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I finished reading Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask over the weekend, and the book stayed strange and fascinating to its end. Reviews of the book always seem to describe it as a story of a young man coming to terms with his homosexuality in WWII-era Japan. I suppose that's technically true (the male protagonist does desire other men, after all) yet it doesn't feel quite right. Mishima seems to me to be more concerned with exploring the question of self-doubt than he is with sexuality, and the narrator's sexual identity is of secondary importance to his inability to trust his own emotions and his need to rationalize and re-rationalize everything he feels and does. This tendency is extremely damaging to the narrator, and Confessions of a Mask derives most of its power from Mishima's depiction of this damage.
This is not to say that sex and sexual identity are not important to the book. I was amazed by the frankness with which Mishima handled sexual material in the novel, giving us detailed descriptions of everything from his narrator's first ejaculation (all over his father's desk, after looking at an image of St. Sebastian in one of his father's art books), to his subsequent violent fantasies of blood running down the torsos of beautiful young men. So there is plenty of focus on sex here, and the narrator's penchant for mistrusting his own emotions is inextricably linked to his need to hide his desires from the people around him.
The thing that makes all of this so fascinating and strange to read is the book's tone. I read it in translation, of course (the 1958 translation by Meredith Weatherby--not sure if there's another one), so I don't know how much the tone of what I read is Mishima's and how much is Weatherby's, but no matter whose tone it is, it is remarkably austere and cold. I was reminded of Austerlitz, that other impossibly numbed novel of emotional devastation. The first half of the book is devoted to the protagonist's childhood and the early experiences that shaped his sexuality; in this half, the coldness of the tone makes the whole thing feel clinical and made me feel vaguely voyeuristic for reading it. In the second half of the book, which concerns the narrator's lengthy attempt to force himself into a relationship with a woman, it becomes evident that the coldness masks tremendous pain. I read most of the book in a state of emotional detachment, but the last twenty pages, when the narrator forces himself again and again to confront his physical inability to desire women, and feels, again and again, betrayed by himself and by his body, consigned to a life he does not want by the sheer force of his "abnormal" longings... Those last twenty pages were heartbreaking.
Confessions of a Mask was Mishima's first novel, and it is widely believed to be (at least somewhat) autobiographical. Mishima was married to a woman, though there are also several men who claim to have had relationships with him. The narrator of Confessions of a Mask has a lot of suicidal thoughts; Mishima committed seppuku in 1970 after an unsuccessful attempt to provoke a coup d'etat. I have read only a very little about this incident, but what I have read seems very bizarre, and there is some suggestion that the coup attempt was only a facade to allow Mishima to commit the ritual suicide he had long wanted. It is all somewhat mysterious to me, but it does seem quite plausible that this book is personal and deeply felt, tied closely to its author.
I stumbled upon this remarkable picture of Mishima himself posed as St. Sebastian.
This is not to say that sex and sexual identity are not important to the book. I was amazed by the frankness with which Mishima handled sexual material in the novel, giving us detailed descriptions of everything from his narrator's first ejaculation (all over his father's desk, after looking at an image of St. Sebastian in one of his father's art books), to his subsequent violent fantasies of blood running down the torsos of beautiful young men. So there is plenty of focus on sex here, and the narrator's penchant for mistrusting his own emotions is inextricably linked to his need to hide his desires from the people around him.
The thing that makes all of this so fascinating and strange to read is the book's tone. I read it in translation, of course (the 1958 translation by Meredith Weatherby--not sure if there's another one), so I don't know how much the tone of what I read is Mishima's and how much is Weatherby's, but no matter whose tone it is, it is remarkably austere and cold. I was reminded of Austerlitz, that other impossibly numbed novel of emotional devastation. The first half of the book is devoted to the protagonist's childhood and the early experiences that shaped his sexuality; in this half, the coldness of the tone makes the whole thing feel clinical and made me feel vaguely voyeuristic for reading it. In the second half of the book, which concerns the narrator's lengthy attempt to force himself into a relationship with a woman, it becomes evident that the coldness masks tremendous pain. I read most of the book in a state of emotional detachment, but the last twenty pages, when the narrator forces himself again and again to confront his physical inability to desire women, and feels, again and again, betrayed by himself and by his body, consigned to a life he does not want by the sheer force of his "abnormal" longings... Those last twenty pages were heartbreaking.
Confessions of a Mask was Mishima's first novel, and it is widely believed to be (at least somewhat) autobiographical. Mishima was married to a woman, though there are also several men who claim to have had relationships with him. The narrator of Confessions of a Mask has a lot of suicidal thoughts; Mishima committed seppuku in 1970 after an unsuccessful attempt to provoke a coup d'etat. I have read only a very little about this incident, but what I have read seems very bizarre, and there is some suggestion that the coup attempt was only a facade to allow Mishima to commit the ritual suicide he had long wanted. It is all somewhat mysterious to me, but it does seem quite plausible that this book is personal and deeply felt, tied closely to its author.
I stumbled upon this remarkable picture of Mishima himself posed as St. Sebastian.
