Beyond Doubt, There Was A

Was I Ignorant, Then, When I Was Seventeen? I Think Not. I Knew Everything. A Quarter-century's Experience Of Life Since Then Has Added Nothing To What I Knew. The One Difference Is That At Seventeen I Had No 'realism'.

I Cried Sobbingly Until At Last Those Visions Reeking With Blood Came To Comfort Me. And Then I Surrendered Myself To Them, To Those Deplorably Brutal Visions, My Most Intimate Friends.

I Still Have No Way To Survive But To Keep Writing One Line, One More Line, One More Line.

...of All The Kinds Of Decay In This World, Decadent Purity Is The Most Malignant.

We Tend To Suffer From The Illusion That We Are Capable Of Dying For A Belief Or Theory. What Hagakure Is Insisting Is That Even In Merciless Death, A Futile Death That Knows Neither Flower Nor Fruit Has Dignity As The Death Of A Human Being. If We Value So Highly The Dignity Of Life, How Can We Not Also Value The Dignity Of Death? No Death May Be Called Futile.