| This dissertation investigates the potential for a reconciliation between politics and aesthetics, as represented in the notions of revolution ( kakumei) and anarchy in the early works of the French modernist author Andre Gide and the Japanese modernist author Ishikawa Jun, who translated some of Gide's works into Japanese. Focusing on the issue of the writing self, I show how these authors create a theory of prose as part of their perception of their contemporary societies. Ishikawa's narratives discussed are Fugen (translated into English as The Bodhisattva, or Samantabhadra , 1936) and "Yakeato no iesu" ("The Jesus of the Ruins," 1946). Gide's narratives are Paludes ( Marshlands, 1895) and Les caves du Vatican ( Lafcadio's Adventure, 1914). The form of metafiction and the concept of "play/asobi" are keys to understanding the dialogic structure in these narratives. In addition, Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological analysis of Bergson's "life-philosophy" is also useful, since Bergson's impact is extensive in the social background of Gide's and Ishikawa's literature.; The notions of revolution and anarchy, in the political essays and stories of Ishikawa and Gide, converge as forces for order on the one hand (revolution aims at the establishment of a new order), and disorder, on the other hand. This convergence suggests an alternative to the existing tensions between aesthetics and political engagement as focuses for literature. This alternative literary world, however, does not fall into closure. Rather, in the early narratives of both of these modernist writers, it emerges in the ongoing creative process of the writing self. |
