The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

ules, should be an ally, and “my” nature has not been.
I have accomplished the nonrecognition with
gentleness. I have not been spoiled or pampered.
Always feeling the shadow of persons clamorous to
do me injury, I have been careful about expenditures
of gentleness certain to do injury to others. One may
see in the care a very human sort of solicitude. But
mixed in with the very word “solicitude” are unpleasant
shreds of weariness.
I have thought that, in comparison with the nature of
my own being, the affairs of the world, delicate and
complicated international problems and the like, have
not been problems at all. Politics and art and ideology
have been so many watermelon rinds. Only
watermelon rinds left on the seashore, mostly white
but tinged with the faint pink of sunrise. For though I
have hated the vulgar, I have recognized in them the
possibility of eternal life.
Incomprehension and error have seemed
preferable to a relentless probing of my depths. This
last means indescribable rudeness and discourtesy,
not possible without the nastiest hostility. When did a
ship ever understand me? It was enough for me to
understand. Spiritlessly, punctiliously, it gave me its
name and without another word slipped into harbor. It
has been fortunate for the ships that not one of them