[GXD]⇒ Download Gratis The Decay of the Angel The Sea of Fertility Yukio Mishima 9780099284574 Books

The Decay of the Angel The Sea of Fertility Yukio Mishima 9780099284574 Books

Download As PDF : The Decay of the Angel The Sea of Fertility Yukio Mishima 9780099284574 Books

The Decay of the Angel The Sea of Fertility Yukio Mishima 9780099284574 Books

Yukio Mishima's THE DECAY OF THE ANGEL is the last volume of his "Sea of Fertility". It is also the last book he wrote. On November 25, 1970 he sent the manuscript off to the publisher, then went to incite the soldiers of Japan's military headquarters to a coup d'etat. When he failed, he committed seppuku. As might be expected, THE DECAY OF THE ANGEL contains much that that relates to Mishima's dissatisfaction with life, and the cosmic nihilism that he promised would be the ultimate theme of the tetralogy comes to the forefront. The ending is also possibly the most shocking in all of literature.

The year is now 1970, and Shikeguni Honda adopts a young orphan named Toru, who he believes is the third successive reincarnation of Kiyoaki. The decay present throughout the book is especially present in Honda, who we meet as as a man of seventy-six and who reaches eighty-one by the novel's end. His physical health, memory, and wife are gone. He keeps company with Keiko, the former neighbour whose secret formed the climax of THE TEMPLE OF DAWN, and they talk inanely about senility and medical ailments. But it's also present in Toru who, although young, possesses none of the beauty of Kiyoaki, the dedication of Isao, or the allure of Ying Chan. In fact, Toru is pure evil, and the bulk of the novel is his plot to destroy his adoptive father. The political commentary here is much more subtle than I expected it to be, considering that Mishima ended his life as a nationalist. Japan is plagued by a loss of its own traditions--Keiko shows interest in Japanese culture, but Honda remarks that she treats it as a hobby instead of authentically living it. The country is overrun with Coca-Cola ads and student radicals. But all in all, it is the mind of Honda that is the important setting, not the country around him.

By far the most impressive part of the novel is its surprise ending, which demolishes the entire "Sea of Fertility" cycle in a most impressive way when Honda meets Satoko again, who tells him either the mundane truth or the secret to enlightenment itself. The lectures on transmigration and the self which formed such a large part of THE TEMPLE OF DAWN are there for a reason, and what Mishima does with the no-self philosophy of Buddhism is awesome. If you've read one or more of the earlier volumes and are uncertain about pressing on, I exhort you to make it through this one. Looking back on the cycle, I admire its clever design, where the first two novels set a precedent and the second two undo it, and the general arc where we track Honda from youth to senescence, and Kiyoaki from a praise-worthy youth to despicable brat is skillfully done. The series as a whole is brilliant, read it all.


Tags : The Decay of the Angel (The Sea of Fertility) [Yukio Mishima] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The dramatic climax of The Sea of Fertility tetraology takes place in the late 1960s. Honda, now an aged and wealthy man,Yukio Mishima,The Decay of the Angel (The Sea of Fertility),Vintage Uk,009928457X,General & Literary Fiction,Fiction

The Decay of the Angel The Sea of Fertility Yukio Mishima 9780099284574 Books Reviews

The Decay of the Angel is the final volume of Mishima's The Sea of Fertility tetralogy. It is about Honda's adoption of Toru, who Honda believes is the latest incarnation of Kiyoaki. Toru is a strange character. Unlike Kiyoaki, Isao, and Ying Chan, he seems to be entirely devoid of normal human emotions and believes himself to be a kind of "exception", or, as Keiko says, "a beautiful little cloud of evil floating over humanity." The novel centers around the relationship between Honda, who is quite old, and his adopted cloud of evil.

I had the same experience reading all the novels of Mishima's tetralogy, with the exception of Runaway Horses. For most of each volume I was on the fence. I was impressed with Mishima's writing, his psychological insight, his exploration of the caverns of the heart and storms of emotion that assail human life, his descriptions of nature, and what I took to be his "metaphysics", for lack of a better term. However, I did not find any of the stories tremendously engaging (Spring Snow was the most interesting, in my opinion) and I was only lukewarm about each book, until the final scenes.

