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jaden_umeh's review
4.0
Mishima offers a wonderful meditation on the impermanence of beauty, both structural and biological, as well as depicting the inevitably flawed human reaction to said impermanence.
hadia_00's review against another edition
5.0
Unlike the other two books I have read by Mishima, this had a pretty slow start. So much so that at one point, around the 50-page I put it down for over 3 weeks before picking it back up. But after those few chapters the book became unputdownable. So, even though I was initially thinking of giving this a lower rating, the overall story was worth the wait.
We follow a young boy named Mizoguchi, who becomes a stutterer due to some childhood trauma. This gives his schoolmates a reason to make fun of him which affects his self-image severely. He hates his disability and finds himself ugly because of it. On top of that, he now has to become an acolyte at The Golden Temple in Kyoto to fulfil his father's dying wish.
It's the same temple whose beauty his father used to describe in great detail to him as a child. But he doesn't believe it'll be as beautiful in person, that is until he sets his eyes on it. He becomes unnaturally consumed by the temple's beauty, to the point that it inevitably destroys him.
The book is loosely based on a true event and is a brilliantly written psychological study of a young, traumatised mind. Mishima's way of making something banal seem worthy of deeper analysis and conveying complex emotions in an accessible manner is unmatched till date.
We follow a young boy named Mizoguchi, who becomes a stutterer due to some childhood trauma. This gives his schoolmates a reason to make fun of him which affects his self-image severely. He hates his disability and finds himself ugly because of it. On top of that, he now has to become an acolyte at The Golden Temple in Kyoto to fulfil his father's dying wish.
It's the same temple whose beauty his father used to describe in great detail to him as a child. But he doesn't believe it'll be as beautiful in person, that is until he sets his eyes on it. He becomes unnaturally consumed by the temple's beauty, to the point that it inevitably destroys him.
The book is loosely based on a true event and is a brilliantly written psychological study of a young, traumatised mind. Mishima's way of making something banal seem worthy of deeper analysis and conveying complex emotions in an accessible manner is unmatched till date.
mimmaz's review
5.0
Really powerful narration. I was totally entrenched by Mizuguchi’s delusions, isolation, and inaction and the final pages just felt like relief.
lisky's review
challenging
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
tomstbr's review against another edition
5.0
I know I'm too old for it, but I'm going through my nihilist/existentialist phase now in my late twenties. This book really hits the spot. It's about two things: beauty and death. Or three things if you count beauty in death. It actually reminded me of Catcher in the Rye, but not terrible and way more intelligent. The protagonist is similar in terms of having a young brashness, a certain naivety. It's beautifully written with so many perfect sentences/paragraphs. Absolutely a book I will read again.
lien_entre_'s review
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
casparb's review against another edition
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (anag): A looping TV film, telephone Ed
It is no exaggeration to say that the first real problem I faced in my life was that of beauty
I don't want to call this a meditation but here is something of an expostulation of beauty, as fascism proclaims it. Or as Mishima has wrapt it in desire & disgust ! There's an opening here -- sexuality awakens in self-abasement, Mizoguchi's desire-dreams become sexuality in his dreamed transformation into an ugly ungeziefer, and frankly I don't see it as straying too far into biographical reductionism to gesture at this incredible twinning of desire & disgust, sexuality & self-abasement as Mishima sees it here.
I see why Schrader in his biopic presents Pavilion as a kind of Noh play, the realm of archetypes hyperbole & -- Mishima.
We remember our friend Walter Benjamin's dictum that Fascism is the aestheticization of politics & I find that an immensely useful reading of this novel I'm sure there's a paper on that out there somewhere. The word beauty seems to occur on just about every page I'd be curious to know how many times & it seems so adjacent to the occupation in Sailor - purity. Perhaps purity is something that Can be reached, uncharacteristically, for Mish. Hence the bodybuilding the ascetism so forth. I just find the use of Mizoguchi & Kashiwagi so fascinating (etymology) in developing something actually Interesting to say about, first of all, authorship (to stutter, to reiterate, self-perception as sack of potatoes. & This from arguably Japan's most beautiful writer he's not distancing he's identifying! An artist!) -- it's so much more exciting there than what fascism actually Is in the world & I think that comes through YM as a person an artist of neverending complications.
