An occasion of synchronicity
Rainy Day readers will be familiar with our devotion to both Jung's theory of synchronicity and F. Scott Fitzgerald's, The Great Gatsby. Equipped with the two, one has all the charts needed for navigating the shoals of life. Gatsby's global significance is confirmed daily so it was almost inevitable that Haruki Murakami would talk about "the enchanted metropolitan twilight" in "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running". Between marathons, he notes in his diary:
"One other project I'm involved in now is translating Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and things are going well. I've finished the first draft and am revising the second. I'm taking my time, going over each line carefully, and as I do so the translation gets smoother and I'm better able to render Fitzgerald's prose into more natural Japanese. It's a little strange, perhaps, to make this claim at such a late date, but Gatsby really is an outstanding novel. I never get tired of it, no matter how many times I read it. It's the kind of literature that nourishes you as you read, and every time I do I'm struck by something new, and experience a fresh reaction to it. I find it amazing how such a young writer, only twenty-nine at the time, could grasp — so insightfully, so equitably, and so warmly — the realities of life. How was this possible? The more I think about it, and the more I read the novel, the more mysterious it all is."
Yes, it is a mystery, and the synchronicity of it all makes it even more mysterious.
Comments
Gatsby is important in another sense these days in that it signalled the end of a particular phase of capitalism. The Crash of 1929, the Depression and the Second World War are all hinted at. Some would say this is a selective interpretation, but the genius of the book is that it sparkles with the nervousness of the times and all these jitters let to one thing after another. I am glad that Japanese readers finally have a good translation of it.
Posted by: Ralf Schulz | September 18, 2008 4:59 PM