(the golden pavilion as it spreads itself enormously and consumes the temple ground, Kyoto, the world entire, as his sweaty timid hand lays coldly on her powdery milkwhite breast)
Art is a shadow in the grove of...
(her tangled bush as it seals the drops of blood that seep like miniature rosebuds from his head wounds)
Art is a shadow in the sight of...
(the sun as it looms large over the terrified world and swallows the boy soldier in the loveless embrace of an agony flaring from his shred entrails)
Art is a shadow... a shadow... a shadow.
The author cups his hands against the glare. His back burns with the desire to run, but he stands still and waits. Behind him trails the black image of his body, a body that will years ahead of him die and corrupt and pass away from beauty.
If art is a shadow, then the will is the body; the will to 'transform reality.' Beauty, oppressive and incorruptible, is the afterimage of the body on its way to death. Art indicates by its shade that the author has achieved a solidity in opposition to the mocking & unreal fabric of life. The body has force, persuasion, definition. It is corruptible precisely because it is so savage; latent equally with brute force and martyrship, the body posits even in its stillness a possibility for action. Pen & sword.
Pen & sword.
Mishima, the last samurai, commits seppuku in 1970.
He writes a jisei, a death poem:
A small night storm
whispers, 'Falling is the essence
of the flower,' preceding
the hesitant.
Art is the shadow that lines his eyes when his severed head falls fast from the body.
...
2 comments:
I always found this movie to always be almost operatic, with the Philip Glass soundtrack and all.
yes, it has a pastel feel, strangely artificial, and perhaps for that reason the film's production design so neatly syncs up with that Glass score and its themes that just stick in your head (especially that nice rock variation that makes me laugh when i hear it, at beg. of the "Kyoko's House" section); i'm not a big Glass fan, so i will dare to claim that this is the best film score i've heard from him (then again i haven't heard many by him.)
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