Osamu Dazai

For the first time in English, Osamu Dazai’s hilariously comic and deeply moving prequel to No Longer Human The Flowers of Buffoonery opens in a seaside sanitarium where Yozo Oba—the narrator of No Longer Human at a younger age—is being kept after a failed suicide attempt. While he is convalescing, his friends and family visit him, and other patients and nurses drift in and out of his room. Against this dispiriting backdrop, everyone tries to maintain a lighthearted, even clownish atmosphere: playing cards, smoking cigarettes, vying for attention, cracking jokes, and trying to make each other laugh. While No Longer Human delves into the darkest corners of human consciousness, The Flowers of Buffoonery pokes fun at these same emotions: the follies and hardships of youth, of love, and of self-hatred and depression. A glimpse into the lives of a group of outsiders in prewar Japan, The Flowers of Buffoonery is a darkly humorous and fresh addition to Osamu Dazai’s masterful and intoxicating oeuvre.

The Flowers of Buffoonery

tianna

Oh, please forgive me. Even the lowliest of authors has an urge to help his characters achieve a place closer to god than the rest of us. But I’ll do you one better. Yozo was not merely close to god, but like one. Like the goddess of wisdom, Minerva, sending her sacred bird, the owl, out into the dusky sky and laughing to herself at the sight of it all. 

Shall I end there? The old masters always end things on a high note, something rich with meaning. But this flimsy brand of solace has gotten rather old for me, and for Yozo, and for you as well, I bet, dear reader. Who cares about New Year's or the prosecutor? Did the question of the prosecutor even cross your mind? All of us just want to make it to the summit. What's up there? What could it be? Our one remaining source of hope, however illusory.

🏹

But in my softness I find peace, however fleeting.

The Flowers of Buffoonery quotes

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