| Throughout the literature world of the 20th century, Thomas Mann and Yukio Mishima were representatives of German and Japanese literature respectively, stunning in the literary world. In 1929, Mann won the Nobel Prize for Buddenbrooks. While, Mishima had been nominated three times. As a younger generation of literature, Mishima respected Mann as "The Thinker" in his works more than once and admitted his style has been influenced by Mann. This is the realistic basic to study the two writers in the perspective of comparative literature.Looking deeply into the text of Mann and Mishima, we can find the use of imagery in both of their works has profound similarities. Ocean and disease as imageries repeatively appear. In Mann’s works, the ocean has become a philosophical category, becoming a concept named as "sea metaphysical" in his narrative works. Ocean which contains reincarnation is also a basic image in Mishima’s novel. In Mann and Mishima’s novels, the disease has become a modern fable, symbolizing the true mental state of human being and the decay of human civilization at that time, especially in the war time, or becoming a barrier between individuals and the world.This paper starts from this two distinct images and explore the signifier and signified in Mann and Mishima’s literary language, and the characteristic of the direction to death. Man and Mishima’s works shows a relentless focus or even obsessive preoccupation on death. the two writers shows similar attitude towards death by the evidence of their images as well as differences which is of more significance.The two Writers also intended to use traditional text styles of their countries in their works. Buddenbrooks and The Sea of Fertility respectively adopt means of the German decline literary and the structure of Japanese vagrant noble story. The novels present the decline trend of a class or an individual, which is a manifestation of Mann and Mishima’ s Nihilistic philosophy. |
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