Book record
Memoir of Forgetting the Capital
谷崎潤一郎
Translated from Japanese by Amy Heinrich
Memoir of Forgetting the Capital, by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki and translated by Amy Heinrich, sits at an interesting edge of the poetry library because Tanizaki is best known as a major Japanese prose writer. The title suggests memory and erasure, city and departure, cultural center and personal dislocation. Heinrich’s translation gives English readers access to a work that may matter as lyric prose, literary reflection, or a historically attentive text rather than a conventional poetry collection. I would read it for the tension between memoir and forgetting. A memoir usually promises recovery, but this title promises loss, or at least the failure of memory to obey. The capital may be a place, a symbol, or an organizing principle the self can no longer keep intact.
- Published
- 2011
- Publisher
- Columbia University Press
- Language
- Japanese
- Country
- Japan
- ISBN
- 9784841905472