Spring Snow

The Sea of Fertility #1

by Yukio Mishima, Michael Gallagher (Translator)

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780099282990

Tokyo, 1912. The closed world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders - rich provincial familes, a new and powerful political and social elite. Kiyoaki has been raised among the elegant Ayakura family - members of the waning aristocracy - but he is not one of them. Coming of age, he is caught up in the tensions between old and new, and his feelings for the exquisite, spirited Satoko, observed from the sidelines by his devoted friend Honda. When Satoko is engaged to a royal prince, Kiyoaki realises the magnitude of his passion.

Genres: Fiction, Japan, Japanese Literature, Classics, Historical Fiction, Literature, Novels

389 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Yukio Mishima (三島 由紀夫) was born in Tokyo in 1925. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University’s School of Jurisprudence in 1947. His first published book, The Forest in Full Bloom, appeared in 1944 and he established himself as a major author with Confessions of a Mask (1949). From then until his death he continued to publish novels, short stories, and plays each year. His crowning achievement, the Sea of Fertility tetralogy—which contains the novels Spring Snow (1969), Runaway Horses (1969), The Temple of Dawn (1970), and The Decay of the Angel (1971)—is considered one of the definitive works of twentieth-century Japanese fiction. In 1970, at the age of forty-five and the day after completing the last novel in the Fertility series, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide)—a spectacular death that attracted worldwide attention.

Reviews

[Carolyn]

Nie ukrywam, na początku mi szło opornie, prawie 400 stron to dużo, jak na Mishimę. Oprócz standardowych dram, romansów i śmierci jest jeszcze dużo filozofowania, jak w Forbidden Colors ale damn wciągnęłam się i muszę kupić kolejną część

[Killreic]

Absolutnie wspaniała. Mishima pisze w sposób, którego nie umiem dobrze opisać. Nadal jest to orientalne i wymagające, ale przy odrobinie chęci, zachodni czytelnik jest w stanie doskonale pojąć co czują bohaterowie, zrozumieć czasami kompletnie obce uczucia podszyte odrębnością sposobu myślenia samego Mishimy.

Historie, które buduje, noszą w sobie rozważania nad zetknięciem bardzo twardego świata zewnętrznego z miękkimi emocjami w środku nas.

Cała tetralogia wychodzi po polsku w 2025 r. i zmuszę Was żebyście przeczytali.

"To feel myself dissolve into your beauty and freeze to death in the snow - no fate could be sweeter."

[Jasiek Gromadzki]

Pojawiają się rysy na patriarchalnym ustroju, ale to nadal głównie mało ciekawa opowiastka o romantyczności dzieci bogaczy.

[Adekolej]

kolejny testament incelstwa mishimy