Going up a mountain track, I fell to thinking. Approach everything rationally, and you become harsh. Pole along in the stream of emotions, and you will be swept away by the current. Give free rein to your desires, and you become uncomfortably confined. It is not a very agreeable place to live, this world of ours.
Opening with the most famous introductory lines in Japanese literature, The Three Cornered World has been cherished by generations of readers as a glittering jewel in the crown of Soseki's artistic achievement.
A painter escapes to a mountain spa to work in a world free of emotional entanglement, but finds himself fascinated by the alluring mistress at his inn. He imagines painting her, inspired by thoughts of Millais' Ophelia.
But strange rumours surround the woman; that she has abandoned her husband and fallen in love with a priest at a nearby temple. Somehow the right expression for her face eludes the artist.
Beautifully written, humorous and filled with bitter-sweet reflections on the human condition, The Three Cornered Worldwas intended as a unique haiku-novel with a mood utterly different to anything ever produced in the West. Demonstrating along the way a mastery of everything from Western painting to Chinese literature, Soseki succeeded in an artistic tour-de-force that produced what legendary recording artist Glenn Gould would simply refer to as his favourite book.
---
Natsume Soseki's significance to Japan can be compared to that of Dickens to Britain or Henry James to North America.
Like these writers his work now holds a hugely popular and important place in the literary imagination of his country. Unlike them Soseki's work is only recently coming to the attention of readers outside of Japan.
"Soseki is the representative modern Japanese novelist, a figure of truly national stature." --Haruki Murakami
"The greatest Japanese novelist of the modern period." --Sunday Telegraph
"A writer to be judged by the highest standards. His works create, after the fashion of all great writers, a new and completely individual reality." --Spectator
"Vastly refreshing . . . Soseki doesn't shrink from seeking and finding exquisite pearls of beauty." --Guardian
