#14 SCHOOLGIRL (8/10)
by Osamu Dazai (太宰 治)
This was an important book because my dad’s girlfriend gave it to me. Don’t know whether “dad’s girlfriend” is belittling or not… I think it’s just a short cut. Mother of my dad’s children? I think that sounds better and it’s truer too just takes twice the amount of syllables so it can feel anxiously specific like, mother of my dad’s children gave me this book after I gave her TERRITORY OF LIGHT by Yūko Tsushima (津島 佑子)—a thoughtful gift from me and it had to be because this was not book-giving at Christmas, this was book-giving as re-connection; book-giving as olive branch—and for the sake of my bookshelf I’ll close my eyes and say thank you I think it helped. A couple of months later and the mother of my dad’s children gifted me this book for my birthday (I’m omitting her name because she’s a private person); she chose it because Osamu Dazai (太宰 治) is the father of Yūko Tsushima (津島佑子) the author of the novel I gave her. Delicate connections like this are everything to me. I take it to Sweden without a second thought.
I should memorise the opening of this novel because it’s exactly how I feel about the morning:
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.
When I told Lucy this she felt sorry for me but there’s nothing to feel bad about because the morning just is this way sometimes. Only Eliot comes close to this feeling with his line about the sky being stretched out like a patient—that’s how I feel about the morning except I’m the patient lying under the sky and I lack even the formality to stretch out…
It’s all about that word “interesting” for me,
Waking up in the morning is always interesting.
Clearly when Dazai published SCHOOLGIRL in 1939 “interesting” was functioning the same way it does now, a 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 would like to keep playing = interesting...
Unfortunately 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, then hold up what’s at stake (like a politician)
But when you’re monologuing like a schoolgirl you can passionately love one thing one minute and vehemently hate it the next. For example, this schoolgirl likes glasses:
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.
“But actually” says the schoolgirl on the next page, “glasses are the worst.” And of course she’s right about that too. If only I can never lose the voice of the schoolgirl. It shouldn’t be too hard since I am after all, self-identified (somewhere?) guilty school girl at heart. Hopefully then I shall never cease to have aspirations such as these,
I hope I meet lots of people with lovely eyes.
What a sensible thing to aspire to. See school girls aren’t afraid to spell out the obvious. They’re like grown-up-children aware of the “outside” but even more aware of the barrier between it & them hence why they’re so keen on having secrets (evidence of boundaries to you) e.g.
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.
There’s also the optimism of the schoolgirl. Even though she wakes up feeling the way she does by the time she leaves the house she says,
Maybe something good would happen today.
Mmmmmmmm. 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 to leave someone’s lips.) That line is just like opening a window though, isn’t it? Maybe something good would happen today. Ok. Also the schoolgirl knows she’s a thinking creature of sheer circumstance so when she’s on the train she says,
It’s amazing how much your thoughts vary, depending on whether you’re standing or seated.
Again with the prosaic wisdom. This is what I aspire to. This schoolgirl acknowledges her spheres of influence freely. She isn’t embarrassed to be composed of different parts of everyone around her (friends family society) and lastly now because I know I’m rambling, the final thing I’ve got to mention about Dazai’s schoolgirl is that she’s very in touch with her desires & not concerned about the logical connections between them
When I’m eating alone in the dining room, I get this wild urge to travel.
She knows her feelings are kites in the wind so she leans back against the force of them and looks up humbly, subservient to their whims,
I decided I didn’t like his face. Something about his forehead.
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 schoolgirl and leave just a girl—think it took the school out of me? Don’t worry though, it only takes a few years to re-integrate the schoolgirl that is already inside of everybody.
Tilly
Next.