Murder in the Age of Enlightenment: Essential Stories
By Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, translated by Brian Karetnyk
"... having fallen as far as this, they had already been so wearied by the many tortures of Hell that they no longer had the strength to cry out." (The Spider's Thread)
"At any rate, if you want to rob a man of his woman, it's only natural that you're going to have to kill him. Only, when I do it, I do it with a sword. People like you don't use swords. You gentlemen kill with power, with money, sometimes with words alone - all on the pretence of doing a man a favour. True enough, no blood is shed. He might even live well. But you've killed him all the same. It's hard to say whose sin is greater - yours or mine. [An ironic smile]" (In a Grove)
"When it once pleased His Lordship to joke, 'You appear to take pleasure in all manner of unsightly things,' Yoshihide's unnaturally red lips creased into an unnerving smile and he replied haughtily, 'Yes, My Lord, it's true. Other more frivolous painters lack the insight required to perceive beauty in what offends the eye.'" (Hell Screen)
"'As a rule, I'm unable to paint anything I haven't seen. ... I have seen a man bound by iron chains,' Yoshihide said. 'I have made a detailed sketch of another being tormented by a monstrous bird. Thus, it cannot be said that I do not know the tortures that sinners endure. As for the wardens of Hell . . .' here the corners of Yoshihide's lips rose sinisterly, 'as for the wardens of Hell, I have seen them any number of times in my dreams and hallucinations. Devils with bulls' heads, with horses heads, with three faces and six arms. Almost every night they come to torment me with their noiseless clapping hands and their voiceless gaping mouths. No . . . They are not what I am unable to pain.'" (Hell Screen)
"The fleeting moments I have left impel me to set down my story, to describe the motives that brought me to commit the murder, the act itself, as well as the strange state that gripped me after the deed was done. And yet - O! and yet - even now, how keenly I am aware of my breath warming the frozen ink, of having placed this sheet of paper before me, and, with fear and trepidation, trying vainly to master myself. After all, to examine my past and set it down in writing means nothing less than to relive a past life. Once more I hatch my plan, once more I commit the deed, once more I am made to suffer the torments of this last year. Can I really have the strength to endure all this?" (Murder in the Age of Enlightenment)
"My state of mind then was such that a Japan without [her] had become utterly foreign to me. Rather than eke out the existence of a broken man in a country that was no longer my own, I thought it might be better to take a volume of Childe Harold, travel to some remote, distant place and, having roamed the world in lonely solitude, bury my bones in the soil of some foreign land." (Murder in the Age of Enlightenment)
"It seems that deep within my soul there lurks a monster incomprehensible even to myself." (Murder in the Age of Enlightenment)
"As the time passed, however, little by little I inched closer to the most despicable temptation of my life, and to a destiny with which I would ultimately have to reckon. By no means do I have the courage to recount how fierce was the battle I had to fight, how step by step, it pursued me to the brink of death. No, even now, as I inscribe these lines, I must enter into mortal combat with this hydra of temptation." (Murder in the Age of Enlightenment)
"... he contemplated death and war. But not even the faintest glimmer of wisdom came of it. After all, dying was still a wretched business, even if it was for the Emperor. As for war . . . Well, he didn't even hold war to be a crime. Next to war, crime, rooted as it was in private passion, was almost understandable. But war mean one's duty to the Emperor, and nothing else. And yet, he - but no, it was not just he, for more than two thousand men, from every division, had been selected for the White Sash Unit, and they too, whether they liked it or not, would now have to die, carrying out the greatest of duties . . ." (The General)
"I have no artistic conscience; indeed, I have no conscience whatsoever. I have only nerves." (Cogwheels)
"Soon enough, I began to feel that anything and everything was a lie. Politics, industry, arts, science - all this seemed to me little more than a gaily coloured enamel concealing the true horror of human life." (Cogwheels)
"I looked up to the lofty heavens to remind myself how small the world was - and, consequently, how small I myself was - amid the twinkling of countless stars." (Cogwheels)
"I haven't the strength to go on writing this. To live in this state of mind is an agony beyond all words. Isn't there someone kind enough to strangle me softly in my sleep?" (Cogwheels)
