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lauren_endnotes 's review for:
Sun and Steel
by Yukio Mishima
"I cherished a romantic relationship with death..." (pg 38)
From SUN AND STEEL by Yukio Mishima, translated by John Bester, 1968/1970.
Mishima's 1968 personal essay is a challenge. It is not long and dense, but the challenge comes in the subject matter and the insight into Mishima's way of looking at the world.
In 108 pages, he writes a beautifully constructed essay on physical training and the aesthetics of the human form - most specifically building muscle towards an absolute, devotion to a task, and reaching the pinnacle of that form and devotion with a noble death.
The specter of that death hangs heavy, knowing of Mishima's own ritualised, dramatic, and controversial suicide that occurred only 2 years after this essay's publication.
In this essay, death is mentioned no less than 100 times. Mishima describes his cultic obsession with death in romantic and erotic terms, with diversions and dialectics into philosophy and literature, and then back to martial training and bodybuilding. He has an extended passage describing the facial expressions of Shinto devotees looking into the blue heavens; another long passage discusses an apple being pierced and sliced, and how this relates to word and action.
I saw some other reviewers refer to the essay as "quite mad" or "batshit crazy", and while they arent too far off, this was quite a revelatory read for me. I was struck again by the imagery and the fluidity of description, and just how different his perceptions of the world are from my own.
Imagine an extreme right-wing Oath Keeper type - storming the gates (that's what he did with his own militia!) YET this person is also a stunning poet, a recognized literary genius, and cultural icon...
It challenges the mind and the notions of society, and just scratches the surface of the mystery and mythos of Yukio Mishima.
From SUN AND STEEL by Yukio Mishima, translated by John Bester, 1968/1970.
Mishima's 1968 personal essay is a challenge. It is not long and dense, but the challenge comes in the subject matter and the insight into Mishima's way of looking at the world.
In 108 pages, he writes a beautifully constructed essay on physical training and the aesthetics of the human form - most specifically building muscle towards an absolute, devotion to a task, and reaching the pinnacle of that form and devotion with a noble death.
The specter of that death hangs heavy, knowing of Mishima's own ritualised, dramatic, and controversial suicide that occurred only 2 years after this essay's publication.
In this essay, death is mentioned no less than 100 times. Mishima describes his cultic obsession with death in romantic and erotic terms, with diversions and dialectics into philosophy and literature, and then back to martial training and bodybuilding. He has an extended passage describing the facial expressions of Shinto devotees looking into the blue heavens; another long passage discusses an apple being pierced and sliced, and how this relates to word and action.
I saw some other reviewers refer to the essay as "quite mad" or "batshit crazy", and while they arent too far off, this was quite a revelatory read for me. I was struck again by the imagery and the fluidity of description, and just how different his perceptions of the world are from my own.
Imagine an extreme right-wing Oath Keeper type - storming the gates (that's what he did with his own militia!) YET this person is also a stunning poet, a recognized literary genius, and cultural icon...
It challenges the mind and the notions of society, and just scratches the surface of the mystery and mythos of Yukio Mishima.