The Meanings of Mask in Kobo Abe’s Novels
This essay analyses the importance of different sort of disguise strategies in Kobo Abe’s fiction. Considered one of the most significant contemporary Japanese novelists, Abe creates a hallucinatory universe, populated with characters that find in mask a perfect strategy of living (and even of surviving). Expression of the well-known literary theme of the double, mask, as well as mirror, offers a new kind of reality that puts into question the very essence of contemporary human condition.
Keywords: Japanese modern fiction, mask, identity, mirror, alienation, solitude
1. Kobo Abe, Chip străin. Traducere şi note de Angela Hondru, Editura Polirom, 2006.
2. Yasunari Kawabata, Japonia, frumosul şi eu însumi, in Tribuna, nr. 37 / 711, 10 sept. 1970.
3. Kobo Abe, Bărbatul-cutie. Traducere de Angela Hondru, Editura Polirom, 2007.
