Ten Nights' Dreams and Our Cat's Grave

Ten Nights' Dreams and Our Cat's GraveTen Nights Dreams (___, Yume J_ya) is a classic written work from the Japanese master Natsume Soseki. Originally published in 1908, it announced the emergence in Japanese literature of a modernist and impressionistic mode. Short vignettes with fantastic, tragic, or magical events convey an exquisite sensibility compounded with stark realism. Love, honor, duty, artistry, desire, despair, and regret all shape events in the dream world. The stories

Ten NightsÕ Dreams (___, Yume J_ya) is a classic written work from the Japanese master Natsume Soseki. Originally published in 1908, it announced the emergence in Japanese literature of a modernist and impressionistic mode. Short vignettes with fantastic, tragic, or magical events convey an exquisite sensibility compounded with stark realism. Love, honor, duty, artistry, desire, despair, and regret all shape events in the dream-world. The stories themselves suggest echoes of meanings beyond the failures of rational sense-making. Ten dreamsÑeach unique and arrestingÑform a panorama of life and feeling, at once universal and intensely present.
ÒOur CatÕs GraveÓ is a brief but heartfelt monody for a feline companion. Encompassing both the affection and the neglect, it becomes a meditation on empathy and helplessness, and on the transience of life and the persistence of memory.