ещё о Лафкадио Херне
Jan. 20th, 2004 11:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ded_maximЛафкадио Херн, кстати, был чуть ли не единственным гайдзином, которого японцы воистину полюбили и приняли как своего. Причиной тому было следующее: Херн, как никто другой из европейцев, сумел увидеть подлинную природу отношения японцев к покровительственному вмешательству Запада -- презрение, искусно запрятанное под маской вежливости. Презрение к метрополису из камня, стали и стекла, презрение к отчуждению, порождённому техническим прогрессом и индустриальной революцией. Очень увлекательно написано о Херне и его идеях и взглядах в книге "The Great Wave : Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan" Кристофера Бенфи.
Тема фундаментальной несовместимости социокультурных парадигм Запада и Востока затрагивалась Херном ещё в 1895 году, в статье "The Genius of Japanese Civilization" (The Atlantic, October 1895), но даже и сейчас многое из написанного им читается свежо и злободневно.
Вот что пишет Херн о типичном западном метрополисе:
Stairways of steel and cement, of brass and stone, with costliest balustrades, ascend through the decades and double decades of stories; but no foot treads them. By water-power, by steam, by electricity, men go up and down; the heights are too dizzy, the distances too great, for the use of the limbs. My friend who pays rent of five thousand dollars for his rooms in the fourteenth story of a monstrosity not far off has never trodden his stairway. I am walking for curiosity alone; with a serious purpose I should not walk, — the spaces are too broad, the time is too precious, for such slow exertion; — men travel from district to district, from house to office, by steam. Heights are too great for the voice to traverse; orders are given and obeyed by machinery. By electricity faraway doors are opened; with one touch a hundred rooms are lighted or heated.
And all this enormity is hard, grim, dumb; it is the enormity of mathematical power applied to utilitarian ends of solidity and durability. These leagues of palaces, of warehouses, of business structures, of buildings describable and indescribable, are not beautiful, but sinister. One feels depressed by the mere sensation of the enormous life which created them, life without sympathy; of their prodigious manifestation of power, power without pity.
Безжизненности, бездушности, вещизму Запада Херн противопоставляет аскезу, простоту, минималистичность японского Востока:
Ability to live without furniture, without impedimenta, with the least possible amount of neat clothing, shows more than the advantage held by this Japanese race in the struggle of life; it shows also the real character of some weaknesses in our own civilization. It forces reflection upon the useless multiplicity of our daily wants. We must have meat and bread and butter; glass windows and fire; hats, white shirts, and woolen underwear; boots and shoes; trunks, bags, and boxes; bedsteads, mattresses, sheets, and blankets: all of which a Japanese can do without, and is really better off without. Think for a moment how important an article of Occidental attire is the single costly item of white shirts! Yet even the linen shirt, the so-called "badge of a gentleman," is in itself a useless garment. It gives neither warmth nor comfort. It represents in our fashions the survival of something once a luxurious class distinction, but today meaningless and useless as the buttons sewn on the outside of coat-sleeves.
К сожалению, в этом описании уже не содержится и доли правды. Современная Япония давно обогнала даже Америку в гонке за правом быть названной идеальным "обществом спектакля" (по Дебору) или царством "симулякров" (по Бодрийяру). Ни в какой другой стране мира нет такого интернализованного сиюминутного потребительского инстинкта, как в Японии. А так как японцы по своей природе конформисты, то этот потребительский инстинкт выражается, например, в том, что, скажем, этой осенью все молодые японки красят волосы в ядовито-красный цвет.
Тема фундаментальной несовместимости социокультурных парадигм Запада и Востока затрагивалась Херном ещё в 1895 году, в статье "The Genius of Japanese Civilization" (The Atlantic, October 1895), но даже и сейчас многое из написанного им читается свежо и злободневно.
Вот что пишет Херн о типичном западном метрополисе:
Stairways of steel and cement, of brass and stone, with costliest balustrades, ascend through the decades and double decades of stories; but no foot treads them. By water-power, by steam, by electricity, men go up and down; the heights are too dizzy, the distances too great, for the use of the limbs. My friend who pays rent of five thousand dollars for his rooms in the fourteenth story of a monstrosity not far off has never trodden his stairway. I am walking for curiosity alone; with a serious purpose I should not walk, — the spaces are too broad, the time is too precious, for such slow exertion; — men travel from district to district, from house to office, by steam. Heights are too great for the voice to traverse; orders are given and obeyed by machinery. By electricity faraway doors are opened; with one touch a hundred rooms are lighted or heated.
And all this enormity is hard, grim, dumb; it is the enormity of mathematical power applied to utilitarian ends of solidity and durability. These leagues of palaces, of warehouses, of business structures, of buildings describable and indescribable, are not beautiful, but sinister. One feels depressed by the mere sensation of the enormous life which created them, life without sympathy; of their prodigious manifestation of power, power without pity.
Безжизненности, бездушности, вещизму Запада Херн противопоставляет аскезу, простоту, минималистичность японского Востока:
Ability to live without furniture, without impedimenta, with the least possible amount of neat clothing, shows more than the advantage held by this Japanese race in the struggle of life; it shows also the real character of some weaknesses in our own civilization. It forces reflection upon the useless multiplicity of our daily wants. We must have meat and bread and butter; glass windows and fire; hats, white shirts, and woolen underwear; boots and shoes; trunks, bags, and boxes; bedsteads, mattresses, sheets, and blankets: all of which a Japanese can do without, and is really better off without. Think for a moment how important an article of Occidental attire is the single costly item of white shirts! Yet even the linen shirt, the so-called "badge of a gentleman," is in itself a useless garment. It gives neither warmth nor comfort. It represents in our fashions the survival of something once a luxurious class distinction, but today meaningless and useless as the buttons sewn on the outside of coat-sleeves.
К сожалению, в этом описании уже не содержится и доли правды. Современная Япония давно обогнала даже Америку в гонке за правом быть названной идеальным "обществом спектакля" (по Дебору) или царством "симулякров" (по Бодрийяру). Ни в какой другой стране мира нет такого интернализованного сиюминутного потребительского инстинкта, как в Японии. А так как японцы по своей природе конформисты, то этот потребительский инстинкт выражается, например, в том, что, скажем, этой осенью все молодые японки красят волосы в ядовито-красный цвет.
