No and purification: The art of ritual and vocational performance

Seen from a literary point of view, Zeami builds his tragedy around this lyricism. Here is exactly the same relationship between lyric and drama as between ritual and drama. Drama is grafted onto lyricism only to be resolved into it. In Kinuta, for example, the expression of the wife's sentiment intermingles with descriptions of the autumn scenery. Here, Zeami follows the lyric convention of expressing feelings in terms of nature. He makes particularly effective use of puns between natural objects and human feelings, such as shinobu ("fern," a pun on "endure") and matsu ("pine," a. pun on "wait"; 107). This lyrical depiction of transition is simultaneously naturalistic and elegiac in that it parallels the quiet and inevitable passage of seasons with that of human life. Kinuta is set in late autumn, in the late evening. There are abundant suggestions of the imminent end, of which the wife's death is only a small part. The end of the year and of the day signal the inevitable end of her hope and her life. The only tie she has to her husband is through the messenger Yugiri, which means "evening mist." Yugiri is clearly more the personification of a natural phenomenon than a person. The frailty of the promise she brings to the wife, along with the cruelty of her second message, indicate nature's fundamental indifference to human affairs. All the wife can do is to liken her life to "things natural," such as a dewdrop, and quietly accept the approaching end (107). All these elements belong within the framework of the lyric, rather than dramatic, tradition. Moreover, there is no description of the characters' personalities in this play. The lord and the wife have no names, no identities. The only character who has a name is Yugiri, but, as noted above, she is more nature than person. The chorus moves freely in and out of the wife's innermost heart, making her feelings transparent to the audience. The question is whether or not the wife's life is completely at one with the autumn landscape, whether lyric ends and drama begins at all.

The wife guards a passion, a sentiment she cannot resolve into nature. She indicates her passion twice. On these occasions, and only on these occasions, she uses the word "I" ("ware"):6

"And I, already left alone in this life" (105)

and:

"But I, once fallen deep in sinful lust...." (109)

The passion in these simple and powerful phrases is that which does not disappear along with the passage of time, that which does not return to nature. The first "I" still may be within the lyric framework, but the second one is definitely not; rather, it marks the beginning of a drama. And yet the play works toward the resolution of this passion, this "I." In fact, resolution comes quite suddenly. The wife's attachment to her long-absent husband-the cause of her passion and torture, the cause of her "I"-turns out to be, at the same time, "the seed of [her] liberation" (111). Here is the standard Mahayana Buddhist doctrine of the identity of attachment and liberation. It would be incorrect, however, to castigate Zeami as an ideologist because of this.' This identity is the goal both of Zeami's performance and his career. It is not given to him as a doctrine but demanded of him both on stage and in life, and it is possible only when his art fulfills its promise. In Kinuta, the drama suddenly disappears and the lyric returns. The description of the wife's liberation is no longer dramatic but merely lyrical. Her passion is finally entrusted to nature; her love is said to flower and bear "the seed of liberation." Zeami recovers his earlier lyricism here when he successfully resolves drama into ritual.