ABSTRACT Kawabata Yasunari (1899–1972) held a deep interest in modern spiritualism and applied his knowledge of it to his literary process in diverse ways. Spiritualism was widely employed as metaphor and narrative methodology in twentieth-century literary modernism, and Kawabata stood out among his peers for his prolific use of it. It has typically been assumed that Kawabata distanced himself from modernism after World War II, enacting a complete return to ‘Japanese tradition’. Yet modernist and spiritualist connections can still be observed in his writing during that period. This paper looks at the connections between postwar Kawabata and contemporary modernism, focusing in particular on a close reading of the short story ‘Mugon‘ [Silence] (1953). The story is framed by an episode involving a haunted tunnel and depicts a series of events as a novelist visits an elderly writer who has fallen mute due to illness. Kawabata uses stream-of-consciousness narration to present radical ideas about literary composition and the relationship between language and reality and subverts common-wisdom understandings of language and literature. I conclude that the composition of ‘Mugon‘ demonstrates clear continuity between Kawabata’s pre- and postwar writings.

中文翻译：

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“环绕沉默的圆周”：战后川端康成的鬼魂与现代主义

摘要 川端康成 (1899-1972) 对现代唯灵论有着浓厚的兴趣，并以多种方式将其知识应用到他的文学创作过程中。唯心主义在 20 世纪的现代文学中被广泛用作隐喻和叙事方法，川端正因对它的大量使用而在同龄人中脱颖而出。人们通常认为川端康熙在二战后与现代主义保持距离，完全回归“日本传统”。然而，在那个时期，在他的作品中仍然可以观察到现代主义和唯心主义的联系。本文着眼于战后川端和当代现代主义之间的联系，特别关注对短篇小说“Mugon”[沉默] (1953) 的仔细阅读。故事由一个涉及闹鬼隧道的情节构成，并描绘了一系列事件，因为一位小说家拜访了一位因疾病而哑口无言的老年作家。Kawabata 用意识流叙事来呈现关于文学创作和语言与现实关系的激进思想，颠覆了对语言和文学的共同智慧理解。我的结论是，'Mugon' 的构成展示了川端康熙战前和战后作品之间的明显连续性。