SOURCE: Nayman, Shira. “‘Sadly Wasted by Words’: Mishima's Search for the Proustian Self.” Boulevard 7, no. 1 (spring 1992): 73-92.

In the following essay, Nayman compares the work of Mishima to Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust, focusing on the conflict between writing and action, and the search for self-realization.

Two years before his suicide in 1970, the Japanese writer, Yukio Mishima, endured several months of daunting training in a fighter-jet simulator so that he might take to the skies and experience the speed of sound. He anticipated the day of his flight in the F104 military plane with heightened excitement; and when it finally arrived, he was not disappointed. Once in motion, the chest-gripping pressure of zero gravity gave way to an extraordinary feeling of calm, a rare moment of serenity for Mishima, who usually felt as if his physical and intellectual worlds had been sundered. For a brief moment...