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A review by casparb
Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima
nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick...
Mishe Mishe again and unsurprisingly he's very good again. Spring Snow is closer to Confessions of a Mask than the blended depravity & beauty of The Sailor... but there are notes of all. I do detect a fairly Western swing in a way which is odd as this is one of YM's last novels before everything went a bit upsy-daisy.
I could see this as a screenplay for a film though it seems to fit better with more midcentury Japanese cinema than the 70s as this was written. But I wouldn't describe Mishima as somebody that loves progress. (the cinema industry a possible exception for him, interestingly). The issue with that is that the most exquisite features of Spring Snow are Mishima's descriptions, and while the force of his prose is consistently powerful and beautiful across his works, I feel often his narratives are capable of standing aside from that and I'm less sure for Snow. It's the first of a tetralogy ( The Sea of Fertility ) so perhaps will be seeing how things develop. I suspect they're not continuous in that sense.
Purity is the word for YM and is one of my favourites to spot. A crucial litmus test for any of his scenes. His relationship with 'purity' is of course very troubled in that he died for it. There's an incredible pathos - and disturbance - to encountering it in his fiction.
Mishe Mishe again and unsurprisingly he's very good again. Spring Snow is closer to Confessions of a Mask than the blended depravity & beauty of The Sailor... but there are notes of all. I do detect a fairly Western swing in a way which is odd as this is one of YM's last novels before everything went a bit upsy-daisy.
I could see this as a screenplay for a film though it seems to fit better with more midcentury Japanese cinema than the 70s as this was written. But I wouldn't describe Mishima as somebody that loves progress. (the cinema industry a possible exception for him, interestingly). The issue with that is that the most exquisite features of Spring Snow are Mishima's descriptions, and while the force of his prose is consistently powerful and beautiful across his works, I feel often his narratives are capable of standing aside from that and I'm less sure for Snow. It's the first of a tetralogy ( The Sea of Fertility ) so perhaps will be seeing how things develop. I suspect they're not continuous in that sense.
Purity is the word for YM and is one of my favourites to spot. A crucial litmus test for any of his scenes. His relationship with 'purity' is of course very troubled in that he died for it. There's an incredible pathos - and disturbance - to encountering it in his fiction.