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Matsukaze by Zeami, Kwanami

dolorsitamet's review

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4.0

Obviously the number is arbitrary. "Obviously."

Noh drama is just so very different from anything we're accustomed to as a play. Less the development of a plot, and more a...slow unfolding of an atmosphere, a feeling, a capturing of a part of the human condition.

Even having read an introductory piece on how carefully every action and role is, how predetermined stylistically everything should be – something that happened to the upper-class art form as it was preserved with the same repertoire over hundreds of years – I still didn't "get" it.

Like trying to read Eliot without annotations for all the myriad allusions I'm sure I missed.

(and lastly: what a linguistic miracle that "pine" has the same double meaning in both languages!)
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