Review: “The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea” by Yukio Mishima

Thumbs up for The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima. Literature.

I couldn’t decide whether to read slowly in order to savor Mishima’s exquisite prose, or gulp it in sheer ecstasy. This book did once more raise the question: Why do so many of the greatest writers in the world – of which I will unhesitatingly say Mishima is one – chose to write books of which we know what the finale will be from the first pages? (Flaubert dear, I’m thinking of you.) But like with Madame Bovary, I didn’t care at all that it was all going to come to a nasty end. This was a stunningly beautiful little book.

“He never cried, not even in his dreams, for hard-heartedness was a point of pride. A large iron anchor withstanding the corrosion of the sea and scornful of the barnacles and oysters that harass the hulls of ships, sinking polished and indifferent through heaps of broken glass, toothless combs, bottle caps, and prophylactics into the mud at harbor bottom – that was how he liked to imagine his heart. Someday he would have an anchor tattoed on his chest.”