由紀夫·三島

This is the personal testament of Japan's greatest novelist, written shorty before his public suicide in 1970. Through Mishima's finely wrought and emphatic prose, the mind and motivation behind his agonized search for personal identity is revealed. In this fascinating document, one of Japan's best known-and controversial-writers created what might be termed a new literary form. It is new because it combines elements of many existing types of writing, yet in the end fits into none of them. At one level, it may be read as an account of how a puny, bookish boy discovered the importance

太陽と鉄

Confessioni di una maschera

When Mishima committed ritual suicide in November 1970, he was only forty-five. He had written over thirty novels, eighteen plays, and twenty volumes of short stories. During his lifetime, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize three times and had seen almost all of his major novels appear in English. While the flamboyance of his life and the apparent fanaticism of his death have dominated the public's perception of his achievement, Japanese and Western critics alike are in agreement that his literary gifts were prodigious. Mishima is arguably at his best in the shorter forms, and it is the flower of these that appears here for the first time in English. Each story has its own distinctive atmosphere and each is brilliantly organized, yielding deeper layers of meaning with repeated readings. The psychological observation, particularly in what it reveals of the turmoil of adolescence, is meticulous. The style, with its skillful blending of colors and surfaces, shows Mishima in top form, and no further proof is needed to remind us that he was a consummate writer whose work is an irreplaceable part of world literature.

Seven Stories

Acts of Worship

Musica

Mizoguchi has been mentally troubled since he witnessed his mother's infidelity in the presence of his dying father. Mizoguchi feels utterly abandoned and alone until he becomes a pdest at Kinka-kuji, a famous Buddhist temple in Kyoto. Failing in his quest to find the warmth of human companionship in the temple, the young man, tormented by the temple's exquisite beauty, decides to destroy himself and all he loves. He feels he cannot live in peace as long as the temple exists. Mizoguchi, like many other troubled Mishima heroes, becomes obsessed with unattainable ideals. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion reflects Mishima's preoccupations with beauty and death in a clear and unmistakable manner. It is also an excellent example of a theme that frequently arises in Mishima's work: the resentment of the object of desire. Because this novel, arguably Mishima's best, reflects the author's suicidal tendencies, it also offers us insight into one of the twentieth century's greatest and most complex literary icons.

金閣寺

Temple of the Golden Pavilion, The

Narra este libro la historia de dos personajes que se encuentran aislados: un joven pescador que debe mantener a su madre y a su hermano, y la hija de un rico naviero que ha de casarse para que subsista el clan familiar. Pero nuestro autor es un auténtico maestro a la hora de escribir, y junto a estos dos personajes nos dibuja todo un mundo de personajes secundarios y ambientes igualmente aislados: los familiares, los amigos, los ricos del pueblo, el farero... Todos ellos individuos cuyas vidas nos muestran una instantánea del Japón rural de aquella época, de las costumbres y las tradiciones que permiten a los hombres vivir en armonía con el medio, con ese mar que llega a ser un protagonista más dentro del libro.

El rumor del oleaje

The story of a young British widow and an American merchant seaman who fell in love during one of his visits to England.

午後の曳航

romanzo

La voce delle onde

Shunsuké, un famoso escritor sexagenario, se siente atraído por la extraordinaria belleza de un joven homosexual, Yuichi. Lo ha conocido por medio de Yasuko, una joven de la que está enamorado, pero que no le corresponde ya que se siente atraída por Yuichi sin conocer sus inclinaciones. Tras la aparente estabilidad emocional de Shunsuké se esconde una vida atormentada con terribles fracasos sentimentales y altísimas cotas de misoginia a la que da rienda suelta en un diario que nunca verá la luz. Él, que ha dedicado su vida a la creación literaria, en un momento en que le ha abandonado la inspiración, ve en el joven y bello Yuichi la posibilidad de vengarse de las mujeres que le han hecho sufrir, le han menospreciado y humillado desde su juventud. Piensa iniciar su venganza diabólica con Yasuko, pactando con Yuichi que se case con ella pese a su incapacidad de amarla. Con su influencia, hará del joven apolíneo un personaje viviente de una novela que jamás escribirá, orientándole para que inflija el mayor sufrimiento posible a las mujeres que no podrán resistirse a sus encantos. Yuichi se sumerge en una serie de aventuras homosexuales al tiempo que cumple su pacto con el viejo escritor de seducir a varias mujeres para destrozarles el corazón. Lo que ignora el viejo escritor es lo que le deparará este juego perverso. Escrita entre 1950 y 1953, El color prohibido era hasta ahora una obra de Mishima inédita en castellano. Además de expresar sus teorías estéticas y filosóficas, describe con sinceridad y audacia, y el lirismo que caracteriza toda su obra, el universo homosexual del Tokyo de la posguerra mundial. Es la primera novela japonesa moderna que aborda sin meandros el tema del «amor que no puede decir su nombre» en aquella sociedad cuyas estrictas costumbres empezaban a relajarse bajo los embates de una occidentalización acelerada. Ese amor erótico que en la lengua del país puede expresarse con el ambiguo eufemismo de El color prohibido.

禁色

Dopo il banchetto

La filosofia a cui si sentiva vicino Yukio Mishima, quella dei samurai, raccolta in questi cinque testi. Tra essi troviamo anche "Proclama" che Mishima lesse il 25 novembre 1970, pochi istanti prima di suicidarsi.

Lezioni spirituali per giovani samurai e altri scritti

春の雪

Trastulli d'animali

Haru no yuki or Spring Snow, part one of the tetra-logy The Sea of Fertility. Thrice Nobel nominated Mishima Yukio's final work before he committed ritual suicide. This story sets in 1912 Tokyo where the hermetic world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders. In Japanese. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.

由紀夫·三島

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