Strange is...Snow Country

Strange, how irrational woman can get. Part of it is the fickle-mindedness. Another bit caused by man. Strange, even eerie, are the women depicted in Kawabata's Snow Country. Komako, the hot spring's geisha, so devoted, so passionate to a man like the tongue of flame at the makeshift theatre that closes the curtain, or was it when the teakettle sounded with the image of Komako tripping off? Strange, are the snow, ever chilly, and the lovely portrait of a Milky way descending gradually upon the snow country. Strange, how snow, women and all things in it are subjects of Haiku: for all their pureness, innocence, wasted beauty or tragic? I haven't a clue. Strange, how I find Shimamura all so distant, so cool, yet so near. There is a Shimamura in every man I say - the heartless, empty and carnal one. He seemed devoid of focus on Yoko, the only girl who he truly desired, yet frequently admiring, asking others things about her from afar. Strange Yoko, capable of taking a sick man all the way home to die, yet like a dim-witted child with bright-eyed wilfulness, pledged incessantly, unconvincingly for Shimamura to take her to tokyo: the only real dialogue they had at a stretch. Strange are the love triangle and kawabata, don't you think?

Note: Snow Country is said to a be a novel with multi-layered meaning, and though I am not spilling the beans on how the strange love triangle concluded, I could state my indefinable love for its poetic and literary beauty.