Abstract

MARTINHO, Maria Helena. Mishima: in between love and desire. Stylus (Rio J.) [online]. 2014, n.28, pp.33-39. ISSN 1676-157X.

The confessions made by Yukio Mishima in his autobiographical novel Confissões de uma máscara (1949), are included in this article to illustrate how this subject passes - just like in a Moebius band - the love to desire in a circulating motion. In his childhood he was divided between the love of his grandmother and sexual desire for princes and soldiers. In his youth, he was divided between the spiritual love for Sonoko and the carnal desire, homosexual, for Omi. The cleavage that unveils between love and desire is subsumed by the cleavage between "flesh and spirit". On one side the "flesh", the homosexual carnal desire, the desire for what is printed in masculinity, strength, ignorance, rude gestures, careless talk, on the other, the spirit, all that which is of the order of the intellectuality. Mishima tried to constitute two poles of purity and perfection, two absolute, belying the castration of the Other. He pursued the solution of division of the I which appeared in polarities, but the chasm that divided him between "love and desire" never filled. The confessions made by Yukio Mishima in his autobiographical novel "Confessions of a mask" (1949), are taken in this article to illustrate how this subject moves - just like in a Moebius band - from love to desire in a circling movement. In his childhood, he was divided between his grandmother's love and the sexual desire for princes and soldiers. In his youth, he was divided between his spiritual love for Sonoko and the carnal homosexual desire for Omi. The cleavage that is unveiled between love and desire is subsumed by the cleavage of "flesh and spirit". On one side, "flesh", the carnal homosexual desire, the desire for what is imprinted in masculinity, strength, ignorance, rude gestures, careless talk, on the other, spirit, all that which is related to intellectuality. Mishima tried to constitute two poles of purity and perfection, two absolutes, denying, thus, the castration of the Other. He pursued the solution of division of the self, which presented itself in polarities, but the chasm that divided him between "love and desire" was never filled out.

Keywords : Perversion; Love; Desire.

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