Patriotism

About

A young army officer, loyal to his Emperor and to a coup that has failed, prepares to commit ritual suicide. His wife will follow. Mishima narrates their final night together — the lovemaking, the preparation, the act itself — with a rigor and beauty that transforms the political into the physical and the physical into the transcendent. This is Mishima's most concentrated work, distilling every theme of his career into a single, devastating story: the body as tragic stage, the fusion of ecstasy and death, the terrible sincerity of absolute commitment. The prose is precise enough to cut, and the story's climax is among the most harrowing passages in modern literature. A story about the moment when conviction becomes flesh — and the discovery that the line between patriotism and passion was never a line at all.