Sun and Steel YUKIO MISHIMA

Sun and Steel

YUKIO MISHIMA

"Nothing gives the armed forces so much attraction as the fact that even the most trivial duty is ultimately an emanation of something far loftier and more glorious, and is linked, somewhere, with the idea of death. The man of letters, on the other hand, must scratch together his own glory from the rubbish within himself, already overfamiliar in every detail, and refurbish it for the public eye."

"Once there were such words, though they are lost to us nowadays. They were not simply beautiful phrases, but a constant summons to superhuman behavior, words that demanded that the individual stake his very life on the attempt to climb to their own lofty heights. Words such as these, in which something first uttered as a conscious resolve gradually comes to demand an inescapable identification, lacked from the outset any bridge that might link them with ordinary, everyday preoccupations."

"Before my eyes, there slowly emerged a giant snake coiled about the earth; a snake that by constantly swallowing its own tail vanquished all polarities; the ultimate, huge snake that mocks all opposites.
Opposites carried to extremes come to resemble each other; and tilings that are farthest removed from each other, by increasing the distance between them, come closer together. This is the secret that the circle of the snake expounded."