Swaddling Clothes | Mishima in Microcosm
In the following essay, Wolf looks at the theme
of isolation from a external world that is cruel and
unsympathetic in Yukio Mishima’s writing.
Death in Midsummer is almost a microcosm of Mishima’s whole work, representing most of his major styles except for the polemic and the directly confessional. Together, the stories suggest both where he was broad in his concerns and limited by his obsessions.
Death in Midsummer must be surprising to those familiar with Mishima only through headlines. [‘‘Death in Midsummer,’’] which opens the collection, is quite unrelated to nationalism, fascism, homosexuality, or seppuku. Rather, it is an elegy on the death of the innocent, and a study of the psychology of...
[The entire page is 2219 words long]
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