An Eternally Unpleasant Double Life
In this brief but incisive note, Ryunosuke Akutagawa reflects on the so-called "double life" of the artist. Writing in response to an inquiry, he argues first that art and life are not truly separable, since art necessarily arises from the totality of human existence. Yet once the question is shifted into practical terms, especially the artist's need to earn a living, the problem becomes painfully concrete. Speaking from his own experience as a teacher of English, Akutagawa describes the discomfort of sustaining both an artistic and a professional life, while insisting that the possibility of overcoming this division depends not on ideals, but on material conditions. His conclusion is deliberately plain, resigned, and quietly severe. (QA warning)
Mr. Nakamura,
The issue is a large one, so I cannot very well pull my thoughts together on it in any quick and easy way. But if I were to say roughly what I think, it would be this.
In the first place, what becomes the content of art is nothing other than the whole of our life as human beings, so in the primary sense I do not think such a thing as a double life can exist.
But when it comes to a secondary meaning, various difficult problems arise. Such questions as turning life into art, or conversely turning art into life, probably arise from that.
The question of an artist's occupation mentioned in your letter seems to me to be a problem that has been shifted a further step onto a more superficial plane.
Therefore, even if one speaks of "the relation and interaction between life as a human being in both its material and spiritual aspects, and life as an artist," unless one first fixes a proper standpoint for the meaning of each, any painstaking discussion is bound to end in confusion.
Now then, as I said before, I have no time at present to argue such matters.
Still, if I must say something, then since I teach English as my profession, the double life that arises from that is unpleasant; and although transcending that unpleasantness is entirely a material question, unfortunately, so long as it seems unlikely to be resolved for the time being in modern Japan, all we can do is go on living this eternally unpleasant existence. In the end, what I have to say becomes something exceedingly commonplace.
If this will do, please add it to the other gentlemen's replies. That is all.
(October, 1918)