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3.87 AVERAGE
3.87 AVERAGE
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Oh Yukio Mishima, you were insane, which resulted in such an earnest novel that is so honest at times that it’s difficult to truly look at it directly. However, I feel like this unbridled rawness was diluted every so often by the character’s compulsive heteronormativity. Although that is very much a part of many queer people’s journeys, focusing on it so much to where it overtakes the last third of the book feels a bit reductive. Still, a brilliant novel worth reading.
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
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
dark
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Did the motif of later years ‐ that of "remorse as prelude to sin" ‐ show here the first hint of its beginning? Or was the moment teaching me how grotesque my isolation would appear to the eyes of love, and at the same time was I learning, from the reverse side of the lesson, my own incapacity for accepting love?
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-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
Saint Sebastian, Guido Reni
"The black and slightly oblique trunk of the tree of execution was seen against a Titian-like background of gloomy forest and evening sky, sombre and distant. A remarkably handsome youth was bound naked to the trunk of the tree. His crossed hands were raised high, and the thongs binding his wrists were tied to the tree. No other bonds were visible, and the only covering for the youth’s nakedness was a coarse white cloth knotted loosely about his loins.
....
The arrows have eaten into the tense, fragrant, youthful flesh and are about to consume his body from within with flames of supreme agony and ecstasy. But there is no flowing blood, nor yet the host of arrows seen in other pictures of Sebastian’s martyrdom. Instead, two lone arrows cast their tranquil and graceful shadows upon the smoothness of his skin, like the shadows of a bough falling upon a marble stairway.
….
That day, the instant I looked upon the picture, my entire being trembled with some pagan joy. My blood soared up; my loins swelled as though in wrath. The monstrous part of me that was on the point of bursting awaited my use of it with unprecedented ardour, upbraiding me for my ignorance, panting indignantly. My hands, completely unconsciously, began a motion they had never been taught. I felt a secret, radiant something rise swift-footed to the attack from inside me. Suddenly it burst forth, bringing with it a blinding intoxication . . ."
It can be argued that human identity is composed of a plethora of masks, each and every one carefully crafted and subsequently picked out for any occasion that might arise.
Some are most comfortable to wear, fitting smoothly on that most expressive part of our bodies, the human face. Others might bring about some slight initial discomfort, but on the whole are quite innocuous, even lending a thrill here and there.
Yet there exists another, more treacherous, type of mask. The one that has spikes protruding from the back of it, poised to mutilate the owner’s face, contorting it, piercing its flesh, causing infected wounds, and ultimately coming very near to destroying it.
Those, the user will come to realize sooner or later, can be worn for a limited period of time. They quickly become menacing existential threats, and have to be dispensed with, ere the abyss opens up before him and swallows him whole.
Being the nigh agonizingly frank reveal of self that it is, Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask ( published in 1949 while its author was still in his early twenties ) has ever since garnered a reputation for being the quintessential 'coming out' novel, serving as an inspiration to homosexuals brought up in socially conservative societies everywhere.
Of course, writings portraying males freely exercising their homosexuality saw a great surge in the post-war years (Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar and Truman Capote's Other Voices Other Rooms being some of the most notable examples, at least in the US ).
Yet, I think a great disservice is done to Mishima's second work to classify it as merely a 'gay' - albeit semi-autobiographical - novel (does anyone else beside me detest the term?). There are multiple layers of his psyche explored here, themes touched upon, which all would play out in his later work - and, most tragically, life as well.
His apparent awe of the soldier’s calling and military glory in general (even though he feigned illness to avoid the draft), the appeal he found in suicide, which he considered to be one of the noblest actions one could perform, are featured prominently. These passages provide a clear hint for what was to follow.
Also disturbing is the supreme titillation Mishima found in the convergence of male youths, torture and death by all manner of gruesome ways. So while I am vaguely curious how his Japanese readership reacted to knowing which gender he turned his affections to, I'm even more so when it comes to what in essence amounts to his sadomasochism and worship of death. One imagines detailing these grotesque erotic fantasies could either make or break a budding author from the moment he admits to them.
Fortunately for Mishima, it made him an international phenomenon. And for good reason. Confessions of a Mask is a brave and powerful piece of detailed, rather Freudian, self-examination. Throw the clear influence of Huysmans's decadent hero Des Esseintes in there, and you end up with an intriguing recipe for a novel.
Alas, this is not the fully-formed, masterful Mishima I first encountered in his stupendous Spring Snow .
