would have been more in demand. Foreign ink and pen would not be as popular as they are; the talk of discarding our system of writing for Roman letters would be less noisy.. But more than that: our thought and our literature might not be imitating the West as they are, but might have pushed forward into new regions quite on their own.

This musing of the conservative, aging novelist is not mere nostalgia, letting the old machine linger and sighing uselessly for bygone days, but the wellspring of hope behind decolonisation: even the culture-shaping tools of science and technology can be remodelled and reshaped; the invader can be displaced by new growth surging up from the strong roots of indigenous knowings... This is something the Rationalist fails to imagine. Sometimes, Tanizaki's melancholic essay surprisingly shows us, radical change begins by going backwards.

در مورد چیه؟
در یک کلمه در موردِ زیبایی‌شناسیه. نویسنده از تاثیرِ تفاوت‌های فرهنگی‌شون بر زیبایی‌شناسی‌اش می‌گه. مثلا این که ژاپنی‌ها از برق زدنِ ظروف بدشون می‌آد و ممکنه کسی سرِ خدمت‌کارش به این علت داد بزنه که زنگ‌زدگی‌ها رو پاک‌کرده. یا به‌قول خود نویسنده: «روشناییِ حزن‌انگیز رو به درخششی سطحی ترجیح می‌دن.» و «این جرم‌اندودگی رو تابشِ جلایِ کهنگی می‌بینن.»

I get that it's a 90yo essay on aesthetics but I could've done without the colorism, the idealized infantilized female body, or the complete omission of beauty wrt men (maybe he didn't consider aesthetics applicable to people, only to objects e.g. women). anyway he described the skin of east Asian women as having a darkness under the skin with shadows gathering like dirt and compared it to white people who always have a limpid glow or something and I'm still fucking ticked off, apparently the inherent cloudiness in my skin is why the Hwhites are justified in destroying Asian culture lmfao ok whatever thanks for feeding the racism machine I'm off to punch a wall

Çok keyif aldığım, çok şey öğrendiğim bir kitap oldu. Japonların yaşam tarzı çok ilgimi çekiyor, ne zaman okusam yatağımı yere serip güne miso çorbası içerek başlayasım geliyor, Gölgeye Övgü'de de aynısı oldu. Ev dekorasyonu ile ilgili kısımları bayılarak okudum, geleneksel Japon tiyatrosuyla ilgili kısımlarda çok sıkıldım. Tanizaki'nin Japon modernleşmesini eleştirirken kullandığı argümanlar, bizim Türk modernleşmesini eleştirirken kullandığımız argümanlara çok benziyordu bazı açılardan. Ama kabullenip bununla yaşamaya yönelikti söylemleri daha çok, zira öyle bir şey ki ne kadar eleştirirsek eleştirelim bir şekilde sunduğu konfordan vazgeçemiyoruz. Son kısımda eşinin anlattığı anekdottaki gibi: Tanizaki yeni bir ev inşa ettirmeye karar verir, görüşmeye gelen mimar gururla "Gölgeye Övgü kitabınızı okudum efendim, nasıl bir ev istediğinizi çok iyi biliyorum" der, Tanizaki gülerek, "ama ben öyle bir evde asla oturamam ki" der.

Japon Edebiyatı'nın İngilizce çevirilerini çok beğenmesem de Vintage iki Japonca profesörüne bu kitabı çevirterek çok iyi bir karar vermiş. Açıkçası okul kütüphanesine bu kitabı istetirken aslında Japon kültürü üzerine uzun bir makale olduğunun farkında değildim. Kitap beni şaşırttı bu yüzden. Adından da anlaşılacağı üzre, kitap gölgelere ve karanlığa bir övgü adeta. Tanizaki dönemi içerisinde genişleyen batı hayranlığını eleştirmiş ve sadeliği ve gölgeleri yücelten Japon kültürünün adeta yok oluşundan dem vurmuş. Kitabın sayfalarında yazarın kendi kültürüne olan zarif hayranlığını görmemek elde değil. Kütüphanenizdeki koltukta küçük, tatlı bir okuma yapmak isterseniz bu kitap ilaç gibi gelecektir.

Japonların gizemli, mistik, gölgeli, ‘kusurlu’ yanlarına, bu alışkanlıklarının kültürlerindeki yansımalarına dair şahane bir deneme olmuş. Tanizaki’nin estetik dağınıklığını okumak her zamanki gibi yine şahane.

Το εγκώμιο της σκιάς είναι ένα μικρό,περιεκτικό και ουσιώδες βιβλίο που θα μπορούσε να χαρακτηριστεί και ως εγχειρίδιο αισθητικής στα παραδοσιακά ιδεώδη της Ανατολής.

Ενα δοκίμιο απόρριψης κάθε επιφανειακής δυτικοποιημένης εξέλιξης.

Μια καλογραμμένη έκθεση πάνω σε ανατολίτικο μετάξι με σκούρες αποχρώσεις ιδεών και όνειρα μέσα σε ομίχλες σκιών,σκοτάδι,ασάφεια,παρωχημένη αισθητική αντίληψη και γοητεία νηφαλιότητας.

Η σκουριά και η μουντή παλαιωμένη πατίνα του χρόνου,παράλληλα με το αμυδρό και το μισοϊδωμένο της σκιάς αποτελεί τη φύση της ομορφιάς.

Το εγκώμιο της σκιάς δεν είναι σε καμία περίπτωση μία αντιπαράθεση ανάμεσα στην παράδοση και την αναπότρεπτη εξέλιξη του πολιτισμού.
Αντιθέτως δημιουργεί μια συναισθηματική γαλήνη μέσα απο την αποδοχή με λογική και στωικότητα.

Πολύ σεμνά και τρυφερά αναπολεί,νοσταλγεί και διαπιστώνει τη θλιβερή απώλεια της μαγείας της σκιάς,της νηφαλιότητας και της γαλήνης που χάνονται μπροστά σε ότι κραυγαλέα γυαλίζει και επιδεικνύεται.

Απο αυτή τη μαγεία της παλαιότητας γεννιούνται όλα τα θαύματα των υλικών πλασμάτων,των φαντασμάτων και των ξωτικών του σκοταδιού.

Διαβάζοντας το παρασύρεσαι και αφήνεσαι σε μια αισθητική ανακούφιση. Μια παράξενη χαλάρωση που απλώνεται στο σώμα και το πνεύμα.

Βρίσκεσαι μέσα σε ένα βουδιστικό μοναστήρι του 14ου αιώνα και βιώνεις πνευματική και αισθητική αυτοσυγκέντρωση και φιλοσοφικού νοήματος ζέν.

Οι αξίες πηγάζουν απο την εσωτερικότητα και την υπαινικτική μαγεία του σκοταδιού.
Όπου εισχωρεί το φως ξεθωριάζει η γοητεία και οι γρήγοροι ρυθμοί εξέλιξης εξοντώνουν τη μοναχικότητα,το γούστο,τη λεπτότητα και την καλαίσθητη θλίψη.

Η ομορφιά είναι ψυχρή,σκοτεινή και διακριτική!


Καλή ανάγνωση!
Πολλούς ασπασμούς.

Starting to think this Tanizaki guy is a bit of a weeaboo.