Publisher's Synopsis
Impulsado por la nostalgia, Oki Toshio, un escritor casado, decide viajar a Kyoto para oir las campanas del templo en el Ano Nuevo. Pero ademas quiere ver a Otoko, antigua amante a la que habia humillado. Todavia hermosa, Otoko, ahora pintora, vive con su protegida Keiko, una joven amoral, sensual y apasionada de apenas veinte anos. Y lo que comienza como un reencuentro sentimental entre el maduro Oki y la discreta Otoko se convertira, por voluntad de Keiko, decidida a vengar a su mentora, en un cruel drama de amor y destruccion. Entre la ternura y la obsesion, la serenidad y el arrebato, Lo bello y lo triste es una de las obras cumbre de Kawabata, capaz de convertir el mero ajuste de un cenidor en algo infinitamente erotico y perverso. Description in English: Driven by nostalgia, Oki Toshio, a married writer, decides to travel to Kyoto to hear the temple bells in New Year. But also he wants to see Otoko, former lover whom he had humiliated. Still beautiful, Otoko, now a painter, lives with Keiko her protege, an amoral, sensual and passionate young woman of only twenty years of age. And what begins as a sentimental reunion between the mature Oki and the discreet Otoko becomes -by the will of Keiko, determined to avenge her mentor- in a cruel drama of love and destruction. Between tenderness and obsession, serenity and rapture, the Beautiful And The Sad is one of Kawabata's top works, capable of converting the mere setting of a tightener into something infinitely erotic and perverse.