I think it’d be fun to design a module on Problems of beauty in 20thc literature - you could through this against The Waves & the Cantos for chaos.
Also the final ten pages are really just some of his best, ever. beauty ! here !
that terrifying concept of beauty, which makes people powerless act - seems to speak to the relatively sustained references to Hamlet Now tread carefully
It's worth saying also that this is based on a true story & Mishima apparently interviewed the 'real' Mizoguchi- is there a transcript let me know
Now we know to be careful with these to take tweezers & divide this feels such an essential text in the Mishima canon for his own relationship to what he believed as the teleology of fascism, for the purpose of the body & self-perception as an artist. It's a difficult chew & I expect there's an awful lot of scholarship erring on quite the wrong side of the matter. But worthwhile, after others from YM. It’s kind of the apotheosis of a study on how fascists attempt to reconcile what they want to call beautiful & ugliness. And my doesn't it just tap into perennial concerns for those involved. See below
I have brought the great ball of crystal;
who can lift it?
Can you enter the great acorn of light?
But the beauty is not the madness
Tho’ my errors and wrecks lie about me.
And I am not a demigod,
I cannot make it cohere.
If love be not in the house there is nothing.
The voice of famine unheard.
How came beauty against this blackness,
Twice beauty under the elms ---
-EP, CXVI
A single gunshot can never destroy the beauty of fascism!
-Peggy Gravel
It is no exaggeration to say that the first real problem I faced in my life was that of beauty
I don't want to call this a meditation but here is something of an expostulation of beauty, as fascism proclaims it. Or as Mishima has wrapt it in desire & disgust ! There's an opening here -- sexuality awakens in self-abasement, Mizoguchi's desire-dreams become sexuality in his dreamed transformation into an ugly ungeziefer, and frankly I don't see it as straying too far into biographical reductionism to gesture at this incredible twinning of desire & disgust, sexuality & self-abasement as Mishima sees it here.
I see why Schrader in his biopic presents Pavilion as a kind of Noh play, the realm of archetypes hyperbole & -- Mishima.
We remember our friend Walter Benjamin's dictum that Fascism is the aestheticization of politics & I find that an immensely useful reading of this novel I'm sure there's a paper on that out there somewhere. The word beauty seems to occur on just about every page I'd be curious to know how many times & it seems so adjacent to the occupation in Sailor - purity. Perhaps purity is something that Can be reached, uncharacteristically, for Mish. Hence the bodybuilding the ascetism so forth. I just find the use of Mizoguchi & Kashiwagi so fascinating (etymology) in developing something actually Interesting to say about, first of all, authorship (to stutter, to reiterate, self-perception as sack of potatoes. & This from arguably Japan's most beautiful writer he's not distancing he's identifying! An artist!) -- it's so much more exciting there than what fascism actually Is in the world & I think that comes through YM as a person an artist of neverending complications.
I think it’d be fun to design a module on Problems of beauty in 20thc literature - you could through this against The Waves & the Cantos for chaos.
Also the final ten pages are really just some of his best, ever. beauty ! here !
that terrifying concept of beauty, which makes people powerless act - seems to speak to the relatively sustained references to Hamlet Now tread carefully
It's worth saying also that this is based on a true story & Mishima apparently interviewed the 'real' Mizoguchi- is there a transcript let me know
Now we know to be careful with these to take tweezers & divide this feels such an essential text in the Mishima canon for his own relationship to what he believed as the teleology of fascism, for the purpose of the body & self-perception as an artist. It's a difficult chew & I expect there's an awful lot of scholarship erring on quite the wrong side of the matter. But worthwhile, after others from YM. It’s kind of the apotheosis of a study on how fascists attempt to reconcile what they want to call beautiful & ugliness. And my doesn't it just tap into perennial concerns for those involved. See below
I have brought the great ball of crystal;
who can lift it?
Can you enter the great acorn of light?
But the beauty is not the madness
Tho’ my errors and wrecks lie about me.
And I am not a demigod,
I cannot make it cohere.
If love be not in the house there is nothing.
The voice of famine unheard.
How came beauty against this blackness,
Twice beauty under the elms ---
-EP, CXVI
A single gunshot can never destroy the beauty of fascism!
-Peggy Gravel
ekaterine's review
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
4.0
miguelchambel's review
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
vanessa40834's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75