Life and Music

“Yet how strange a thing is the beauty of music! The brief beauty that the player brings into being transforms a given period of time into pure continuance; it is certain never to be repeated; like the existence of day flies and other such short-lived creatures, beauty is a perfect abstraction and creation of life itself. Nothing is so similar to life as music.”

Yukio Mishima

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

 
 

Yukio Mishima in New York. Photograph: Carlo Bavagnoli. Life magazine, 1964