The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

from outside. If only I could raise Momoko to the same
level! Since there was in the wish a pedagogical urge
—love, so to speak—my protestations of love were
not wholly without substance. But was there not a
methodological contradiction in having an affirmer of
reality like Momoko become a denier? It would not be
easy to have her, like Kinué, do battle with the whole
world.
But while reading the sacred formula “I love you”
over and over, endlessly, a change comes to the heart
of the reader. I could almost feel that I was in love, that
some corner of my heart was drunk in the sudden and
abandoned liberation of the banished word. How
similar the tempter is to the flying instructor who must
go flying with a beginner!
Momoko’s other requirement, altogether
appropriate for a somewhat old-fashioned girl, was
no more than a purely “spiritual” affirmation, and all
that was needed to satisfy it was a word or two.
Words, casting a clear shadow on the earth in their
passage—might they not have been the essential I? I
had been born to use words thus. If so (these
sentimental locutions greatly annoy me, of course),
then perhaps the basic mother tongue I have kept
hidden is after all the language of love.
While the patient himself is ignorant of the truth, his