"Spring Snow" by Yukio Mishima *****

●  Japanese author
●  Originally published in 1969
●   Vocabulary:
             》 bodhisattva- "someone who voluntarily travels the road of mortification and suffering before entering into the full enlightenment of buddahood
●  Quotes:
              》 p.13......"Kiyoaki was incapable of hiding his true nature,  and was defenseless against society's power to inflict pain"... foreshadowing
              》 p.15......"And, Kiyoaki, like an ant that senses the approaching flood, was experiencing the first intimations of his family's rapid collapse. "
              》 p.17....."As they stepped into the boat,  its wild rocking evoked in Kiyoaki his favorite feelings about the precariousness of life. "
              》 p.18......"  Greedy men tend to look miserable. "
              》 p.31......"He realized that as long as conscious desire is at work, it will permit distinctions to exist.  But if one can suppress it, these distinctions          dissolve and one can be as content with a skull as with anything else."
              》 p.38......"Their expressions blank,  innocent of foreknowledge,  they glided downstream like twigs hand in hand on clear waters mirroring blue sky and clouds, to take the inevitable plunge over the crest of the falls."....Satoko & Miyoaki
              》 p.46......"Dreams, memories,  the sacred--they are all alike in that they are beyond our grasp.   Once we are even marginally separated from what we can touch, the object is sanctified; it acquires the beauty of the unattainable,  the qualityof miraculous.  Everything,  really,  has thix quality of sacredness,  but we can desecrate it at a touch. How strange man is!  His touch defiles and yet he contains thexour e of miracles."   ????
              》 p.71......"Since early childhood,  all that he had been taught to revere as honorable and beautiful was to be found,  as far as the Matsugaes were concerned, inthe proximityof death."
              》p.100....."Do away with chance and you undermine the the props under the concept of the will.".......??????
              》 p.109....."And so I think of Kiyo as the spirit of snow, so masculine in your uniform.   I think of you as overwhelming me.  To feelmyself dissolve into your beauty and freeze to death in the snow--no fate could be sweeter. "
              》p.166....."If a candle has burned brilliantly but now stands alone in the dark with its flame extinguished,  itneed no longer fear that its substance will dissolve into hot wax.   For the first ti e in his life, Kiyoaki came to realize the healing powers of solitude."
              》 p.198....."And just as in the old wars,  there will be casualties inthe war of emotion, I think.  It's the fate of our age--and you're one of our representatives. "    Honda to Miyoaki.  ?....first sentence of book refeds to the Russo-Japanese War......metaphor and foreshadowing
             》 p.209...."Once passion was set in motion according to its own laws,  thenit was irresistable.  This was a theory that would never be accepted by modern law, which took it as self evident that conscience and reasonruled man."....Honda's realization based on the transformation of Miyoaki
            》 p.217......"The sunlight became awesome as it shone on the cumulus clouds,  towering up over the offing like huge masses of whipped cream,  and penetrated their deep curving hollows.  While the areas that lay in the shadows resisted the probing sun, its bright rays threw the rugged force of their sculptured outlines into relief.   In his imagination,  the parts cut off from direct light were totally different in character from those that were dazzlingly exposed.  They slumbered on uneventfully , while in contrast their counterparts fiercely enacted a swiftly unfolding drama of tragic proportions.   But there was no place for the human element,  and so slumber and tragedy came to the samething, an idle game at best."
           》 p.222....."Be it the edge of time or space,  there is nothing so awe inspiring as a border."
           》 p.255......"He felt, rather, that it was his youth, or the most glorious part of it, that was about to vanish below the horizon."  ......more ship imagery
           》 p.271......"Tadeshina felt that she and Satoko were matched like a boat advancing against the current and the current itself, so well matched that the boat was held immobile for a time, bound together with it from moment to moment in impatient intimacy. "
           》 p.277......."...bewitched by impossibility"
●  Notes:
             》 water imagery, youth escaping,
             》 Marquis' s disquiet at his son's beauty....p.10......foreshadowing
             》 The author likes boat imagery,  just as in "The Sound of Waves"....p.16
             》 Title.....springsnow is often intense, but does not last long
             》 Dynamic of force in lovemaking....cultural?
             》 Story of golden feathers destroyed by greed, a children's story...p.229
             》 Pleasure of the forbidden....cigarettes and love....Miyoaki waited until love with Satoko forbidden to act
             》 Total shock at 8 year plan to humiliate Matsugae. P.306
             》  Imagery of black dog at waterfall and dead white mole?
             》  Bohdisattva temple....link between Siamese princes and Satoko....p.317....suffering to enlightenment. ?..p.336
             》  Two sons of Marquis....one ugly, one beautiful
             》  Kiyoaki's firstview of amember of the aristocracybrought abouthis adoration of a woman
●  Review:    This is my second novel by Mishima, and I am firmly a fan!  This tale of young forbidden love, of a manipulative, devious aristocracy desperate to hold onto their way of life, set in Tokyo in the early 1900s is absolutely marvelous.  Mishima's prose is elegant, his use of metaphor and imagery is unparalleled.   The second half of the novel felt like an opera unfolding before me, full of drama, intrigue, and the sense of impending doom whichhad been brilliantly foreshadowed in the first half.  There was even a surprise twist to take the reader's breath away.  Beautiful read!