Spring Snow (The Sea of Fertility)
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Review
"Mishima is like Stendhal in his precise psychological analyses, like Dostoevsky in his explorations of darkly destructive personalities."
-- Christian Science Monitor
"[The Sea of Fertility] is a literary legacy on the scale of Proust's."
-- National Review
Translated from the Japanese by Michael Gallagher
-- Christian Science Monitor
"[The Sea of Fertility] is a literary legacy on the scale of Proust's."
-- National Review
Translated from the Japanese by Michael Gallagher
Book Description
The first novel in Mishima's masterful Sea of Fertility tetraology
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
24 of 24 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
While the last three books of Mishima's Sea of Fertility cycle tend to get bogged down in somewhat convoluted philosophical arguments, which may hold interest for some (Temple of Dawn), or by uninspired writing (Runaway Horses), Spring Snow, the first, displays no such weakness. It is a novel of immensely beautiful imagery and lyricism and overall perfection. What's more, this translation truly does justice to the beauty of the original Japanese.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Spring Snow is a dramatic, moving work that helps codify Mishima's tetralogy, the Sea of Fertility, as perhaps the 20th century's greatest magnum opus. Mishima writes in a delicately impressionistic style, employing similes and metaphors of subtle, almost fragile beauty, that create a vivid and harmonic unity that simply inspire awe. Like Dante, he moves the reader's spirit as his characters spirits evolve. Like Dostoyevsky, he plunges relentlessly into the dark caprices of the mind. Like Milton, his word choice was so perfect that I put down the Sea of Fertility wishing that I had written it myself.
Spring Snow, the first installment of the cycle, stands very well on its own (though its ultimate meaning can only be appreciated as the tetralogy is continued). It takes place early in 20th century Japan, a time of transition in which Japan's decreased isolation leads to a Westernization that ultimately proves Spring Snow to be an elegy for the samurai tradition. It is also a wonderful and tragic love story -- far more convincing than Romeo and Juliet -- in which an impossible and doomed love threatens the young protagonists whose wealthy families adjust to the changing sociopolitical climate of Japan.
The other three books in the cycle are (in order):
'Runaway Horses,' 'The Temple of Dawn,' and 'The Decay of the Angel'
Spring Snow, the first installment of the cycle, stands very well on its own (though its ultimate meaning can only be appreciated as the tetralogy is continued). It takes place early in 20th century Japan, a time of transition in which Japan's decreased isolation leads to a Westernization that ultimately proves Spring Snow to be an elegy for the samurai tradition. It is also a wonderful and tragic love story -- far more convincing than Romeo and Juliet -- in which an impossible and doomed love threatens the young protagonists whose wealthy families adjust to the changing sociopolitical climate of Japan.
The other three books in the cycle are (in order):
'Runaway Horses,' 'The Temple of Dawn,' and 'The Decay of the Angel'
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Briefly, the Sea of Fertility tetrology has much in common with Dostoevsky. Mishima's characters act within the tight confines of aristoocratic Japan in the early to mid 20th Century. However, the real story underneath the cultural one involves a brilliant and sustained discussion of the Budhist conceptions of samsara, karma and reincarnation. Mishima's investigation of this subject covers Hindu, ancient Greek, 19th Century German and countless schools of Budhism.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Images fresher than ever
Some 20 years after my first read, it wasn't so surprising how many of the salient images I could still vividly recall. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Mr. F. G. Dineen
Poetic love story
This isn't just a story. It is obvious from the first ripples that this book is quite introspective and illuminates Mishima himself. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Discerning
"Now that old wars are finished, a new kind of war has just begun;...
Just after author Yukio Mishima finished the final novel in his "Sea of Fertility" tetralogy on November 25, 1970, he disemboweled himself in a ritual suicide--seppuku. Read more
Published 24 months ago by Mary Whipple
Delicate and haunting
This book from Mishima is a beautiful meditation on the meaning of love and the folly of youth. The prose, as is the case for much Japanese writing, has a delicate touch and... Read more
Published on 7 Oct 2009 by David K. Smith
Spring rebirth (9/10)
Spring Snow is a 1966 novel by Yukio Mishima, the first in his Sea of Fertility tetralogy that concerns itself principally with themes of love, death and reincarnation. Read more
Published on 27 Jun 2008 by Demob Happy
A Chillingly Beautiful Novel
Spring Snow tell's the tale of the brief, yet chillingly beautiful romance between Kiyoaki and Satoko. Read more
Published on 16 Jun 2004 by "melanieberryuk"
A Chillingly Beautiful Novel
Spring Snow tell's the tale of the brief, yet chillingly beautiful romance between Kiyoaki and Satoko. Read more
Published on 16 Jun 2004 by "melanieberryuk"
A good introduction to Mishima
Though a part of the sea of fertility, Spring Snow is a self contained novel. It is a love story that is likely to appeal to men and women. Read more
Published on 23 July 2003
Riveting: it makes you want more
Perhaps I shouldn't review this book in light of the fact that I haven't read the whole tetralogy. However, after reading 'Spring Snow' I'm trying to plow through 'Runaway Horses'... Read more
Published on 17 May 1999
Unbelievably moving and haunting
Figuratively speaking it is a literary crime that any of Mishima's books are ever allowed to go out of print. Read more
Published on 21 Dec 1998
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