Reflections between literature and music

Ayase Maru – The Forest Brims Over

(2019, published by Add Edizioni in 2023)

One day a woman named Nowatari Rui decides to swallow an entire bowl of seeds. She eats them one by one, slowly but deliberately, as if they were perfectly ordinary snacks. Meanwhile, her husband, the writer Nowatari Tetsuya, is busy brainstorming with his editor to come up with ideas for a new novel.

Tetsuya found fame with a book called "Lacrima", in which the female protagonist is a transfiguration of Rui. The woman is thus the artist's muse, someone he has in some way plundered without her being able to stop him.

The writer is cultured, charismatic, self-assured. His talents allow him to feed off his wife and any lovers he might have, exploiting his verbal superiority and his ability to express concepts with clarity and conviction — attitudes that don't come so naturally to Rui, for whom being exploited as a character in a novel is just the tip of the iceberg of her troubles. Digging into the pages of "The Forest Brims Over", it becomes increasingly clear that there's an abuse of power at play, a force that crushes the woman's feelings and will.

What's left for Rui to do in a situation like this? Simple: swallow the seeds one after another and watch an entire forest sprout inside her body, one that will end up taking over much of the house she shares with her husband.

"Mysterious things live right beside us, and sometimes they express reality better than what is considered normal." Author Ayase Maru's words perfectly capture the core idea of a book capable of transporting the reader into a space between reality and imagination, one that ultimately serves as a guide to deeper reflection.

The literary device of the woman-forest, seemingly enigmatic and disorienting, is the perfect — and strikingly beautiful — metaphor for Rui's silent scream. Her husband's selfishness, the rage and frustration of never having been able to pursue her own ambitions, her awareness of his affairs, her inability — due to sensitivity, temperament, shyness — to express herself with his same forcefulness and conviction: all of this leads her to quietly sprout and uncontrollably expand her mute will, which has taken on a vegetal form.

Alongside this are the stories of characters like the editor and the lover, which highlight and denounce the image of the pure, silent woman so common in Japanese literature, as well as the oppressive nature of capitalism and the obsession with work that men have no way of escaping. Ayase Maru handles all of this in a way that is both abstract and realistic, across pages that grow increasingly incisive, leading to a careful analysis of the human tendency toward domination.

"The Forest Brims Over" is smooth as a river stone, delicate in the way Japanese literature often is, yet also passionate, full of force, capable of calling out misogyny and the distortions of a society like Japan's. Praise goes to Add Edizioni for publishing (in a beautifully designed edition) this novel by Ayase Maru, a writer who has written eighteen books and been a finalist for several literary prizes. "The Forest Brims Over" is her first work to be translated into Italian — hopefully more will follow soon.

Soundtrack: Mort Garson – Mother Earth's Plantasia (1976)

The Moog synthesizer resonates celestially throughout the half-hour running time of an album that made history partly because of the peculiar way it was released. Originally, it was only available to those who shopped at the Mother Plant Boutique, a plant shop in Los Angeles. Alternatively, it could be received as a free gift when buying a mattress from the Simmons Mattress company.

Indeed, the soothing power of these performed scores is plain to hear. They seem perfectly suited to lying back on a comfortable bed and gazing, entranced, at the flawless geometries of plants. The instrumental tracks unfold with melodic strength, their themes brimming with bliss, carrying the listener into a boundless green universe.

The protagonist of "La foresta trabocca" goes further still: she welcomes that universe into her own body and gives life to the lush growth of an entire forest, in order to communicate through budding shoots everything that words and actions cannot express. The music of "Plantasia" provides the sonic backdrop to these visions, giving voice to the language of living beings that captivate in their silent greening — beings that, if not held in check by human hands, could swallow the entire planet.

Listening to the caressing melodies of tracks like "Baby Tear's Blues", "Rhapsody In Green" or "You Don't Have To Walk A Begonia", one seems to glimpse Rui trying to make contact with the labyrinthine tangle that is herself; one seems to catch sight of her struggle to contain the uncontrolled growth of her will, finally freed from the chains of action and speech.

At times the restless energy of Ayase Maru's novel plays off against the clear, caressing music of Mort Garson, creating an enjoyable contrast in which an aura of mystery takes shape: in ways more or less overt, the protagonist of "La foresta trabocca" and the melodies of "Plantasia" set out to place the reader-listener before the forces of nature, so as to reveal all their grace — but also their dark power.

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