Beauty is something that burns the hand when you touch it.
Interpretation
Beauty can be both alluring and dangerous, evoking strong emotions.
In this quote, Yukio Mishima conveys the idea that true beauty is not merely a superficial quality; it possesses a profound intensity that can lead to emotional or physical consequences. The metaphor of beauty 'burning the hand' suggests that engaging with beauty can be a risky endeavor that stirs deep passions and tumultuous feelings, reminding us that while beauty invites admiration, it can also lead to discomfort and strife.
In practice
During a lecture on the nature of art, this quote can be used to highlight the complex relationship between beauty and emotional response.
What I wanted was to die among strangers, untroubled, beneath a cloudless sky. And yet my desire differed from the sentiments of that ancient Greek who wanted to die under the brilliant sun. What I wanted was some natural, spontaneous suicide. I wanted a death like that of a fox, not yet well versed in cunning, that walks carelessly along a mountain path and is shot by a hunter because of its own stupidity.
a samurai is a total human being, whereas a man who is completely absorbed in his technical skill has degenerated into a ‘function’, one cog in a machine.
When a captive lion steps out of his cage, he comes into a wider world than the lion who has known only the wilds. While he was in captivity, there were only two worlds for him - the world of the cage, and the world outside the cage. Now he is free. He roars. He attacks people. He eats them. Yet he is not satisfied, for there is no third world that is neither the world of the cage nor the world outside the cage.
…the samurai ethic is a political science of the heart, designed to control such discouragement and fatigue in order to avoid showing them to others. It was thought more important to look healthy than to be healthy, and more important to seem bold and daring than to be so. This view of morality, since it is physiologically based on the special vanity peculiar to men, is perhaps the supreme male view of morality.
Young people get the foolish idea that what is new for them must be new for everybody else too. No matter how unconventional they get, they're just repeating what others before them have done.
Is there not a sort of remorse that precedes sin? Was it remorse at the very fact that I existed?
An artist must approach his work in the spirit of the criminal about to commit a crime.
He has Van Gogh's ear for music.
I seriously doubt I would ever have written the first story had I not been a lawyer. I never dreamed of being a writer. I wrote only after witnessing a trial.
The person of old had the same brilliance of mind that we assume we have now. But that which made a thing become manifest for the first time is our great moment of creative happening.
What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,’.... And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come.
Imagination is a form of seeing
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