Many of Kenzaburo Oé’s phrases reflect his personal tragedies and the terrible social events he sensed. He is one of the most important and profound writers of the twentieth century, and also one of the most read in the world.
Kenzaburo Oé was born in a small town in Japan, from a very humble family and his desire to progress led him to live in Tokyo, where he specialized in philosophy and literature, suffered a cultural clash because his hometown was very different from the great city he met, which led him to develop his first texts.
“As a child I have an interest in knowing how our limited body adapts to suffering. ” – Kenzaburo Oé-
Most of Kenzaburo Oé’s phrases are brief and relevant, have a humanistic essence, with existential nuances. His style is agile and vigorous, with a wealth of poetic images and deep reflections, are some of his best-known statements.
Fear appears repeatedly in Kenzaburo Oé’s phrases, explicitly or implicitly, but your goal is not to succumb to fear, but to think of it. This wonderful writer, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994, also believes in the ability of human beings to break free.
One of Kenzaburo Oé’s phrases that reflects this spirit says: “To control fear you have to isolate it. And for that, do you have to precisely define your object ?. Very good advice. Specifying what the object of fear is is one way to start overcoming it.
One of Kenzaburo Oé’s phrases reads: “When I want to look at our world with two eyes, what I perceive are two overlapping worlds: one bright and bright, surprisingly clear; the other, vague and subtly dark?.
This text reflects the ambiguity of existence, which is also the ambiguity of the human being. The duality that inhabits us: good and evil, light and darkness, the great and the miserable?We constantly face this paradox throughout our lives.
Kenzaburo Oé has also reflected on his own profession as a writer on numerous occasions. Writing, in addition to vocation, is also a position in front of life, while it is witness, therapy and cultural exercise.
In this regard, he says, “A good writer should never stabilize. ” It refers to the fact that one of the drivers that leads to writing is precisely instability. Other than that, there would essentially be no reason to imagine other possible worlds through literature.
One of the events that hit Kenzaburo Oé the most was the launch of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not only because of the devastation it caused, but also because of the impressive amount of physical and psychological damage it left to the Japanese.
There are many Kenzaburo Oé phrases dedicated to this topic. One of them said, “The most important lesson of the Hiroshima tragedy is dignity. “He refers to his people’s unwavering will to rebuild the nation after this terrible event. they were able to compete against the historical moment: first with surrender, then with reconstruction.
Kenzaburo Oé’s objective is not to moralize through his literature, he does not intend to give moral lessons, nor does he intend to propose models of behavior, however, ethical questioning underlies all his novels and essays, this happens more as a reflection than as an explicit approach or dogma.
One of his sentences says, “If you lie to get out of trouble, you have to do it in such a way that you no longer have to lie when the truth is discovered. “As we can see, he’s not trying to condemn the lie, but to indicate its inconvenience. It is assumed that the truth comes to light and that, therefore, this fact must be taken into account when issuing a lie.
In addition to the atomic bomb, what most distressed Kenzaburo Oé is having a child with intellectual disabilities, he totally changed his life and also his literature, perhaps that’s why, when you read it, you feel like you’re in front of someone who certainly dreamed of deciphering the meaning of the impossible.