Yukio Mishima on his writing style:
"My ideal style would have had the grave beauty of polished wood in the entrance hall of a samurai mansion on a winter's day."
Dude was really messed up. This is how you end up committing seppuku and inspiring generations of malcontents into general dickishness.
Me, I want my writing to have the low-gravitas feel of a McMansion.
The point about postures and truths is an interesting insight though. I’m content to leave truths requiring a disciplined military bearing to others. The truths that concern me are the ones that can only be glimpsed when you’re slouching about mediocrely, whining and complaining
Gravitas inhibits your ability to see more than undignified weakness though
He walked in beauty, of the might
of faultless poise, and sightless eyes;
And the cutting edge of endless night,
met his belly — now dead he lies
With apologies to Lord Byron
What I note is my own instinctive deference to his aesthetic sensibility without noticing it to be a simple manifestation of his reactionary longing. "Samurai mansion" indeed. Old polished wood is old polished wood.
Dude was a towering genius but we can't all be one. He wasn't a hypocrite, that's for sure, he lived his philosophy, and he certainly wasn't mediocre. He wanted better bread than could be made of wheat.
My model is RAW (or, I guess, one of those cheesy-looking chain restaurants that somehow serve decent food): write in such a way that nobody is totally sure if you're a philosopher or a comedian.