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4.04 AVERAGE
4.04 AVERAGE
“once we are even marginally separated from what we can touch, the object is sanctified; it acquires the beauty of the unattainable, the quality of the miraculous. everything, really, has the quality of sacredness, but we can desecrate it at a touch. how strange man is! his touch defiles and yet he contains the source of miracles.”
“i’ve come to love you too much. and happiness is something i’ve left far behind me.”
“if Chance ceases to exist, then Will becomes meaningless - no more significant than a speck of rust on the huge chain of cause and effect that we only glimpse from time to time. then there’s only one way to participate in history, and that’s to have no will at all - to function solely as a shining, beautiful atom, eternal and unchanging.”
“i lost that emerald ring that was so rich in memories for me. it wasn’t a living thing, of course, and so it won’t be reborn. but still, the loss of something is significant, and i think that loss is the necessary source of a new manifestation. some night i might see my emerald ring appear as a green star somewhere in the sky.”
“but what was he to do if no dreadful punishment fell from the skies and things remained as they were? the taboo that they were violating fascinated and drive him on, like the peal of a distant, forever unattainable golden bell. the more he sinned, the more the sense of sin eluded him.”
“in one circle of pale yellow light the lamp above them caught the ultimate symbols of two diametrically opposed worlds to which these two young men had given themselves…one cooly rational, one burning with fever, each in turn finally bound up by the rhythm of his own particular world.”
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I loved this book. Mishima was such a beautiful writer. He describes the environment in great detail, but it never felt overdone or flowery. The characters were well thought-out and the storyline was gripping. No action or suspense to speak of, but I was always eager to read the next sentence and the next page. We experience the quirks, privilege and scheming of the very wealthy as , "love" (or was it lust?) driven by wild hormones, so much physical beauty, and obsessive attempts to maintain appearances against all odds. I think I need to read the other 3 books in this series.
challenging
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
3.5 stars
Some passages of this book absolutely blew me away but it was a long old slog reading it. The imagery is so vivid at times but the story itself wasn’t my favourite, it’s a bit simple. The ideas and themes are complex, heavy and very Mishima but sometimes it’s a bit too much. I feel like it could have been 100 pages shorter easily, especially considering how long it takes to get going.
Some passages of this book absolutely blew me away but it was a long old slog reading it. The imagery is so vivid at times but the story itself wasn’t my favourite, it’s a bit simple. The ideas and themes are complex, heavy and very Mishima but sometimes it’s a bit too much. I feel like it could have been 100 pages shorter easily, especially considering how long it takes to get going.
It’s like if I started rooting for Holden Caulfield, which made the ending like 12 times more impactful. God the writing itself was so gorgeous, I was floored. This is a 5/5, but just not my personal taste exactly idk how to explain it.
People have written really elegant and thoughtful reviews of this book and here are some ideas I agree with: you have to read it slowly to really appreciate it. You should come more for the quality of the prose rather than the quality of the plot. You won't get it all out the book unless you have at least some vague knowledge of Japanese society at the time that the book is set, as the aristocracy turns west.
I really took a while to finish this because first of all, living in Japan is crazy busy and I've got a lot going on, and also because this is far removed from a genre I usually read for pleasure. The thing is is that I really want to journey away from the YA fantasy that hooked the end of my teenage years, and explore deeper into the world of fiction, because there's so much more out then on offer than I realise. So I picked up this dense tome only knowing that the guy who wrote it looked like this:
Though this version is read through the veil of a translation, you could easily feel Mishima's words, and they are stunning. My favourite parts were always the descriptions of nature, animals, how the seasons change. He can write just a short phrase and the entire essence of the scene is vivid in your mind. It felt like the story was being projected to me. I loved it.
And I really love how Kiyoaki is just a person. He's really complicated, and often think things that don't make sense, and he changes his mind and behaves like a normal human being with problems and issues. When I read about him it didn't feel like I was reading about the main character of a story, but rather having a direct look into someone's life, with all the boring bits shoved in between. As he lazed around and let the days pass, so did I. As he argued with Honda for pages and pages, it made me want to join in, too. Do I call this book realism? I'm not sure. But Mishima certainly knows how to write a book, and I'm excited to read the rest of the tetralogy as soon as I can.
Thanks bisexual legend u wrote a banger here.
I really took a while to finish this because first of all, living in Japan is crazy busy and I've got a lot going on, and also because this is far removed from a genre I usually read for pleasure. The thing is is that I really want to journey away from the YA fantasy that hooked the end of my teenage years, and explore deeper into the world of fiction, because there's so much more out then on offer than I realise. So I picked up this dense tome only knowing that the guy who wrote it looked like this:
Though this version is read through the veil of a translation, you could easily feel Mishima's words, and they are stunning. My favourite parts were always the descriptions of nature, animals, how the seasons change. He can write just a short phrase and the entire essence of the scene is vivid in your mind. It felt like the story was being projected to me. I loved it.
And I really love how Kiyoaki is just a person. He's really complicated, and often think things that don't make sense, and he changes his mind and behaves like a normal human being with problems and issues. When I read about him it didn't feel like I was reading about the main character of a story, but rather having a direct look into someone's life, with all the boring bits shoved in between. As he lazed around and let the days pass, so did I. As he argued with Honda for pages and pages, it made me want to join in, too. Do I call this book realism? I'm not sure. But Mishima certainly knows how to write a book, and I'm excited to read the rest of the tetralogy as soon as I can.
Thanks bisexual legend u wrote a banger here.
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
One of the most beautiful books I've ever read. Reading Mishima's prose is like reading poetry, and it makes me feel wholly inadequate in the English language (and the original was in Japanese!). Also one of the most profoundly psychological books I've read; like a modernist equivalent of Lispector's 'The Passion According to G.H.' or Blanchot's 'Thomas the Obscure', where for much of the book you are living in the minds of the characters, learning about their (very ill!) psyches, the way they think, even coming to understand the way their parents' psyches have impressed upon them certain facets and maladaptive patterns, but ultimately it works with the plot to move it along, giving you an incredible simultaneous movement between, on the one hand, all-too-real interactions, almost a gritty realism of interactions situated in the complex period of Westernization in Japan, and on the other hand, psychological elaborations, dream journals ripe with metaphor and prescience, and even religious ponderings that take you at once to the mystical and metaphysical as well as grounding you in the social and political mechanisms at the time. The result is a Romeo and Juliet-type tragedy whose inevitable end is not just so because of the helplessness of the protagonists embedded in a deeply familial and political world of filiations and alliances, but also because of their own choices, they own thought patterns, their own ways of seeing the world, their own illnesses, their own beings; the course of events for Kiyoaki and Satoko were not doomed simply because of the traditional and wealthy worlds they were born into, but ultimately because it involved specifically Kiyoaki and Satoko, whose being together could only lead to tragedy. 'Spring Snow' is thus far the best book I've read all year and I cannot recommend it more highly.