"The Life of a Fool" - Aru aho no issho

...His view of art ("Art and Others"), which saw all of this as a highly conscious attempt by the author, eventually shifted to a focus on the unconscious, not the conscious, and on everyday life itself, and as he moved from the works he wrote after 1922 ("From Yasukichi's Notebook" and others) to "Half the Life of Daidoji Shinsuke" (1925) and "Tenki-bo" (1926), he turned to a dark gaze on the fate surrounding his own origins. Despite his physical and mental decline, he showed final glimmers of hope in his powerful works "Genkaku-sanbo" and "Kappa" and the exquisite short piece "Mirage" (all 1927), and eventually spoke of his fate as a writer in a series of posthumous works, including "The Life of a Fool," before leaving a poem titled "A Vague Anxiety" in his will and taking his own life at the age of 36. The "infinite divisions" that Akutagawa himself spoke of, based on the inner conflict between the West and the East described in his posthumous works "Gears" and "The Westerner," as well as the conflict between the consciousness of the person who tries to "protect" everyday life and the consciousness of the artist who tries to "transcend" it, show that the existence of Akutagawa as a writer truly meant a bridge from the Taisho era to the Showa era.

*Some of the terminology that refers to "The Life of a Fool" is listed below.

Source | Heibonsha World Encyclopedia 2nd Edition | Information

…そのすべてを作家のすぐれて意識的な試みと見る芸術観(《芸術その他》)は，やがて意識ならぬ無意識の世界，日常性そのものへの着目へと転移し，22年以後書き出される保吉もの(《保吉の手帳から》ほか)から《大導寺信輔の半生》(1925)，《点鬼簿》(1926)などへと進むにつれ，己の出自をめぐる宿命への暗い凝視となる。その心身の衰弱のなかにも力編《玄鶴山房》や《河童》，珠玉の小品《蜃気楼》(以上1927)などに最後の光芒を見せつつ，やがて《或阿呆の一生》をはじめとする一連の遺稿の内にその作家的宿運の何たるかを語りつつ，27年7月24日未明，〈ぼんやりした不安〉の一句を遺書に残し，自裁の死をもって36年の生涯を閉じた。遺稿《歯車》や《西方の人》の語るその内なる西方と東方の相克，また日常性を“守らんとする”生活者の意識とこれを“超えんとする”芸術家の意識の葛藤などを基底とする，彼自身のいう“無数の分裂”こそは，芥川という作家の存在が，まさしく大正から昭和への架橋を意味していたことを告げるものであろう。…

※「《或阿呆の一生》」について言及している用語解説の一部を掲載しています。

出典｜株式会社平凡社世界大百科事典 第２版について | 情報