We love the voice of the schoolgirl!
SCHOOLGIRL by Osamu Dazai
It takes someone close to source (teenager) to describe something so absolutely habitual and prosaic as waking up as interesting. Welcome to the voice of the schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai. I should memorise the opening because it’s exactly how I feel about the mornings:
Waking up in the morning is always interesting. It reminds me of when we're playing hide-and-seek—I'm hidden crouching in the pitch-dark closet and suddenly Deko throws open the sliding door, sunlight pouring in as she shouts, "Found you!" that dazzling glare followed by an awkward pause, and then, my heart pounding as I adjust the front of my kimono and emerge from the closet, I'm slightly self-conscious and then suddenly irritated and annoyed—it feels similar, but no, not quite like that, somehow even more unbearable. Sort of like opening a box, only to find another box inside, so you open that smaller box and again there's another box inside, and you open it, and one after another there are smaller boxes inside each other, so you keep opening them, seven or eight of them, until finally what's left is a tiny box the size of a small die, so you gently pry it open to find... nothing, it's empty. More like that feeling. Anyway, it's a lie when they say your eyes just blink awake. Bleary and cloudy, then as the starch gradually settles to the bottom and the skim rises to the top, at last my eyes wearily open. Mornings seem forced to me. So much sadness rises up, I can’t bear it… Mornings are torture. (p.21-22)
When I sent this to Lucy she felt sorry for me—but there’s nothing to feel bad about? The morning just is this way sometimes. Especially for not-morning people. Only Eliot comes close to this opening with his line about the sky being stretched out like a patient… I feel like that in the morning except I’m the patient lying under the sky but I lack even the formality to stretch out. I’m a half-digested meat ball. A soft tangle of homogenous complication. But then I have my coffee. Let’s go back to that first line again:
Waking up in the morning is always interesting. (p.21)
For me it’s all about the adjective. Seems like when Dazai published Schoolgirl in 1939 “interesting” was functioning in the same way it does now. It’s the clear cousin of weird. Amorphous and accommodating. For example, this is the worst thing in thing world but I don’t want to sound ungrateful = “interesting”; you are being a manifestation of something terrible but I don’t want to hurt your feelings = “interesting”; I have no idea what’s expected of me right now but I should like to keep playing… = “interesting.”
Sadly, when you’re not a schoolgirl anymore, it’s no longer good enough to have a series of strong conflicting impressions. This at least is what university tried to teach me: build an argument, come down heavily on one side, and hold up what’s at stake (like a politician)—but when you’re monologuing as a schoolgirl you can passionately love one thing one minute & vehemently hate it the next. It’s freeing. For example, this schoolgirl likes glasses (for the same reason I hypothetically do):
I like to take my glasses off and look out into the distance. Everything goes hazy, as in a dream, or like a zoetrope—it’s wonderful. I can’t see anything that’s dirty. Only big things—vivid intense colours and light are all that enters my vision. The faces around me, all of them, seem kind and pretty and smiling. (p.24)
(This is what Tilda does sometimes. I can imagine Tilda doing this sometimes. I think it must really suit her.) “But actually” she says on the very next page “glasses are the worst.” And of course, she’s right about that too—if only I could never loose the voice of the schoolgirl. I am after all self-identified (somewhere?) guilty school girl at heart… so hopefully I shall never stop having aspirations like: “I hope I meet lots of people with lovely eyes.” Ooooooo. But who am I kidding? I’ve never had an aspiration like that, not yet—but Dazai is inspiring.
School girls aren’t afraid to spell out the obvious.
They’re like grown-up children, aware of the “outside” but even more acute of the barrier between it & them hence why they’re so keen on having secrets still (evidence of boundaries to you, grown-ups):
I changed into the underclothes I had finished sewing yesterday. I had embroidered little white roses on the bodice. You couldn’t see this embroidery when I put on the rest of my clothes. No one knew it was there. How brilliant. (p.29)
There’s also of course the optimism of the schoolgirl. Even though she wakes up feeling that way she does sometimes by the time she leaves the house she says:
Maybe something good would happen today.
Maybe something good would happen today… huh? (I owe the art of the huh? to Hattie… it’s the most knowing question mark I’ve ever heard leave someone’s mouth.) It’s just like opening a window—isn’t it? The schoolgirl also knows that she is a thinking creature of sheer circumstance. So on the train she remarks:
It’s amazing how much your thoughts vary, depending on whether you’re standing or seated. (p.49)
The schoolgirl acknowledges her spheres of influence freely. She isn’t embarrassed to be composed of different parts from everything around her (friends, family, society…) And lastly now (because I’m rambling) my other favourite thing about the schoolgirl is that she’s in touch with her desires and isn’t concerned about the logical connection between one thing to the next, like:
When I’m eating alone in the dining room, I get this wild urge to travel. (p. 34)
She knows her feelings are kites in the wind and—she leans back against the force of her feeling and looks up humbly, subservient to her whim:
I decided I didn’t like his face. Something about his forehead. (p.34)
This kind of remark (tiny, instantaneous, resolute) is a sign of deep inner confidence I think—something (somewhere,) I lost at school—how funny is that? I arrive at school as a schoolgirl and then leave just as a girl. It took the school out of me.
The schoolgirl is best summarised by “perhaps!” perhaps. (Only the schoolgirl can pull off the single exclamation mark,) because she manages to always maintain between things—now one, now the other—and yet, always, decidedly! Don’t worry, it takes many years to re-integrate the schoolgirl that is inside of everybody. We’ll get there.
Reading Dazai’s Schoolgirl this week was a quiet epiphany for me. This morning when I was trying on the voice again I found it so comfy. Too comfy. (That’s the adult in me saying “too”.)
I’m going to send you something early tomorrow morning from this voice. How do you feel about the voice of the schoolgirl? Would you like a break from the voice of the expert? You are allowed to. I mean what do they know? (Lots probably.) Good night x