A transparent emptiness

"A chill swept over Shimamura. The goose flesh seemed to rise even to his cheeks. The first notes opened a transparent emptiness deep in his entrails, and in the emptiness the sound of the samisen reverberated. He was startled - or, better, he fell back as under a well-aimed blow. Taken with a feeling almost of reverence, washed by waves of remorse, defenceless, quite deprived of strength - there was nothing for him to do but give himself up to the current, to the pleasure of being swept off wherever Komako would take him ..." 

-Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country