Books: “The Sea of Fertility” by Yukio Mishima

A tetralogy that teeters delicately between rational and absurd, comprised of the four novels “Spring Snow,” “Runaway Horses,” “The Temple of Dawn,” and “The Decay of the Angel.”  The protagonist, Honda, is drawn to those he believes to be the reincarnation of his child-hood friend. The first two novels are similar in its logic: the man is trying to understand the nature of this particular soul, its purity, and the idea of reincarnation. By the third, however, our protagonist takes a moral fall: the price of being able to witness the inner workings of the universe. By the fourth novel, “evil” has taken shape instead of the long sought after “purity”. But the reader still clings on to a sliver of hope, that perhaps the protagonist who has fallen so low in our esteem would be redeemed and obtain True Enlightenment: the meeting between Honda and the renowned Abbess which has been hinted at and build up from the very first novel. Mishima delivers his promise, but not until the very last pages of the fourth and final book. And it is perhaps the greatest upset in the literary history…

“When he was young, there had been only one reality, and the future had seemed to stretch before him, swelling with the immense possibilities. But as he grew older, reality seemed to take many forms, and it was the past that seemed refracted into innumerable possibilities. Since each of these was linked with its own reality, the line distinguishing dream and reality became all the more obscure. His memories were in constant flux, and had taken on the aspect of a dream.”

Runaway Horses

“The male and female angels of the Worlds of Desire come constantly up to one another; but the angels of the third world are content to hold hands, of the fourth to exchange thoughts, of the fifth to exchange glances, of the sixth and highest to exchange words.”

The Decay of the Angel

“It would not have become me to raise my hand in farewell to those who were below, where time still ran on. Had I raised my hand in sudden farewell at a street crossing, I would only have stopped a cab. Perhaps, unable to stop time, I had to be content with stopping a succession of cabs. For the purpose, and that only, with firm resolve, of being taken to yet another place where time does not stop.”

The Decay of the Angel