FICTION

COURTLINESS AND DELICACY

The Tale' of Genji by the Lady Murasaki. Translated by Arthur Waley. (Allen and Unwin. 10s. 6d. net.) THERE was once in Japan a Prime Minister—aristocratic and powerful—who discovered that his daughter's governess was 'writing a novel. Perhaps even to-day in England such a dis- covery might come as a minor shock : to the Japanese Prime Minister it' was astounding. True, he knew that the lady, a -respectable' widow of thirty-one, was a blue-stocking, for he had particularly employed her on account of her scholarly

attainments and rather eccentric proficiency in the Chinese language. But he had every reason to be amazed. Murasaki tad written a novel in a land where novels had never been teard of before. The -Prime Minister thought it unladylike, read the talc to the Emperor as a sort of joke, and then began

trying to make love to the governess. , He-cannot have known

that she also kept a diary. . • Part of Murasaki's diary has already appeared in English in

.Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan. Her novel is now trans- lated for the first time by Mr. Arthur Waley, an official in the Far Eastern Department of the British Museum, whose lin- guistic attainments and beautifully colloquial and graceful ,English style (rare enough among scholars) peculiarly fit him for the task of Making this quite remarkable work accessible: The Tale of Genji is not at all what one would expect. The work of a woman, it is a roman de mews written entirely from the point of view of a Man. The first essay in fiction in -the Japanese language, it much more resembles in manner the

novels of such late Western writers as Benjamin Constant and Henry James than any early European novels. In fact, as the translator says :—

" Ono might have expected the first novel to be somewhat un- decisive in character, more of an overgrown short story than a real novel. It is, on the contrary, planned on the scale of Lea .4fisirablea or War and Peace. This is as strange as if St. Paul's, instead of _growing out of an age-long culture, had boon the work of some early Briton who had never in his life seen any piece of architecture more grandiose than a cow-shed."

its hero is a Prince of great personal charm, impetuous and romantic, exquisitely educated in versification, choreography and "the finer shades." It is true he is a sad rogue, ever in pursuit of sonic new unknown fair one ; but he conducts his intrigues with so much sensibility and tact that his indiscre- tions are not much more offensive than the infidelities of a dancer in a sentimental ballet. Nor can one, of course, judge Prince Genii by -any current code of moralitv..since in his time

and country all moral values were -plainly so very different from ours. The Emperor, his father, tells him what is expected of a young man :— " Affairs of this kind," he continued, " must be managed so that the woman, no matter who sheds, need not feel that she has been brought into a humiliating position or treated in a cynical and off-hand manner "

Genji was a paragon of delicacy. Chance and curiosity 'led him into an encounter with a lady who, though of high rank, was awkward, shy, and—as he later discovered with pain— afflicted with a red tip to her nose. Her-unattractiveness made

him take infinite care to show her every consideration, and he visited her frequently with the gentlest motives. But this was only natural in a young man who, when he was leaving this poor lady one morning -

" Noticed a little orange-tree almost buried in snow. He ordered one of his attendants to uncover it. As though jealous of the attention that the man was paying to its neighbour a pine= tree near by shook its heavily laden branches, pouring great billows of snow over his sleeve. .Delighted with the scene Genii suddenly longed for some companion with whom be might share this pleasure ;. not necessarily someone who loved such things as he did, but one who at least responded to them in an ordinary way."

Towards the end of this volume Genji loses his wife, a girl lovelier than any of those in whose company he spent his leisure, but unloving and proud, and he bitterly regrets that he had been unable ever to come to affectionate terms with her, feeling this to be his own fault for having hoped rather vaguely _ that time would bring them to some pleasanter intimacy, when he should have made a particular effort to win her confidence. ' One of the most remarkable passages in the book describes how the Lady Rokoju, who had long been on intimate terms with the Prince, anxiously asks herself, on hearing that his wife is dead, whether she had ever wished the dead woman.

ill, whether in fact she had perhaps even caused her death by unconscious evil thoughts :—

" How terrible ! It seemed then that it was really possible fin ono's spirit to leave the body and break out into emotions which; the waking mind would not countenance." -

There is something astonishing in the penetration of mind which enabled the eleventh-century governess to anticipate in, this way the most modern psychologists. The story is full of

penetrating and tender observations of the kind, and although! Murasaki's hero has some hardly admirable qualities and

though the authoress draws a picture of an over-civilized Court world where it was clearly less important for women to be virtuous than quick-witted, sensitive and above all accomplished writers of those half-cryptic little verses which' fell continually frcim the Tien of every well-bred person, she also draws the picture with a taste that is unerring, and in the true spirit of Comedy, in order to evoke which, Meredith says :—

- " You must know the real world, and know men and women well enough not to expect too much of them, though you may hope for good."