Mori Ōgai, il Genji monogatari e il mondo classico giapponese

The essay analyzes the relationship of the writer Mori Ogai with the classical repertory of the Japanese. Ogai shows in his works a deep respect for classical literature, but also a remarkable ability to do a clever criticism on classical literature, becaming sometime even irreverent. Famous is his sentence that defines the style of the Genjimonogatari, the most important work of classical Japanese literature, as 'akubun', bad writing. As the italian writer Italo Calvino, Ogai felt a kind of resistance, 'teiko' in japanese, towards the classics, but also a strong sense of respect and responsibility.