The book is slightly muddled both structurally and prose-wise (perhaps the translation is at fault here?), and at times was unable to grab me as much as I wanted or expected it to. All the elements of his future masterpieces are patently present, but he hadn’t arrived at a controlled, fruitful synthesis of those yet. As a full-length novel, it falls short a tad. He was just too young.
Yet, contained within are some truly gorgeous, descriptive passages to immerse yourself in, which prefigure that older Mishima I cherish so much. His soaring ambition and talent must be obvious to anyone who reads him. It is quite impossible to deny, even by his most ardent detractors.
As for me, I can’t wait to continue my – roughly chronological - exploration of both the man (in all his glorious complexity) and the writer. Forbidden Colours is next on the list.
Three years later, I finally finish Confessions of a Mask. I’m attributing this timespan to providence; in these three years, what I’ve experienced has worked me into someone able to digest this without falling into abject sin or tyrannical scrupulosity.
Brutal. I went into this knowing little about Mishima other than his infamous seppuku, his homosexuality, and the niche right-wing internet bodybuilding fanboy cult which parades him. I was not expecting the relatability of a pallid, bookish young man neurotically locked into Möbius strips of self-doubt and deceit.
Inferiority and impostor syndrome; watching yourself play the game and against yourself being powerless. “Pretense of normality.” The outcast. The nervous analysis of your own place in society and the inner mind of your peers which threatens the line of autism. Toying with others to convince yourself that you’re an ordinary person with ordinary thoughts living an ordinary life. Self-condemnation. I am lazy and unstable.A quiet, persistent backdrop of fleshy, gothic sensuality. Candlewax, knives, vampiric bloodlust. Saint Sebastian. The protagonist’s sadistic and “hemo-philic” passions in response to the display of youth, virility, life, which he knows himself to lack (and from which he feels fatefully withheld). World War II. Death in the springtime of life — the ephebic. Death, life, sex, and suffering as intimately and inseparably entwined.
”…at this precise moment you possess the normality that is your obsession. Whatever the form of your fantasy, you are sexually excited to the very depths of your physical being, and such excitement is entirely normal, differing not a jot from that of other men. … You are not attacked by that sadness which follows intercourse with a woman.”
Just prior to picking up this book, I put down Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy. I had read this:
“[the self] needs to reassure itself that it is not a ghost but is rather a self among other selves. … the pleasure of a sexual encounter derives not only from physical gratification but also from the demonstration to oneself that, despite one’s own ghostliness, one is, for the moment at least, a sexual being.”
Stuff to ponder!!
I’ll definitely have to read Confessions of a Mask again someday. My next Mishima read will likely be Sun & Steel; I hope it wakes me from my laziness and instability.
Brutal. I went into this knowing little about Mishima other than his infamous seppuku, his homosexuality, and the niche right-wing internet bodybuilding fanboy cult which parades him. I was not expecting the relatability of a pallid, bookish young man neurotically locked into Möbius strips of self-doubt and deceit.
Inferiority and impostor syndrome; watching yourself play the game and against yourself being powerless. “Pretense of normality.” The outcast. The nervous analysis of your own place in society and the inner mind of your peers which threatens the line of autism. Toying with others to convince yourself that you’re an ordinary person with ordinary thoughts living an ordinary life. Self-condemnation. I am lazy and unstable.A quiet, persistent backdrop of fleshy, gothic sensuality. Candlewax, knives, vampiric bloodlust. Saint Sebastian. The protagonist’s sadistic and “hemo-philic” passions in response to the display of youth, virility, life, which he knows himself to lack (and from which he feels fatefully withheld). World War II. Death in the springtime of life — the ephebic. Death, life, sex, and suffering as intimately and inseparably entwined.
”…at this precise moment you possess the normality that is your obsession. Whatever the form of your fantasy, you are sexually excited to the very depths of your physical being, and such excitement is entirely normal, differing not a jot from that of other men. … You are not attacked by that sadness which follows intercourse with a woman.”
Just prior to picking up this book, I put down Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy. I had read this:
“[the self] needs to reassure itself that it is not a ghost but is rather a self among other selves. … the pleasure of a sexual encounter derives not only from physical gratification but also from the demonstration to oneself that, despite one’s own ghostliness, one is, for the moment at least, a sexual being.”
Stuff to ponder!!
I’ll definitely have to read Confessions of a Mask again someday. My next Mishima read will likely be Sun & Steel; I hope it wakes me from my laziness and instability.