With Spring Snow I was blown away, and tremendously moved, by the scene of Kiyoaki walking through the snow to the temple, and his vision of an other-worldly beauty, with The Temple of Dawn I was moved by the fiery conflagration at the end, and with The Decay of the Angel, I was very moved by the final scene between Honda and Satoko. To me, Mishima had a way of redeeming his books with the final scenes. Since I tend to be swayed by my last impressions, having final scenes that are powerful and moving tends to effect my overall impressions of a book. So, I am not at all disappointed with the ending of the tetralogy or with the feeling it has left me with.

However, all of the books suffered from some flaws, in my humble opinion. The Decay of the Angel suffers from some of the same flaws of the earlier volumes, and some that were unique to it. For example, I was never really clear about Toru's or Honda's motives in this final volume. What was Honda trying to achieve by adopting Toru and forcing him to take lessons in etiquette? It seemed to me he was trying to keep Toru from the fate of his previous incarnations death in pursuit of beauty or some other-worldly ideal. But he also seems to think that the death is fated. And why does he want to keep him from that fate in the first place?

I was also never very clear about Toru's motives. Why does he want to injure Honda? Why does he take so much pleasure in hurting Momoko? His character also seemed somewhat inconsistent to me. He is described as possessing some special awareness or clarity. He is described as a machine. He is described as inhuman and, at one point, he claims to have no unconscious. He is also very passive. He just goes along with everything. He seems to be a strange image of some kind of hyper-consciousness that is able to pierce through the world, to see his own insides operating in perfect clarity. And yet, he gets carried away by emotions like humiliation and anger. He is a very strange character and I was never really sure what to make of him or what he was supposed to represent.

Like The Temple of Dawn, the novel also did not seem to me to have a central story or conflict. I thought it was going to center around Toru and Momoko, and Toru's cruelty towards her, but that is wrapped up long before the end of the novel. I just am not entirely sure what the story is. The characters, as I already mentioned, do not seem to be driven by any recognizable motives, so it is unclear what they are aiming for, why they are aiming for it, or whether they achieve it in the end. Not all novels have to be structured in that way but it certainly helps hold the reader's interest if they know what they are hoping for or where the story is heading.

What are we, as readers, hoping to have happen in this novel? Are we disappointed or fulfilled at the end? Do we want Toru to be the reincarnation of Kiyoaki? Do we want him to die in a blaze of glory like his predecessors or follow a boring path to worldly success? Do we want Honda to succeed in his plan, whatever it is, or do we want Toru to succeed in his? What is the novel driving towards? What are we expecting to happen? Are those expectations fulfilled or dashed?

I do not know the answers to those questions. Still, despite those reservations, I have to say, I found the novel moving. Mishima is worth reading for his lyrical writing alone. There are plenty of treasures within this book. And like I said, the ending to me seemed fitting, and seemed to me to largely redeem all the problems with the novel that I listed above. SPOILER ALERT IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK DO NOT READ THE REST OF MY REVIEW. Some people seem to think the ending to this novel is nihilistic. I have to admit, I have a hard time understanding that reading. It is true that Honda is disappointed in his belief that Toru is Kiyoaki's reincarnation. But is the denial of the reality of reincarnation nihilism? Does the meaning of the world, and of human life, depend on the reality of reincarnation? I don't think so, and I doubt Mishima did either.

It is also true that Toru's fate ends with a whimper rather than a bang. He is blinded and, as far as we know from the novel, spends the rest of his days married to a mad woman (Kinue who, I thought, was one of the most interesting characters in the book). But the reader was not really rooting for Toru to begin with. He was too cruel. The reader comes away feeling satisfied that Toru has gotten his come-uppance. It is true, he can no longer believe that he is an exception, but does the meaning of the world depend on there being exceptions? Is being human not enough?

I think the final scene is an affirmation of Buddhist selflessness. When Satoko claims never to have known Kiyoaki, Honda wonders "If there was no Kiyoaki, then there was no Isao. There was no Ying Chan, and who knows, perhaps there has been no I." Satoko lights up when Honda utters those words and replies "That too is as it is in each heart" (246). That, to me, is an affirmation of the Buddhist doctrine of no-self which, far from being nihilistic, is supposed to be the culminating insight of enlightenment and the path to boundless joy. I feel quite certain that Mishima knew enough about Buddhism to know that.

