Summary and Impressions of Kayoko Yamazaki's "Belgrade Diary" - Winner of the Yomiuri Literary Award! Pearls of Words Spun by a Poet Who Continues to Live in Serbia after the Bombing
We are pleased to present "Belgrade Nisshi" by Kayoko Yamazaki, published in 2014 by Shoushita Yamada.
The author, Kayoko Yamazaki, was introduced in the previous article.From there the blue darkness whispers."He is the author of
First, the dead are known by name. Then it becomes a number. Finally, the number is lost. This is a heartbreaking collection of essays by a woman who refused to return home and continued to write poetry under heavy bombing by NATO forces in the former Yugoslavia.
Yamazaki/Kayoko
Born in 1956 in Shizuoka City, Japan. Graduated from the Department of Russian Literature, Hokkaido University, and studied at the University of Sarajevo in 1979, where he studied the history of Yugoslav literature. 1986 M.A. in Literature, University of Belgrade; 2003 Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, University of Belgrade. Currently he is an instructor at the Department of Japanese Studies, Faculty of Letters, University of Belgrade. Lives and works in Belgrade (This data was published at the time this book was published.)
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As mentioned in the introduction of this book, the author lived in Belgrade for many years and experienced the harsh life after the outbreak of the Yugoslav conflict and the NATO air strikes. His previous book, "Blue Darkness Whispering from There," was written about his experiences at that time.
Let's take a look at the current work, "Belgrade Diary".
Twelve years have passed since 2001. The world has changed... Belgrade, the people who mark these dated days.... Things destroyed, things sinking into the deep darkness, things emerging and being born as a faint light.
From the obi of "Belgrade Diary" by Kayoko Yamazaki, Bookstore Yamada
This work will be the poet Kayoko Yamazaki's account of the days in Serbia after the bombing of Belgrade.
In the afterword, the author states This is a very important section for understanding the atmosphere and significance of this book, so we will take a closer look at it.
I am now pondering the fate of the Balkan Peninsula, a frontier. In this land of various conquerors and repeated wars, it was difficult to protect what human hands had created and to continue to hand down the forms of civilization to future generations. It is not so difficult for a large country to transmit something tangible, but it is not easy for a small country to transmit something tangible.
But if the task entrusted to words is to speak of the formless, of what has lost its form and of what is about to be given form, then it is not so bad that I have spent more than 30 years on the frontier of southern Europe. In the city of Belgrade, a mischievous destiny had spawned me, a "war correspondent of Japanese literature," and before I knew it, my Japanese had become the language of the Japanese people. Before I knew it, my Japanese language had formed the frontier of Japanese literature.
There are countless things that cannot be seen simply by looking at the world through the large window of "big languages" such as English, German, French, Russian, etc. If you look at the world through the small window of "small languages" such as Serbian, you will see unexpected expressions. If we look at the world through the small window of "small languages," such as Serbian, we can see unexpected aspects of the world. The same is true when we look into the depths of people's hearts. Many people remember September 11 in New York and March 11 in Fukushima. But there are countless other dates that should be etched in our memories. Kosovo, Iran, Iraq, and other tragic dates that are not only not remembered, but are not even allowed to be spoken of, are being written into the history of the world one after another.
But what a joy it is to meet friends who transcend country and language and open their hearts to each other. The encounters and connections between people are a small, invisible force, but it is precisely because of this that we can gradually change the world within us. With this small power, we can touch the richness of the memories carved in the history of various lands, feel the equal weight of life, and confirm to each other the depth of the power of nature. When the countless small forces hidden in the small activities of daily life are brought together, they can change something.
Bookshop Yamada, Kayoko Yamazaki, "Belgrade Nisshi", p. 226-227
When the myriad small forces hidden in the small activities of life come together, they can change something.
This book will help you understand what the author is trying to convey here.
And here are some of the most memorable passages from the book.
Traces - 2004
Friday, January 2
The New Year's train was deserted. We get off at Kalemegdan. The Danube was sleeping in the fog as we walked down the hill along the brick wall of the zoo and under the overpass. The pub on the shore was closed. It was the autumn of my nineteenth year, when I went to the dark and rainy Lake Shikotsu and was suspected by the bus driver to be a suicide. There was no one to yukiko and no one to ....... An empty pleasure boat bobbed on the dock. The summer that will never return is melting away. The first men and women, who were in their twenties, were speeding away, exchanging earnest words. They have reached the railroad tracks. A freight train passes by. The sound of steel fades away, and I pick up two pale red stones. I look back at the water as if to say goodbye to something once and for all. Poetry is about giving oneself to the quiet light. Isn't that right?
