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

[John Bailey]

Happy to hear you're on the mend, Laura. Good news goes even further
at a time like this.
Mark: I've only read a little Mishima but he's absolutely a writer
obsessed with values. He dissects his own and those around him in
pointillistic detail, is laugh-out-loud droll and surprisingly
conscious of his own shortcomings. I'd always assumed the end of his
life (leading a failed military coup to reinstate the emperor as
sovereign and a lonely seppuku) were signs of a complete break with
reality but I sort of feel the opposite way now - they're almost a
completely logical and rational endpoint for a life dedicated to
values that are very, very different to mine, but are coherent and
understandable in context.

On Thu, Apr 2, 2020 at 1:26 AM Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Laura, glad you are recovering.
>
> Www.keithdavismusic.com
>
> > On Apr 1, 2020, at 10:06 AM, Charles Albert <cfalbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Marguerite Yourcenar
> >
> >
> > There's someone deserving of a wiki...brilliant.
> >
> >
> >
> > love,
> >
> > cfa
> >
> >> On Wed, Apr 1, 2020, 6:28 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...
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >>
> > --
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> --
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