Kafka on the Shore

by Haruki Murakami

She’s like a person who stepped right out of a dream. The purity of her beauty gives me a feeling close to sadness—a very natural feeling, though one that only something extraordinary could produce.

You sit at the edge of the world, I am in a crater that’s no more. Words without letters Standing in the shadow of the door. The moon shines down on a sleeping lizard, Little fish rain down from the sky. Outside the window there are soldiers, steeling themselves to die.

Kafka sits in a chair by the shore, Thinking of the pendulum that moves the world, it seems. When your heart is closed, The shadow of the unmoving Sphinx, Becomes a knife that pierces your dreams. The drowning girl’s fingers Search for the entrance stone, and more. Lifting the hem of her azure dress, She gazes— at Kafka on the shore.

The Sphinx was the enemy Oedipus defeated by solving the riddle,

and once the monster knew it had lost, it leaped off a cliff and killed itself.

“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”

Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to slip through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won’t be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there—to the edge of the world. There’s something you can’t do unless you get there.