Session 18—Th, Mar 15: 昭和（戦後）：三島由紀夫、みしまゆきお (1925-1970) (1 of 5)

Topics for this session

❖ 1954「詩を書く少年」 しをかくしょうねん

Thoughts*

Random quote: "Sometimes I sensed that the books I read in rapid succession had set up some sort of murmur among themselves, transforming my head into an orchestra pit where different musical instruments sounded out, and I would realize that i could endure this life because of these musicales going on in my head." Orhan Pamuk, Turkish novelist and Nobel Laureate / 2006 (from The New Life, 1997)

The photo I use for Mishima is undated but probably is from near the time when he wrote 「詩を書く少年」.

Mishima is a master of style. He has full control of his prose, has crispy-clean grammar in most cases, and has a proclivity to use words that are somewhat rare, and/or rich in meaning, and often have elaborate kanji formations. In contrast to Kawabata, with whom he was so close, he prefers Chinese-based 熟語（じゅくご） as adjectives such as 豪華な ("gorgeous") over 大和言葉（やまとことば）, which you probably think of as adjective-nouns, na-nouns or 形容動詞（けいようどうし, na-nouns）that are more often written in hiragana than kanji (さわやかな夏）.

From the perspective of this class ("sound") Mishima is a bit difficult to have much to say about. His hallmarks at the level of phrases, sentences and passages are definitely more about his particular perspective and vocabulary choices. When I think of style, specifically, aside word choice I think of "control". How things looks is probably more important to him than how things sound. That being said, with some care to detail, perhaps you can get a line on this particular author's way of using sound.

This story is long and somewhat difficult. Settle in for a bit of a challenge over the next 5 sessions. After this, Abe and Yoshimoto will feel much easier.

Required—to be completed for today's session

✓ First paragraphs comparisons are due at the beginning of class.
✓ Memorized passage checked during this session.
✓ Read up to Section 2 marker that can be found on page 5 of pdf file (288 in original text).