Outline of this post. In 2018, during my recuperation period after a suicide attempt, I read Yukio Mishima" The Sun and Steel." In it, he wrote about feelings that were neither fiction nor criticism. He wrote about "confession" at night, "criticism" by day, and a time when he was neither. I will taste this neither time until 2021. The book, which was also the subject of a controversial debate at the University of Tokyo (1969), seems not to have been appreciated in Japan at the time. I have been on the road from leaving Catholicism to conversion. I was struggling to talk about this mortal disease in my story. Would it be non-fiction, or should I force it to be fiction? Whether I choose the sun or the night. There was also the question of Catholicism and the political uncertainty of the future in Japan. For many years, I had forgotten the poetry of Mishima response to the sun. In 2021, I have decided to move on to the night (literature). This involves a lot of interpretation on my part. In Sartre's terms, it is "the other with the subject". Apologies that this is not a thorough explanation of the sun and Steel.
The” Sun and Steel” was one of Yukio Mishima lesser-known works at the time. After a long time.I read this in 2018 and found much to sympathies with. I read this in 2018 and found much to sympathies with. In the process of writing, some things are difficult to express even as a novel. I too fell into that groove around 2017. Probably every artist. I feel like it comes to every artist. Sometimes we can’t establish ourselves because we are confused by current trends or common perceptions. Mishima described it as an intermediate form between confession and criticism, “a kind of hidden criticism”.
Mishima is perhaps the only person who has focused on the area of twilight that exists between night as confession and day as criticism.
Sartre’s raison d’etre about existence and essence is that existence precedes essence, but this kind of wayward speculation, a combination of fiction and criticism, is a wandering interior that does not know the outer skin of existence, and is itself an embryo that does not know the outer world (essence).
It is the equivalent of inference, prediction and prophecy. When the result is not yet known, even if we think we have grasped the essence, we cannot be sure. A novel does not have enough material to be written, and a criticism is only an assumption made a few years in the future. But there are times when the feeling is strong.
At such times, I think back to Van Gogh’s Madness paintings.
His paintings were first of all existentially unsuccessful. Later, his brother Theo’s wife succeeded in selling Van Gogh’s paintings and made him into the genius that he is today. Over time, they created the essence of Van Gogh’s paintings. Over time, they created the essence of Van Gogh’s paintings, or the world discovered them.
This is one of my favorite Van Gogh paintings. I don’t know of any other painting that depicts the stirring darkness so clearly.
I think Mishima is right when he declares in this book that he is not a poet. Poets, like Van Gogh’s paintings, are not afraid of consequences, and they do not fall between confession and criticism. Hermann Hesse is a genius as a poet and Rubaiyat dances without fear of criticism from Christians.
It seems to me that Iran is famous for its poets. Perhaps they are not afraid of death (or the oppression of others). That free enthusiasm, which neither the cooperation of the Japanese nor the argumentative nature of the West can match, is something to be admired and, as a result of more social experience, I think we will never have it again. We all dream of it and run with it, but the tragedy and happiness that we have created with our speculations, from pacifisms, through physical pain, gradually becomes a reality.
When I was young, I would have run without fear. In the midst of it all, joy and despair, like differential and integral calculus, were repeated, and expectation and despair may have exceeded real reality. In the midst of this repetition of the mundane routine, where sleep brings morning and daily life again, I had my moments of real despair.
In turn, disappointment and disillusionment increased, becoming part of the larger reality of the real world.
Gradually, disappointment and disillusionment increase, and the artist becomes part of the larger existential context of the real world.
That’s the end of the artist. It is only natural that he should lose his individuality.
I’m trying to be unique because of my long established taste, but my body is screaming. The days when I used to write poetry in the evening, even if it was bad, seem like a lie.
It was a mistake in the first place to see it as a defeat. The thought of being abandoned by night and day
It will always go somewhere. It is like a long, inflexible Steel. That is how I see it.
In my analysis, Mishima Steel element probably became the sun and led to his suicide.
I have decided, after a long time, to return to the Night once more. That’s when I retired as a journalist. It is proof that I am no longer outspoken about current affairs. The man who lives by night lives for the invisible presence of human sensibility. The man who lives by day lives for the market and the human condition.
There is no right or wrong, because both are necessary.
But when speech and knowledge are wasted, it is tempting to talk about real problems.
Isn’t it the starting point of a literary person to keep that ” babble ” silent until night?
I will not write directly about why I attempted suicide, or the process of my conversion. Instead, I will start to confess, as if in the night, my memories and records were a wild reflection.
In this fictional world, the person who speaks for me is a man and other women, and the story goes on. There is, in effect, a fictional character (a lie). But the essence is not a lie. Within the non-existent outer skin, there is an interior that I have experienced and gone through.
I have read a lot of Mishima during my illness. But I chose a different path from him.
In his writings he wrote
“Now I no longer believe with all my heart in the idea of classicism, about which I was so passionate at the age of twenty-six. I no longer believe in it with all my heart”
I might not have the awe-inspiring ardor of my youth, either. I sympathies with him in this confession under the sun.
But, like the protagonist of the piano tuner I am writing about, I intend to expand the literature to say that sound does not die. In the despair of the protagonist, my inner light is incorporated.
It is with God.
Chris Kyogetu 