The Third Notebook: Part Two
No Longer Human
Quotes from book
No Longer Human
Osamu Dazai
Original title
人間失格
(Japanese, 1948)
No Longer Human is a 1948 Japanese novel by Osamu Dazai. It is considered Dazai's masterpiece and ranks as the second-best selling novel in Japan, behind Natsume Sōseki's Kokoro. The literal translation of the title, discussed by Donald Keene in his preface to the English translation, is "Disqualified From Being Human".
The Third Notebook: Part One
No Longer Human
No Longer Human
Final Setence
No Longer Human
‘Human beings never submit to human beings.’ Even slaves practice their mean retaliations. Human beings cannot conceive of any mean retaliations. Human beings cannot conceive of any means of survival except of a single then-and-there contest. They speak of duty to one’s country and such like things, but the object of their effort is invariably the individual, and, even once the individual’s needs have been met, again the individual comes in. The incomprehensibility of society is the incomprehensibility of the individual. The ocean is not society; it is individuals. This is how I managed to gain a modicum of freedom from my terror of the illusion of the ocean called the world. I learned to behave rather aggressively, without the endless anxious worrying I knew before, responding as it were to the needs of the moment.
Third Notebook: Part One
No Longer Human
Source: No Longer Human
The Second Notebook
No Longer Human