Bookshop Yamada, Kayoko Yamazaki, Belgrade Nisshi (Belgrade Diary), p. 82
Ahhh...what beautiful words...I was shot through with this part.
Particularly,I'm on the tracks. A freight train was passing by. The sound of steel fades away, and I pick up two pale red stones. I look back at the water as if to say goodbye to something once and for all. Poetry is about giving oneself to the quiet light. Isn't that right?"The words.
Don't you feel that not only do scenes float before your eyes, but all five senses are stimulated? And not only that, you feel something oozing out of it...! It was so wonderful that I was left reverberating for a while after reading it.
And the last word,'Poetry is about giving oneself to the silent light. Isn't that right?"It is.
As I have said many times before, this work is about the days in Belgrade after the conflict. As mentioned in the afterword above, the Yugoslavian conflict is still fresh in our memories, with images of the siege of Sarajevo, the ruined city, and the sound of bombs and guns.
If Serbia is going to be reported, it will be mainly with such shocking images.
However, even after such shocking events, the people who live there continue to live their days in that very place.
When we "write something down," we tend to write down some "unusual event. And when it is sent out to the world, the "everyday norm" disappears even further. And we tend to think that such "unusual events" are all about life in that place. This is a surprising blind spot.
The Czech writer Karel Čapek also has interesting things to say about the reality that only these "visible special events" flow through the world.
I mentioned this in the article above, but since I am here, I would like to read it here as well.
Now, you have never seen an article in the newspaper about a cat catching a little bird or having three babies, have you? Newspaper articles always catch your attention in the form of special, unusual, and often surprising reports.
For example, an article about an angry cat biting a mailman, or a scholar discovering a cat serum, or a cat with nine tails being born in Plymouth or something like that, well, you know, that sort of thing. [omitted].
My point, therefore, is that, as has already unsettled even Chesterton, the world of newspapers is made of exceptional incidents, extraordinary events, and often wonders and miracles themselves.
So, if a newspaper were to write about a house, it would not be about the house being built, but about it being burned down, destroyed, or at least the biggest house in the world, or something out of the ordinary among all the houses in the world.
The waiter is an aberrant character who kills his mistress. The cashier escapes with the money that should be kept by the waiter, but his mistress ends up tragically throwing herself off the Legion Bridge into the Vltava River. The automobile is a machine for record setting, for crashes, for splashing children or old ladies, and so on.
Everything that appears in the newspapers has a dramatic and somewhat alarming aspect. With each morning edition, the world is transformed into a wild kingdom of countless surprises, dangers, and epic events.
Shakai Shisosha, Karel Chapek, translated by Masuo Tasai (ed.), Karel Chapek's Struggle, p. 13-14.
When you put it this way, you can honestly nod your head and say, "Oh, I see. I can honestly nod my head and say, "Oh, I see.
Chapek does not use small, difficult words or style. As a journalist, he uses writing that is easy for anyone to read, and he explains his sharp views on the essentials.
This newspaper theory may seem to be an obvious statement, but it is actually a very sharp point. We get our information from newspapers, media, and now social networking sites, but is this really reality?
The news covers the extraordinary. But if you watch it over and over again, day after day, it begins to seem like an everyday reality.
Before we know it, the news world has become our world, and we lose sight of the real everyday normalcy around us. Chapek warns us of this with humor.
Chapek is a journalist, a person who writes the news, so he is able to articulate a compelling viewpoint here. This was very interesting.
And back to the story, Kayoko Yamazaki's "Belgrade Diary" is not a work that describes such an "extraordinary everyday life," but rather a work that describes "everyday life as everyday life.
'Poetry is about giving oneself to the silent light. Isn't that right?"
I felt these words encapsulated this attitude.
What did the author see and feel in Belgrade after the Yugoslav conflict and NATO air strikes?
The casual, everyday life that continues after the conflict.
In the words that describe the daily life, the shadow of the conflict gradually appears and disappears...
I think this work is very rare in that it captures the daily lives of people who still live there, rather than easy-to-understand "special events. It is a wonder that it does not merely cut out everyday life, but also gives us a sense of the depth of human life.
I thought it was quite plausible that this work won the Yomiuri Literary Award. This work has a mysterious power.
I highly recommend this work together with the previous work "Blue Darkness Whispering from There".
The above is "Kayoko Yamazaki's "Belgrade Diary," winner of the Yomiuri Literary Award! Words that weave together the essence of life in Serbia after the airstrikes.
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