The book contains two essays, The Sun and Iron and The Age of My Youth Traversal. The former is a literary philosophical essay dissecting Mishima's own opposition between mind and body, and his efforts to unify the two. The latter article is about mishima's debut in the literary world and his twenty-seven-year-old trip around the sea. Compared with the obscure entanglement of "The Sun and iron", "The Age of My Youth Traversal" is extremely clear and clear.
In this clear and lucid narrative, Mishima mentions the self-indulgence of his youth. I was intoxicated, but the future of Japan at that time was also unpredictable, and the yearning for the destruction of the world was born. He imagined himself as "the last youth of the beauty of Japanese tradition."
This kind of imagination reminds me of a work like "Akira", where a magical teenager stands on the ruins of Tokyo. They all exhibit a tragic apocalyptic aesthetic that unbridledly amplifies the instinct to die. "The flames reflected in various colors on the night plains of Takaza County, and I felt as if I were watching a bonfire in the distance like a magnificent feast of death and destruction."
However, with the end of the war, Mishima's magnificent ideals were shattered. Perhaps similar to this, this was also a common feeling of the young generation at that time, so dazai Osamu dazai's dark and sad writers were particularly famous. Mishima, however, did not like that" "he was the type of writer who deliberately exposed the parts I wanted to conceal", "many literary youths were so excited that they found their own portraits in his works, but I hurriedly turned my face away." ”
There is still a romantic complex in Mishima's heart, a yearning and recognition of violent beauty, which did not die with the end of the war, but only temporarily slept. Until he experienced the crisis of spiritual and physical decay, lost patience with his overflowing sensibility, and wanted to say goodbye to it completely.
Toward the end of the essay, Mishima embarked on a steamer to Hawaii. As the ship drew nearer and the daylight grew stronger, Mishima began his sunbathing for twelve years. "It was as if I had come out of a dark cave and found the sun. It was the first time in my life that I had shook hands with the sun. After he went to Greece, "Greece healed me of self-delay and loneliness and awakened the Nietzschean 'will to health.'" Furthermore, he mentioned, he may be thinking about death all the time.
It was in this youth that Mishima entered the second language, the language of the sun and iron.
If the order of these two essays is reversed, perhaps the passage "The Age of My Youth Traversed" can be regarded as the prelude to "The Sun and the Iron". Reading this article first and then reading "The Sun and Iron" may be an easier way to enter the world of Mishima Thought.
In Mishima's infancy, he first realized the role of language rather than the body, it is language that shapes the true face of reality, and language reflects metaphysical pursuits, the division of ontology. Because of his fascination with language, he deliberately avoided the body, and opposed language and the spirit, thought, and imagination it represented with the body and reality. When he accepted the call of the sun to cultivate the sun through iron training, he found that the uniqueness of language in the individual made it impossible to withstand the test of "looking back at reality".
Mishima made many physical efforts, practicing fitness, and kendo. Feeling ashamed of escaping the war during the war, he went to the army for training in his old age. On several occasions in the military, Mishima, at the limits of his training, deeply felt his presence and entered a world of self-sufficiency. The self-contained world no longer needs to add anything, so ahead of it is disillusionment and death. In training with his companions, he also felt his identity with existence. The discipline of the army needs to be consistent, and this collective and common action leads him to believe that "the other already belongs to 'us.'" "From here, the sublime was born.
Mishima's reflections on the flesh, or the contemplation of the flesh, summon Mishima's revival of classical beauty and traditional Japanese aesthetics, where the movement of the flesh is the flower of bloom and language is the flower of withering. Mishima wanted to combine the two, and the tradition of reviving Bushido is the embodiment of the tradition of Japanese literary elegance. In the end, however, he felt that the unity of the two could only be achieved in death.
Mishima should have failed. Failure is only to fulfill his heroism and to become a member of the camp of premature death. He may have found identity in the flesh for a few moments, but the language still corroded him, he still wanted to hide the language, and the language was not really transformed. The function of language is finished, and as long as he uses language, it is impossible to succeed. Moreover, all this is narrated within the framework of language, even if he chooses those noble words, but how can he be sure that words do not come first?
Perhaps he was aware of the indelible paradox, that it was impossible to be in the arms of existence at all times, and that only death could fulfill this wish. So he chose to die in the way he had long believed.