bsd-bibliophile

[bsd-bibliophile]

Don’t fail. I don’t mind if you cheat, but just do not fail. If you fail, it will be a blemish upon your name for your entire life. Even when you’re older, and you’ve taken some respectable and important position, people may forget the time you cheated long ago, but they won’t forget that you failed… . A school is, after all, designed for students not to fail. If a student manages to fail at such a place, it means he is being unreasonable and wishes to fail himself. He’s just trying to get attention. He’s rebelling against the teacher. It is vanity. And it is a ridiculous sense of self-righteousness.

Dazai Osamu, A New Hamlet

#dazai osamu #japanese literature #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd

[bsd-bibliophile]

Human beings are never satisfied with themselves just as they are. The desire to become a dashing prince, a knight, or a lovely princess is the most common in the world, so it is fair to say that the heroes and heroines who appear in popular literature are created to satisfy those aspirations. Children’s dreams are more daring.

Edogawa Ranpo, “A Desire for Transformation” essay (1954) from The Edogawa Rampo Reader

#edogawa ranpo #japanese literature #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd

[bsd-bibliophile]

Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.

H.P. Lovecraft, “Beyond the Wall of Sleep”

#hp lovecraft #american literature #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd

[bsd-bibliophile]

If you can’t help but do bad things, don’t use others. Act on your own. Good or bad, you’ve got to do things on your own.

Sakaguchi Ango, Wind, Light, and the Twenty-Year-Old Me

#sakaguchi ango #japanese literature #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd

[bsd-bibliophile]

Oda wanted to die. . . . I, above all other men, felt and understood deeply the sadness of Oda. The first time I met him on the Ginza, I thought, "God, what an unhappy man," and I could scarcely bear the pain. He gave the vivid impression that there was across his path nothing but the wall of death. He wanted to die. But there was nothing I could do. A big-brotherly warning - what hateful hypocrisy. There was nothing to do but watch. The "adults" of the world will probably criticize him smugly, saying he didn't have enough self-respect. But how dare they think they have the right! Yesterday I found record in Mr. Tatsuno [Yutaka]'s introductory essay on Senancour the following words: "People say it is a sin to flee by throwing life away. However, these same sophists who forbid me death often expose me to the presence of death, force me to proceed toward death. The various innovations they think up increase the opportunities for death around me, their preaching leads me toward death, and the laws they establish present me with death." You are the ones who killed Oda, aren't you? His recent sudden death was a poem of his final, sorry resistance. Oda! You did well.

Dazai’s published eulogy for Odasaku. I found it in The Saga of Dazai Osamu: A Critical Study and Translation by Phyllis I. Lyons, pages 49-50.

#dazai osamu #japanese literature #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd

[bsd-bibliophile]

However, sickness wasn’t like military exercises at school, something you can be exempt from if you were frail and unable to take it. Whether people liked it or not, and no matter how grand or humble they might be, everybody shuffled alone in the same column until they reached the final goal of death.

Kajii Motojirō, “The Carefree Patient” from The Youth of Things: Death and Life in the Age of Kajii Motojirō

#kajii motojirō #japanese literature #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd

[bsd-bibliophile]

Given my lack of experience, if my books were taken away from me, I would be utterly devastated. That’s how much I depend on what’s written in books. I’ll read one book and be completely wild about it - I’ll trust it, I’ll assimilate it, I’ll sympathize with it, I’ll try to make it a part of my life. Then, I’ll read another book and instantly, I’ll switch over to that one.

Dazai Osamu, Schoolgirl

#dazai osamu #japanese literature #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd

[bsd-bibliophile]

Everybody does evil: some openly, others in secret.

Ozaki Kōyō, The Gold Demon

#ozaki kōyō #japanese literature #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd

[bsd-bibliophile]

Up ahead they’s a thousan’ lives we might live, but when it comes it’ll on'y be one.

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

#john steinbeck #american literature #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd

[bsd-bibliophile]

Amiable smiles radiate from his rather narrow eyes, so crystal clear that they appear as if they had caught the bright glow of full-blown cherry-blossoms. However, a closer look may bring to light the sober truth that complete happiness does not always dwell therein. For his smiles seem to yearn after something far away and to frown upon everything nearby.

Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, “Heichu, the Amorous Genius” from Japanese Short Stories by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke

#akutagawa ryūnosuke #japanese literature #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd

[bsd-bibliophile]

It’ll be fine, she thought. We’re going to support each other. We’ll fight - together.

Tsujimura Mizuki, Lonely Castle in the Mirror

#tsujimura mizuki #japanese literature #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd

[bsd-bibliophile]

Sometimes he would think to himself, ‘At any rate, even if he might have been unhappy, to be written up in the papers like this upon your death is a real honor,’ and he would compare this with the vast majority of ordinary people, who were born, lived, and died without causing the smallest ripple. Meanwhile the rain fell and the winds blew.

Tayama Katai, Country Teacher

#tayama katai #japanese literature #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd

[bsd-bibliophile]

I felt as though I had been riding a huge, newly built ship. But where is this ship going? Even I don’t know. I’m still in a dreamscape. This ship is effortlessly leaving the shore. I have a vague premonition that is heading in an uncharted virgin course that has never been experienced by anyone in the world. But now, only the huge new ship is welcomed and advances by yielding to the mercy of the sea lane in the heavens.

Dazai Osamu, Pandora’s Box

#dazai osamu #japanese literature #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd

[bsd-bibliophile]

Don’t be overwise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid - the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

#fyodor dostoevsky #russian literature #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd

[bsd-bibliophile]

Art, according to him, was the revolt of humans against nature. It was none other than the expression of a human being’s dissatisfaction with the way things are and his desire to imprint his own individual personality upon nature.

Edogawa Ranpo, Strange Tale of Panorama Island

#edogawa ranpo #japanese literature #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd

[bsd-bibliophile]

Sadness lasts but a moment, And once you awaken Happiness was only a dream.

Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, “A Blind Man’s Tale” from Seven Japanese Tales

#tanizaki jun'ichirō #japanese literature #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd

[bsd-bibliophile]

What the hell, I thought, I’ll piss it all away on booze. I’ll get by somehow, whatever happens afterwards. If it turns out I can't get by - well, even if it comes to that, I’ll probably get by somehow.

Dazai Osamu, “Two Little Words” from Self Portraits

#dazai osamu #japanese literature #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd