天人五衰 Tennin Gosui PDF/EPUB ☆ 天人五衰
As the dramatic climax of The Sea of Fertility 'The Decay of the Angel' brings together the dominant themes of the three previous novels the meaning and decay of Japan's courtly tradition and samurai ideal; the essence and value of Buddhist philosophy and aesthetics; and underlying all Mishima's apocalyptic vision of the modern era which saw the dissolution of the moral and cultural forces that throughout the ages nourished a people and a world The time is the late 1960s Honda now an aged and wealthy man discovers and adopts a sixteen year old orphan Toru as his heir identifying him with the tragic protagonists of the three previous novels each of whom died at the age of twenty Honda raises and educates the boy yet watches him waiting
This is the fourth and final volume in Mishima’s tetralogy The Sea of Fertility Class divisions and changing values in Japan due to western influence are major themes Another theme all the way through the series is reincarnation In Decay of the Angel the reincarnated spirit is an orphan He has a job helping ships in port navigate to their docks Obviously it was pre ordained that Honda finds him since he encounters him by simply w
A strange swift landing to the Sea of Fertility tetralogy and a book that can't help but be altered by the fact that Mishima's strange ritualistic suicide occurred the day after he handed it in on the date on the last page of the mansucript There is a lot to like in this volume which cleverly inverts the reincarnations of Kiyoaki by uestioning whether this particular rendition a sociopathic ship watcher named Tōru Yasunaga a charact
What’s this one about do you suppose? There is in all translations of Mishima’s work I have read—by a host of translators—a fundamental woodeness or clunkiness of description especially in his philosophical flights In Japan he is often referred to as a stylist with a penchant for archaic Japanese word forms So it could be that Mishima’s use of archaisms means he doesn’t translate well into English I don’t know But this fo
Do you think that your hopes and those of someone else coincide that your hopes can be smoothly realized for you by someone else? People live for themselves and think only of themselves You who than most think only of yourself have gone too far and let yourself be blinded You thought that history has its exceptions There are none You thought that the race has its exceptions There are none There is no special right to happiness and none
To be as honest as possible I must run the risk of not making any sense this is simultaneously my favorite and least favorite book in the series Parts of it were hugely gorgeous the prose was pure and had an almost cleansing aura to it and I felt alive while reading it However I wanted to strangle Mishima for writing some other parts that I felt were not only uncalled for but intentionally annoying to read I'm looking at you several descri
Of all the books that I've read so far this has got to be the hardest book to review I feel like my love for this book stems mainly from certain aspects that have little to do with the book itselfAs an admirer of Yukio Mishima this book meant much to me than any other novel of his since it documented his last thoughts before his poetic demise The finished manuscript waited on the desk as he turned his life into the Line of Poetry written wi
A great ending to a great tetralogy the ending is drilled in my memory like a painting I can see Honda on his cane uestioning his life and Satoko guided by her assistant gazing at the garden a place that had no memories as Honda said with the sunlight streaming on the trees
Much like listening to Joy Division's Closer there's an inescapable feeling of finality when reading the last novel of the uartet that goes beyond simply it being the last novel If you're at all interested in Mishima or the uartet you're probably well aware that as soon as Mishima finished the novel he went out attempted to stage a coup that failed miserably and then committed a ritual suicide all of which made perfect sense to him in his worldv
An excellent ending to a most excellent and powerful series of four novels I'm so sad to see it end and I'm sure I'll be feeling a bit empty for a while to come
How can an angel decay? An angel in this context is not the haloed winged messenger of the Christian deity In Buddhist cosmology angels are celestial beings who live in the sixth realm of rebirth Those with good karma can be reborn there and the pleasure and comfort it offers far exceed that of the human world However this is not the unualified paradise it may sound like No matter how many eons and kalpas may pass beings cannot stay in the sixth rea