p36
...the very fact that he was a child of the merchants' quarter made him especially sensitive to its inadequacies, to its vulgarity and its preoccupation with the material. He reacted from it toward the sublime and the ideal. It was not enough that something should be touching, charming, graceful; it had to have about it a certain radiance, the power to inspire veneration. One had to feel forced to one's knees before it, or lifted by it to the skies. Kaname required this not only in works of art. A woman-worshipper, he looked for the same divine attributes in women, but he had never come upon what he was looking for either in art or in women.
p51
Kaname for his part was not purposely displaying a strength he did not feel; but perhaps a contagious air of strength and virility about Takanatsu stirred him to a bold enthusiasm and led him to suggest more decision than he should in honesty have allowed himself.
p101
Even after Misako's confession, Kaname made no effort to urge her into Aso's arms. He said only enough to show that he claimed no right to pronounce her love affair improper and that he could not object, whatever it might develop into. And yet almost certainly his very refusal to call it improper had the indirect effect of sending her on to Aso. What she wanted from him was not this understanding, this sympathy, this generosity. ``I don't know myself what to do. I'm terribly mixed up,'' she said. ``If you tell me I should, I can still back out.'' She would probably have been overjoyed had he said imperiously: ``This foolishness must stop.'' And even had he called her affair not illicit but only unwise, she would probably still have been able to leave Aso. That was what she wanted. Deep in her heart she no longer hoped for any love from the husband who had withdrawn so from her; but she did hope that he could somehow bring this new love of hers under control, put an end to it.
p142
Meanwhile, unaffected by the confusion, the play took its course and singers came and went. Perhaps a little heady from sake taken so early in the day and from the conversation buzzing so violently around him, Kaname saw it only as a succession of flickering images quite detached from any narrative. Not that he was bored or annoyed. The sensation was rather the pleasant one of pickling in a warm bath, or perhaps of sleeping fitfully on a warm morning, a sweet, unhurried, languorous sensation.
p194
He had developed his private scatological philosophy, something like this: ``A pure white bath or toilet is a piece of Western foolishness. It matters little, you may say, because no one is around to see, but a device that sets your own sewage out in front of your eyes is highly offensive to good taste. How much more proper to dispose of it modestly in as dark and out-of-the-way a corner as you can find.'' He advocated stuffing the urinal with fresh green cedar twigs, it being his eccentric view that ``a well-tended toilet in the pure Japanese style should have a delicate odor all its own. That gives one an inexpressible feeling of elegance and refinement.''引自 all
表示其中内容是对原文的摘抄