Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Yukio Mishima and the League of the South

The League of the South in one of their usual anti-immigration postings in keeping with their general hysteria over Latino immigration into the United States quotes Yukio Mishima.

http://www.lsrebellion.blogspot.com/2013/07/quote-of-day_16.html

Again, I only blog on the League of the South because this is amusing, but I don't want to create the impression that they are that significant in the neo-Confederate movement. They were at one time, but now they are just a remnant.

As anyone who is familiar with literature, and in particular gay literature, knows Yukio Mishima was a gay Japanese writer. I never read, "Confessions of a Mask," but in the 1970s it was one of the roughly dozen gay novels your other gay friends told you about and you read since there was only roughly a dozen gay novels to be read. However, I have never read it, in 1979 a flood of new literature was being published and you had choices and suddenly you didn't have time to read everything.

The other day I was reading online or in a magazine Thomas Fleming, head of the Rockford Institute, leading neo-Confederate, commenting favorably on Cavafy, the Alexandrian Greek poet. I was somewhat repulsed by it and thought "keep away from Cavafy Fleming!". I would have thought his hysterical homophobia would have precluded his ever saying anything favorable about Cavafy. Perhaps Thomas Fleming doesn't really know about Cavafy and this blog posting will inform him and he will reject Cavafy. I doubt it though. Fleming is literate and I think he already knows, but perhaps he doesn't, then again I think Fleming probably just critically processes Cavafy and uses what he likes in Cavafy's writing and discards the rest.

However, for the great mass of neo-Confederates their reaction will be more reflexive and they won't want to even mention Cavafy and Mishima under any circumstances. The Sons of Confederate Veterans Chaplain Corps will certainly not quote either one now. Let me mention Jean Cocteau here so he doesn't get quoted by neo-Confederates, as well for the same reasons Andre Gide and E.M. Forester.If I think of other writers to mention here I will do an update.

Oh by the way, neo-Confederates, your anti-Lincoln writer Gore Vidal wrote "The City and the Pillar." Look it up.










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