Abstract
Richard Gary Brautigan was an American postmodern writer and poet, whose creative activity was greatly influenced by Japanese literature and culture. In 1976, during his first trip to Japan, Brautigan created a cycle of seventy-seven poems in prose dedicated to this journey – “June 30th, June 30th”. This paper examines the images of Japan that push the poet towards introspection and reflection and can be metaphorically understood as a travel inside one’s own self, as a way to self-awareness. Themes, ideas, artistic devices and literary techniques, allusions to classical Japanese poetry, as well as the influence of Zen Buddhism and Japanese literary forms on Brautigan’s poetic experiments are analyzed. The writer’s poems of the Japanese cycle are discussed with regard to the references in his work to Japanese medieval literature, the aesthetics of which he combines with postmodern tendencies. For the lyrical character, Japan for the first time shifts from the realm of fantasy to the realm of actual experience, which pushes the poet towards introspection. The collection is characterized by such techniques as intertextuality; fragmentation; removal of boundaries between reality and illusion; irony, allegory, symbolism of images, and use of hybrid genres. At the same time, allusions to classical Japanese literature are in the diary structure (a travel journal) of the poetry collection; as well as in references to a number of traditional images from haiku by poets Bashō Matsuo and Kobayashi Issa (a frog, a crow, a dewdrop world), which acquire new interpretations from Brautigan.
Presenters
Liala KhronopuloAssociate Professor, Japanese Studies, Saint Petersburg State University, Russian Federation
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Allusions to Japanese literature, Poems in prose, Zen aesthetics, Postmodernism
