'What is the life of a human being - a drop of dew, a flash of lightning? This is so sad, so sad.' Autobiographical stories from one of Japan's masters of modernist story-telling. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927). Akutagawa's Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories is also available in Penguin Classics.
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The Life of a Stupid Man
'What is the life of a human being - a drop of dew, a flash of lightning? This is so sad, so sad.' Autobiographical stories from one of Japan's masters of modernist story-telling. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927). Akutagawa's Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories is also available in Penguin Classics.
Popular Reviews(5)
Reviewed by Andrea PacanzaMakes you think about life in general. Beautifully written with all the simplicity and complexity of a man.
Reviewed by ToriNanaka
Reviewed by natali<3simple but really complicated. it makes you think a lot but is so interesting 💗
Reviewed by MichelleHier fehlte mir irgendwas.. Es hat mich nicht genug berührt.
Reviewed by johannaThe first two stories were better than the actual book in my opinion. I just didn’t get the storyline (if there was one?) and it wasn’t really joyful to read it. There sure was an intended storyline, me personally, I just didn’t catch it. This might not be true for everyone though, so feel free to build your own opinion through reading the book yourself. I liked the first story „In a bamboo grove“ the most, it was even kind of exciting to guess who was the person, that did the crime in the end. Quotes: In a bamboo grove: „When those eyes met mine, I knew I wanted to make her my wife.“ „I no longer have the strength to tell it. That I failed to kill myself is obvious. I tried to stab myself in the throat. I threw myself in a pond at the foot of a mountain. Nothing worked. I am still here, by no means proud of my inability to die.“ Death register: „My mother died in the autumn of my eleventh year, not so much from illness, I think as from simply wasting away.“ The life of a stupid man: „I am living now my unhappiest happiness imaginable. Yet, strangely, I have no regrets.” “This passion for pictures gave him a whole new way of looking at the world. He began to pay attention to the curve of a brach or the swell of a woman’s cheek.” “If I needed a corpse, I’d kill someone without the slightest malice.” “Why did this one have to be born - to come into the world like all the others, this world so full of suffering?” “Yes - or rather, it’s not so much that I want to die as that I’m tired of living.”