THE NARRATIVE OF NIHILISM:
AN ANALYSIS OF JAMES JOYCE'S PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN AND OSAMU DAZAI'S DECLINE OF A MAN
James Joyce, Osamu Dazai, nihilism, modernity, modernism.
The present study establishes a cultural dialogue between Japan and Ireland at the beginning of the 20th century through an analysis of nihilism, a philosophical concept that addresses a historical-existential problem that became notable at that time. We seek to analyze, more specifically, how literary elements incorporate this philosophical concept in two works of autobiographical inspiration in which art is seen as a possible salvation when values are depreciated: No longer human, by Osamu Dazai, and A portrait of the artist as a young man, by James Joyce. These works stood out in their production contexts as subversive novels by authors who spoke for a generation that did not identify with the tradition to which they belonged: Joyce as a religion challenger and Dazai as an anarchist libertine it resisted the political and ideological pretensions of the Japanese empire and the postwar American occupation. The heroic nihilistic self-portrait found in both works was subjected to philosophical analysis through its literary categories: structure, character, narrative, style. In order to understand the concept of nihilism, we apply the thought of Nietzsche, and also the works of those who have studied profoundly the concepts deployed by the philosopher, such as Nishitani, Weller, Volpi, Cioran and Bolea. This research, therefore, will seek to find similarities and differences in the way that nihilism is rooted in both works, seeking to bring the literature of the West closer to the literature of East in the beginning of the 20th century.