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Literary Review
A woman for all seasons
OVER a 1000 years before Virginia Woolf told us that a woman needed a room of her own to escape the afflictions brought upon them by men or Simone de Beauvoir that ``one was not born but becomes a woman'', Lady Murasaki Shikibu said as much in the 10th-century Japanese classic The Tale of Genji _ plus that women do all the work, men do the rest. If much classical literature has been a riposte to fundamental religious philosophies — the Mahabharata and Gita for us, The Bible, especially the Old Testament and within it the Ecclesiastes for the Christian world with its spin-offs into the Greek and Russian Orthodox Church, the Koran for the Islamic world, Confucian Analects for China and so on — The Tale of Genji has been the most popular Japanese response to life's transience, shot through in equal measure with beauty and sorrow. Like the melancholy poet of the Ecclesiastes who says that ``in much wisdom is much grief and he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow,'' Lady Murasaki asks much the same question: ``Why do we suffer so in the world? Should we not regard life as the short bloom of the mountain cherry?'' The Tale is a novel in six parts: The Tale of Genji, The Sacred Tree, A Wreath of Cloud, Blue Trousers, The Lady of the Boat and The Bridge of Dreams. Essentially the novel takes the form of a diary. Like all diaries, it reflects the mood of the diarist and hence is scrappy, which in turns becomes waspish, gentle, melancholy, flirtatious and always directed by the seasons, scents, gardens and clothes. Murasaki Shikibu, daughter of a mid-ranking court poet imagines the amorous adventures of the dashing prince Genji and shares these with an intimate circle of friends. When her story-telling talents come to the attention of the regent, Murasaki is given the post of a tutor and companion to Empress Shoshi where she regales her with tales. Spinning the inventions of her imagination with the real intrigues of the courtiers with whom she lives, the Tale provides a description of the 10th and 11th-century court events and ceremonies, particularly those surrounding the birth of the royal prince, with its intrigues and counter-intrigues. The novel is spiced with anecdotes, searching self-analysis and sharp sketches of individual characters, timid empresses and spineless courtiers that reveal the underside of imperial grandeur. What Murasaki does is to recreate the ambience of the Japanese court and extrapolate that court through anecdotes and practically all the waka (precursor to the haiku) popular at the time.
The result is as close to the truth as possible with a recreation of Lady Murasaki herself who had ``a reputation of erudition, not harm. I am very reserved, unsociable, wanting always to keep people at a distance that I am wrapped up in a study of ancient stories, conceited, living all the time in a political world of my own and scarcely realising the existence of other people, some occasionally to make spiteful comments upon them. But when they get to know me, they find to their extreme surprise I am quite different."
But while Murasaki tries to stick to the truth as she sees it, the Tale is essentially a work of fiction, a book of ancient stories as retold and imagined by a woman. She shows us this world, particularly the male part of it, rather as she would have liked it to be rather than as she actually found it. She dreamed of lovers who, though in every sense men, should yet retain the gentleness and grace of her empress, Saisho. It remains then, first and last a woman's tale, full of yearning, suffused with subtle social observations, faint sorrows and compassionate humour.
If 1000 years — it is considered the first novel ever written — have not been sufficient to sweep the Tale aside, it is because of the undercurrent of ``luxurious sadness'' running below the bright colours of the court. Lady Murasaki never forgets that life is a gossamer affair, not just short but quick also, that ``a mere day is time enough for death, to sweep another frail life to oblivion.'' This sadness is expressed through the waka, which was the primary mode of communication in Murasaki's circle.
She lived in a purely aesthetic and, above all, literary civilisation. It was a state of society in which the stock of knowledge, the experience, the prejudices of all individuals were so similar that grosser forms of communication became no longer necessary. A phrase, a clouded hint, an allusion half-expressed, a gesture imperceptible to common eyes were sufficient to move courtiers ``as those silent messages that in a prairie ripple from beast to beast.'' There is in these waka a lightness of touch and oneness with nature, which is perhaps one of the great attractions of this ancient classic.
Raging in faraway hills, the storm sweeps away the scarlet leaves and dew, leaving no trace.
If today on Oshio Mountains snow was to dust the pine needles, I would say the frosting on the peaks would seem like blossoms.
Long ago, when I left, the snow was like flowers/ Now, when I return the flowers are like snow.
A thousand strands of black hair, tangled hair — like my thoughts, tangled and entangled.
The remains of the night passed in sighs, and when dawn reddened the eastern sky, I had not even glimpsed a dream of you.
One could go on because almost every page steeped with wakareminiscent of the haiku by Basho (1644-94) like: Summer grasses,/ all that <167,2m,1>remains/ of soldiers' dreams. Or Sick on ajourney /over parched fields/ dreams wander on.
A novel, it is said, is never anything but a philosophy expressed in images. And in a good novel the philosophy disappears in images. The images in the Tale are the numerous court stories. The philosophy is simple: life can be both magnificent and overwhelming — that is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger, it would be almost easy to live. But this, in itself, does not explain the longevity of the novel. Its real strength lies in its aesthetic merits, the expressive and evocative powers of the waka with which it is suffused. And the Tale has to be read along with The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon which is, unlike the novel, a record of facts of ancient Japan and shows the extent to which Lady Murasaki used her diaries to spin out yarns of her own.
The Tale of Genji, Lady Murasaki Shikibu, translated in one volume by Arthur Waley in 1935, George Allen and Unwin. A new translation by Edward Seidensticker, Penguin Books, £18.99.
The Diary of Lady Murasaki, translated by Richard Bowring, £6.99.
The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, translated by Arthur Waley in 1928, George Allen and Unwin. A new translation by Ivan Morris, Penguin Books, £8.99.
RAVI VYAS
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