Cindy/Jiahan Lyu's 2nd blog post

Similarities between Murakami and Russian literary trope.

-Murakami's ear and Gogol's nose

As we've seen in both a Wild Sheep Chase and the beginning of Norwegian Wood, Murakami uses quite descriptive language on portraying ear in details and creates a vibe of mysterious symbolism, estrangement, unreality. Especially in a Wild Sheep Chase, the beautiful ear girlfriend's ear not only has prophetic power, but also sort of possessing a perpetuating entity within itself. In this respect, it reminds me of Nikolai Gogol's "the nose", in which an official's nose goes away from him and develops a high-ranking life itself. I find this coincidental link between them to be amusing and intriguing since in both case, an ordinary organ of a human body metamorphoses into something magical, as a surreal body transformation, to represent the fission within one individual and their change, more or less. In addition there is also a shared absurdity in both case by granting mystery to an ordinary body part. Last but not least, I think that by allowing a subordinate body part certain degree of self-agency and inexpressible intimidating charm, hints at individual helplessness in reverse. It is something magical yet out of control in the mean time. This shows in beautiful ear girlfriend's theory about her ear and Naoko's irredeemable trauma in Murakami's case. And it shows in the official's "don't know what to do" surprise in Gogol's case.

Difference

Nonetheless, while Murakami's ear serves more as a reflection of human nature, characters' psychic world, Gogol's nose embodies strong social critics and irony in it, which make this comparativeness weakens in the respective authors' purpose of use, but still, I think that there is similarity with respect to literary style.

-Murakami's mediocrity and Russian "porshlost"

Murakami tends to choose a mediocre and ordinary person as his protagonist and tells the story from this commonplace yet acutely sensitive protagonist's view. And this commonplace protagonist in Murakami's story is usually careless about things around him and leads a not exactly active and purposeful life. This resonates parts of Russian's definition of the term "porshlost", which points to a hypocritical self-pride, and shallow, snobbish systems of views and beliefs of a banal people, who goes with the flow unconsciously, and adapts himself/herself passively to societal values surrounding him/her. Also, Murakami's characters, such as Watanabe in Norwegian Wood, live in repeated daily life episodes, while constantly feels a hard-to-tell anxiety/anxiousness. This echoes emotionally with Dostoevsky's characters who "values highly their shrewdness yet stuck in mental dilemma", like the underground man. However, while Murakami's mediocrity could better be interpreted as an existential helplessness with certain degree of social estrangement involved, Russian "porshlost" draws intense social critics and moral contradiction to itself.

Last but not least, I think that while Murakami's work wanders between reality and unreality on the wing of a bird called memory, Russian literature focuses heavily on reality. Yet the thin and interesting link between them, like a slender spider's silk, has making me think for a while.