Little wonder then that when I was attacked by the two of them together, all the stronger in alliance, my indescribable, mysterious emotion should have been akin, not to lyricism, but to that sinister intoxication found in the conjunction of religion and music. Music giving such religious, tranquil pleasure that it could only be called sacred, filled with the solemnity and longing found in the patterns of stately wall tapestries…Īnd so the affinity between the shape of the tree and the sounds of music had some meaning for me. A piece of chamber music by a German master. And yet at the same time it assuredly was a created thing. There it stood, that tree, perfect, exquisitely wrought, but not losing any of Nature’s grace and artlessness, keeping serene silence as though it itself were its own creator. Upon the lawn it erected an upright triangle tinged with roundness the heavy feeling of its verdure was supported on its many branches, thrusting upward and outward with the balanced symmetry of a candelabrum and beneath the greenery there showed a sturdy trunk, like an ebony pedestal. SebastianĪ Prose Poem by Yukio Mishima (from Confessions of a Mask, 1949) - “Out of a schoolroom window once I spied a tree of middling height, swaying in the wind.

Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima