Analysis of a short story from Dazai's ''Blue bamboo''

I would say that I like Dazai Osamu's works quite lot (I have several of his short stories, as well as his novels like ''No longer human'', ''The setting sun'', ''Schoolgirl'' and so on). I just finished a collection of his short stories, and I wanted to talk about them.

The collection I was reading was ''Blue bamboo'', but I think my version has more stories that ones in English. My favorites were ''Memories'', ''My older brothers'' (mainly because I love learning about his life and what led to it being the way that it was) and ''Horse with no gallop'' (I searched his wiki but couldn't find anything with that name, so this is literal translation from my language).

To me, ''Horse with no gallop'' was the closest in theme to his later works such as ''No longer human'' in the whole collection. I think I liked it so much because it stood out like a sore thumb; you have a whole book with fairytale stories and then something like that. Its relatively short (only a page) and there he talked about what art is. From his perspective, art is just that: art. It's kind of an odd concept to wrap your head around, like, how can it be just that, when art is so many things. The work is quite pessimistic (I mean what did you expect?) but it's not really negative. Sure, it does sound quite dreadful, but I feel like it can be quite a relief to be thinking that way. Why should you find a motive, a purpose in everything? Why can't something exist just to exist, without a purpose. It's a serious problem in a lot of people's eyes, and given the time period when he lived, just existing without a purpose was a bad and lazy thing.

And sure, there's a lot of different ways people view life and try to find its meaning, same with art. But with art, you expect meaning. Because really, what is art without meaning? Can that be called art, when art is something that's showing different ideas, emotions and stories?Can art that doesn't show anything exist, let alone be called art? 

In the story he states:

'' "I borrowed a magazine from a friend and read your stories, but what are they about really, in a word?''. After these continuous questioning, I would answer sadly every single time:

"You say one word, so I'll say it in one word. It is what it is, and nothing more. Please do not read my works from now onwards.''

So, is he saying that his works don't have any meaning? What I believe is that he himself isn't trying to give it meaning, rather leaving it to the reader. In the beginning of the book, he even tried to stop the reader, saying how nothing in your life will change by reading it, nor that there are many good stories.

To be honest, I don't really see this story as negative as I said somewhere in the beginning. I believe things can exist without meaning, that art can be made without leaving some big impact. I mean, by creating it and putting a piece of yourself in it you already did enough. It's probably me being a forever optimist, but this just sounds logical to me.

I planned to talk about the whole book originally, but I really went on a rant here, so I'll have to put it in two (?) parts. If you read all the way down to here, thank you for reading all that and please comment your thoughts, I'd love to know about other people's opinions!!