The Life of a Stupid Man: Ryunosuke Akutagawa (Penguin Little Black Classics)

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Akutagawa’s stories are fascinating because they each deal with themes of death and decay through the lens of everyday objects, nature, and human relationships. The stories are deeply embedded in the heaviness of feeling and human experience, putting into perspective the confines of a human life and how synonymous it is with the eternal ephemerality of “a drop of dew, a flash of lightning.” True, the Van Gogh was just a book of reproductions, but even in the photographs of those paintings, he sensed the vivid presence of nature.” At twenty-nine, life no longer held any brightness for him, but Voltaire supplied him with man-made wings.” The Life of a Stupid Man" is a harrowing summation of Akutagawa's life, told in a montage of 51 fragments. In its form it more closely resembles the film scripts he was also working on during these last months, "Yuwaku" ("Temptation") and "Asakusa Koen" ("Asakusa Park"), and betrays the influence German expressionism had on him. The sections describe books he has read and women he has loved, his fear of society and his hatred of himself, and every line reeks of defeat and death. Section 49, entitled "A Stuffed Swan", concludes:

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Ah, what is the life of a human being — a drop of dew, a flash of lightning? This is so sad, so sad." Nothing like dipping into your favourite author's works when you're stressed no? I'm glad this was the last book I read before studying for my exams. PDF / EPUB File Name: The_life_of_a_stupid_man_-_Ryunosuke_Akutagawa.pdf, The_life_of_a_stupid_man_-_Ryunosuke_Akutagawa.epubThe following two stories are autobiographical and a bit harder to get your head around. Akutagawa has a reflective and delicate way of forming his thoughts and I suspect that the beauty of his writing got lost in translation, however, this is a wild guess and I have no way of actually validating this. The next two titles, Death Register and The Life of a Stupid Man are both split into several parts. While I like the way it’s narrated with clarity in terms of the narrator’s thoughts, beliefs, and experiences, I just wish the writing wasn’t as disjointed. The sun threatened to set before long, but he went on reading book spines with undiminished intensity. Lined up before him was the fin de siècle itself. Nietzsche, Verlaine, the Goncourt brothers, Dostoyevsky, Hauptmann, Flaubert... You gentlemen kill with your power, with your money, and sometimes with your words: you tell people you're doing them a favour. True, no blood flows, the man is still alive, but you've killed him all the same."

The Life of a Stupid Man – The Boss Book Club The Life of a Stupid Man – The Boss Book Club

The life of a stupid man is an autobiography that leads to the death of Akutagawa, told in 51 short verses. His writing is one that I loved. It is daunting, sorrowful and mostly, it shows the thoughts of a man that feels empty inside. Stories like this, when a person whom has not experienced this feeling once in their life, would not be able to relate to the story. It was depressing and dark, but for me, it gave me a sense of comfort in his writing.The second story tells us about the death of the people related to the author. It was melancholic and sad but I crave for something more. The three short stories will not be for everyone's cup of tea, which I recommend proceeding in this book with extreme caution of the trigger warnings (Death, Suicide, Suicidal Thoughts) . It highlights the stages of life in which Akutagawa reflects on his life, up till the moment of his death bed.