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Kawabata Yasunari: Beauty and Sadness・from 'Summer Losses' chapter

Time passed. But time flows in many streams. Live a river, an inner stream of time will flow rapidly at some places and sluggishly at others, or perhaps even stand hopelessly stagnant. Cosmic time is the same for everyone, but human time differs with each person. Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way.

As Otoko approached forty she wondered if the fact that Oki remained within her meant that this stream of time was stagnant, rather than flowing. Or had her image of him flowed along with her through time, like a flower drifting down a river? How she drifted along in his stream of time she did not know. Although he could not have forgotten her, time would at least have flowed differently for him. Even if two people were lovers, their streams of time would never be the same. . .

 

― Yasunari Kawabata, Beauty and Sadness

 

Kawabata Yasunari 川端康成 (1899−1972)

美しさと哀しみと Utsukushisa to kanashimi to

Translated by Howard S. Hibbett (1920−2019)