Mishima (Re: Nora Bossong recommends Mason & Dixon as Corona reading because it has so many pages ...)

[Mark Kohut]

OK, Y'all. my best college buddy read much, maybe too much Mishima and
told me about them all as he read them. I have read little.

Now, tell me about the human values in the vision forever biased for me by
the
expressed values behind his front-pages seppeku.

On Wed, Apr 1, 2020 at 6:29 AM Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
wrote:

>
> Absolute agreement! Mishima is an incredibly skillful & vigorous writer.
> One of the very best.
>
> In the past months I read several of his books & this still continues.
> Started with the tetralogy "The Sea of Fertility" which contains the
> novels "Spring Snow", "Runaway Horses", "The Temple of Dawn" & "The
> Decay of the Angel" (the German translation was done by Siegfried
> Schaarschmidt).  This is, I think, particularly interesting to readers
> of Pynchon (yes, esp. GR, but also VL), because it pictures Japanese
> society in the 20th century from before World War I to the 1970s. Then I
> read "Confessions of a Mask" (in the new German translation by Nora
> Bierich), a homosexual coming of age novel & a breathtaking debut for a
> writer, comparable to "V" or "Buddenbrooks". Since my wife had started
> with "The Sea of Fertility" too & felt equally enthusiastic about it, we
> made Mishima our new author for reading out to each other in the
> evening. First we did "After the Banquet" (German translation: Sachiko
> Yatsushiro), which appeared to us - if you excuse the TV reference -
> partly like "The Good Wife" in Japan during the 1950s. Then we continued
> with "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion" (new German translation: Ursula
> Gräfe), in which the protagonist, an adolescent Buddhist acolyte, is
> burning down the Golden Pavilion of Kyoto (this really happened in
> 1950); in its crass combination of Zen Buddhism & Western existential
> philosophy à la Sartre this is very impressive. Now we're into Mishimas
> collected stories (Y.M.: Gesammelte Erzählungen. Reinbek bei Hamburg
> 1971: Rowohlt), & I can already say that Mishima's mastership does also
> include the form 'story'. As you will have realized by now, I'm a huge
> fan ...
>
> Two instructive books about Mishima are Marguerite Yourcenar's "Mishima:
> A Vision of the Void" (dt. Mishima oder die Vision der Leere) & Hans
> Eppendorfer's "Der Magnolienkaiser. Nachdenken über Yukio Mishima"
> (Berlin 1984: Vis-à-Vis). Then again Mishima's almost classical style,
> especially in the later works, speaks for itself & does not really
> require interpretation.
>
> For German readers Mishima, whose favorite Western writer was Thomas
> Mann, is also interesting, because Germany & Japan suffered a similar
> historical fate in the 20th century. Including the Americanization after
> 1945.
>
> " ... 'Bis Sonnenaufgang ist es weit. So lange zu warten, geht nicht an.
> Also keine heraufkommende Sonnenscheibe, kein Schatten einer alten,
> ehrwürdigen Kiefer, kein glitzerndes Meer', dachte Isao./  Er streifte
> die beiden Hemden ab, so daß er halbnackt dasaß; dafür straffte er
> seinen Körper, und die Kälte wich von ihm. Er lockerte die Hose,
> entblößte den Bauch. Als er den Dolch blankzog, hörte er von der
> Mandarinenplantage her ungeordnete Schritte und Schreie./ Hörte eine
> schrille Stimme sagen: 'Ah, das Meer! Wahrscheinlich ist er in einem
> Boot geflohen.'/ Isao atmete tief ein, strich sich mit der linken Hand
> über den Leib, schloß dann die Augen, um die Spitze des mit der rechten
> Hand gepackten Dolches darauf hinzulenken und, die Finger der Linken an
> der bestimmten Stelle, mit der ganzen Kraft des rechten Armes
> zuzustoßen./ Genau in dem Augenblick, da sich die Klinge in den Bauch
> bohrte, stieg hinter seinen Lidern die leuchtend rote Scheibe der Sonne
> herauf." (Unter dem Sturmgott, pp. 432-33)
>
> I love the way Mishima is evoking natural phenomena like the wind, the
> clouds & the sea ...
>
> "A small night storm blows
> Saying ‘falling is the essence of a flower’
> Preceding those who hesitate"
>
> This is Mishima's jisei (death poem), written 11/24/70.
>
>
> Am 31.03.20 um 23:38 schrieb John Bailey:
> > Gary: I just read Mishima's Confessions of a Mask and damn he's a hell
> > of a writer. Absolutely of interest to fans of Pynchon (esp. GR).
>
> Am 31.03.20 um 17:59 schrieb Gary Webb:
>
> > ... I just got through Mishima’s The Sailor who fell from Grace with the
> Sea...
> >
> > It’s a trip...
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
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>