# mishima death cult *The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 10 Feb 2002* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### maa32 *10 Feb 2002, 21:26* > Mantis wrote: > transcendent in the Mishima death cult way< I'm so glad Mishima came up in this debate. If we pare down his ideas to their essential level: beautiful things should be destroyed before they become ugly -> by destroying something you provide it with an immortal beauty that surpasses its temporal existence ... with people this involves dying at your best to achieve immortality (kind of like Bruce Lee). To that we can throw in something about returning power to the Emperor, but I think Mishima believes that only because it is the most aesthetically pleasing doctrine (and we have heard "loyalty to the monarch" expressed in Malrubius' lesson in Shadow of the Torturer by Wolfe). What would Wolfe feel about this? Wolfe can be transcendent, and death is the most obvious apotheosis ... but destroying yourself would not seem to be a good manner of going about things ... but we have the suicide of Thecla, her experience with the revolutionary which proves that internal conflict is the one that mankind need fear the most, her glorification through Severian (she is NOT really punished for her suicide -> she lives on in Severian [then again, maybe that could be a punishment]). Horn also gives his life in what could be called suicide by relinquishing the body of Silk ...Silk may have tried to kill himself. And we have the possible struggle between Pas and Silk as their personalities (might) battle to control the whorl's destiny as one being. So Suicide does not appear to lead to certain damnation in Wolfe's work ... but seems almost a transcendent passage that Mishima would definitely jive with. By denying and destroying the self (he who would throw his life away will save it, in the words of Krait by the pit) it appears that several of Wolfe's characters actually achieve the transcendent qualities that Mishima's ideals seek to enforce. In any case, Mishima's preoccupations have often reminded me of things that occur in Wolfe, and I think he would be appropriate to discuss in this suicidal squad conversation. Marc Aramini --- ### Andy Robertson *10 Feb 2002, 23:32 · follows maa32* ----- Original Message ----- > From: "maa32" > Mantis wrote: > What would Wolfe feel about this? Wolfe can be transcendent, and death is > the > most obvious apotheosis ... but destroying yourself would not seem to be a > good manner of going about things ... Wolfe would identify it as demonic, aand parabolically condemn it as such. Specifically, the real-life Japanese kamikazi is an expression of a religion which literally deifies a tribal leader - the Emperor. Catholics regard this with horror. See the mystical/Catholic poetry of Charles Williams, TALIESSIN THROUGH LOGRES and THE REGION OF THE SUMMER STARS, for a powerful expression of this horror. Typhon is **specifically** this: a man who tries to raise himself to divine stature and power, and demands *worship*, including suicidal worship. Thus, all kamikazis die in the service of "Typhon" Our disccussion of "Hour of trust" has used "kamikazi" in a slightly different and kinder sense. There, people die voulntarily as an expression and agent of tribal war: but the blasphemy of the human-as-god demanding this is not present. hartshorn ---