Abstract
The coda examines Natsume Sōseki’s (1867–1916) final Chinese poem (kanshi)—the single lyric form from the literati (bunjin) tradition that he shared with the three other writers examined in this book. It reads Sōseki’s poem as an allegory for—and enactment of—the future of form and feeling in literati culture in the absence of kanshi. The poem concludes with the poet singing a song to white clouds, an ironic and paradoxical ending that intimates the possibility that literati culture might survive only as a disembodied echo in the ether of Japanese cultural memory.
Poetry should really only be philosophized.
—Giorgio Agamben, “The End of the Poem” (1999)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Agamben, Giorgio. The End of the Poem: Studies in Poetics. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999.
Ben-Merre, David. “Falling into Silence: Giorgio Agamben at the End of the Poem.” Mosaic 45, no. 1 (March 2012): 89–104.
Boym, David. On Creativity. New York: Routledge, 1996.
Fitzgerald, William. Variety: The Life of a Roman Concept. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Grossman, Allen. True-Love: Essays on Poetry and Valuing. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009.
Iida Rigyō. Sōseki shishū yaku. Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 1967.
Kroeber, Karl. “A New Reading of ‘The World Is Too Much With Us.’” Studies in Romanticism 2, no. 3 (Spring, 1963): 183–188.
Matsuoka Yuzuru. Sōseki no kanshi. Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1966.
Makizumi Etsuko. “Natsume Sōseki no Fūryū—Sōseki ni totte no kanshi.” In Kanbunmyaku no Sōseki, edited by Yamaguchi Tadayoshi, 63–85. Tokyo: Kanrin Shobō, 2018.
Natsume Sōseki. Soseki zenshū. 29 vols. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2003.
Owen, Stephen, ed. and trans. An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996.
Perloff, Marjorie, and Craig Dworkin, eds. The Sound of Poetry/The Poetry of Sound. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009.
Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1968.
The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Edited by Roland Greene, et al., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012.
Wordsworth, William. Selected Poems. Edited by Stephen Gill. New York: Penguin, 2004.
Yoshikawa Kōjirō, ed. Sōseki shichū. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1967. Reprint, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2002.
Yu, Pauline, ed. Voices of the Song Lyric in China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mewhinney, M. (2022). Coda: Echoes in the Ether. In: Form and Feeling in Japanese Literati Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11922-4_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11922-4_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-11921-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-11922-4
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)