And what about Mishima's portrayal of Satoko. Does she seem beaten and defeated to readers? She certainly didn't seem beaten or defeated to me. If Mishima had really wanted to end the book nihilistically, I think Satoko would have to have had some insight that revealed her search for enlightenment to have been in vain. It would have been easy for Mishima to portray her in that way if he had wanted to. He could have fastened on the inevitable decay of her flesh, Honda could have seen the light extinquished in her eyes, but instead Mishima says that age, for Satoko, "had sped in the direction not of decay but of purification," her "skin seemed to glow with a still light," and "the beauty of the eyes was clearer" (243).

I would point out that the fifth sign of the decay of the angel is "The body becomes fetid or ceases to give off light, or the eyelids tremble." Mishima seems to be driving home, with his description of Satoko, that she is not a part of the decay of the angel. He specifically describes her skin as glowing with a "still light" and her eyes as clear. Decay is certainly a theme of the novel, and is ever-present - in Honda, in Keiko, in Toru, in Kinue, in Japan as a whole - but Satoko still radiates at the center of all the decay. Satoko seems to me to be an image of radiant beauty and enlightenment and the final scene of the novel is focused on her.

In the final scene of the whole book Honda is led into an empty garden by Satoko, "a place that had no memories, nothing," as the "noontide sun of summer flowed over the still garden" (247). This, to me, is not a nihilistic image. It is an image of death, for sure, but is it an image of despair or meaninglessness? I don't think so. Portraying death as a walk into an empty garden, bathed in the noontide sun, is an image of paradise or salvation. I find it hard to understand how readers can read it in any other way.

I think people who read this book nihilistically might be reading it through the lens of Mishima's suicide which, apparently, took place on the same day that he wrote those final words about the garden in the noontide sun. I admit, I find that hard to explain, but if I knew nothing about Mishima's death, I would not come away from this book feeling hopeless or depressed or nihilistic. I would come away feeling moved, as if I had caught a glimpse of a strange and other-worldly beauty burning at the still heart of our tumultuous existence, and that, in my opinion, is the main reason to read Mishima.
i love the whole series
too bad he killed himself
Crazy stuff. The consummate sadist. Now on to the SDF HQ and seppuku. No great loss.
I have read it many times. It does not seem as good.
Yukio Mishima's THE DECAY OF THE ANGEL is the last volume of his "Sea of Fertility". It is also the last book he wrote. On November 25, 1970 he sent the manuscript off to the publisher, then went to incite the soldiers of Japan's military headquarters to a coup d'etat. When he failed, he committed seppuku. As might be expected, THE DECAY OF THE ANGEL contains much that that relates to Mishima's dissatisfaction with life, and the cosmic nihilism that he promised would be the ultimate theme of the tetralogy comes to the forefront. The ending is also possibly the most shocking in all of literature.

The year is now 1970, and Shikeguni Honda adopts a young orphan named Toru, who he believes is the third successive reincarnation of Kiyoaki. The decay present throughout the book is especially present in Honda, who we meet as as a man of seventy-six and who reaches eighty-one by the novel's end. His physical health, memory, and wife are gone. He keeps company with Keiko, the former neighbour whose secret formed the climax of THE TEMPLE OF DAWN, and they talk inanely about senility and medical ailments. But it's also present in Toru who, although young, possesses none of the beauty of Kiyoaki, the dedication of Isao, or the allure of Ying Chan. In fact, Toru is pure evil, and the bulk of the novel is his plot to destroy his adoptive father. The political commentary here is much more subtle than I expected it to be, considering that Mishima ended his life as a nationalist. Japan is plagued by a loss of its own traditions--Keiko shows interest in Japanese culture, but Honda remarks that she treats it as a hobby instead of authentically living it. The country is overrun with Coca-Cola ads and student radicals. But all in all, it is the mind of Honda that is the important setting, not the country around him.

By far the most impressive part of the novel is its surprise ending, which demolishes the entire "Sea of Fertility" cycle in a most impressive way when Honda meets Satoko again, who tells him either the mundane truth or the secret to enlightenment itself. The lectures on transmigration and the self which formed such a large part of THE TEMPLE OF DAWN are there for a reason, and what Mishima does with the no-self philosophy of Buddhism is awesome. If you've read one or more of the earlier volumes and are uncertain about pressing on, I exhort you to make it through this one. Looking back on the cycle, I admire its clever design, where the first two novels set a precedent and the second two undo it, and the general arc where we track Honda from youth to senescence, and Kiyoaki from a praise-worthy youth to despicable brat is skillfully done. The series as a whole is brilliant, read it all.