Take a photo of a barcode or cover
eely225 's review for:
Spring Snow
by Yukio Mishima
Mishima is an author who revels in the importance of the unimportant. The seemingly casual remarks that get us all through the day are parsed and broken to a depth of meaning that is unrecognizable from where it began. It seems, oftentimes, excessive.
And yet, don't we all do this? How many pithy, forgettable remarks do we remember? How many times has a single, random phrase defined another person for us in their entirety? How often have we unfairly assumed that we knew all there was to know about a person based on their casual conversation?
The walls are up high and connections are few and far between for Mishima's noble youths. What he reveals is that an absence of formal connection and a paucity of opportunities for deep interaction don't mean that the participants don't feel deeply. Perhaps they feel wrongly, immaturely, or recklessly, but it's not a lack of depth that's the issue.
This is a highly verbose novel about silence, the inability to interrogate one's self and to communicate with others. It's all orbit and no contact. And like the inhuman beauty of its protagonists, the inhuman beauty of the text is resonant in a way that's hard to explain. As a reader, I found myself much in the same position as these characters: amazed and confused. It's a wonder to behold how much Mishima does with so little action.
And yet, don't we all do this? How many pithy, forgettable remarks do we remember? How many times has a single, random phrase defined another person for us in their entirety? How often have we unfairly assumed that we knew all there was to know about a person based on their casual conversation?
The walls are up high and connections are few and far between for Mishima's noble youths. What he reveals is that an absence of formal connection and a paucity of opportunities for deep interaction don't mean that the participants don't feel deeply. Perhaps they feel wrongly, immaturely, or recklessly, but it's not a lack of depth that's the issue.
This is a highly verbose novel about silence, the inability to interrogate one's self and to communicate with others. It's all orbit and no contact. And like the inhuman beauty of its protagonists, the inhuman beauty of the text is resonant in a way that's hard to explain. As a reader, I found myself much in the same position as these characters: amazed and confused. It's a wonder to behold how much Mishima does with so little action.