The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

But sometimes I fear that all these thoughts and all
these plans of mine begin in me and end in me. It was
so, in any event, at the signal station. All the images
flung into that little room like fragments of glass cast
their light upon the walls and ceiling and left no trace
behind. Is it not the same with other worlds too?
I must be my own support and go on living.
Because I am always floating in air, resisting gravity,
on the borders of the impossible.
Yesterday in school one of our more ostentatiously
erudite teachers taught us a fragment of a Grecian
lyric:
Those born with the bounty of the gods
Have the duty to die beautiful,
Not dissipating the bounty.
For me, for whom the whole of life is a duty, this
particular duty does not exist. Because I have no
knowledge of having received a bounty.
Smiling has become a heavy burden, and so I have
taken it upon myself to be out of sorts with Momoko
for a time. I leave room for the perfectly ordinary view,
even while offering a glimpse of the monster, that I am
a sulky, frustrated boy. And because it is an
unrelieved piece of acting, because it is altogether
too stupid, I too must have a measure of passion. I