Abstract

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Przemysław Górecki
Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań
Poland

An Aesthetic Reflection on Kappa by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Abstract: The article is an attempt of reading the modernistic short story of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, a Japanese “father of short story”, in terms of aesthetics. The subject of this analysis is the Polish translation of the work Kappa, also known in Poland under the title In the land of Aquarius, made by Mikołaj Melanowicz. The story shows a phantasmagoric visit to the strange country (peopled by anthropomorphic creatures) and some sober observations of this disturbingly atypical land made by the main character. Due to the multitude of culturally recognizable themes referring to the history of Gulliver, the work bears remarkable signs of anti-utopia. My analysis takes on the themes of the story that are important from the point of view of this branch of philosophy and on its symbolic dimension with its immersion in the tradition of Japanese aesthetics. Basing my interpretation on the critical revision of the basic assumptions of the Japanese aesthetics school and on the close reading of the two surfaces of the work (literal and symbolic), I consider how the text functions in a philosophical way. The article focuses both on the literally aesthetic level of expression (descriptions of the presented world) as well as on the aesthetics of narration and the way of constructing the text.

Keywords: literary studies, comparative studies, Japan, modernism, aesthetics, anti-utopia