The publishers of the Orientalist Arthur Waley have gathered into a single serviceable volume his now-famous translation of Murasaki's Tale of Genji, which previously was barely available (or unavailable) in six onerous volumes. This version may be characterized as a classic: it is written with an almost miraculous naturalness, and what interests us is not the exoticism­ -- that horrible word -- but rather the human passions of the novel. Such interest is just: Murasaki's work is what one would quite precisely call a psychological novel. It was written a thousand years ago by a noble lady in the court of the second Empress of Japan; in Europe it would have been inconceivable before the nineteenth century. This is not to say that Murasaki is more intense or more memorable or "better" than Fielding or Cervantes; rather that she is more complex, and the civilization to which she belonged was more refined. To put it another way: I don't claim that Murasaki Shikibu had the talent of Cervantes, but rather that she was heard by a public that was far more subtle. In the Quixote, Cervantes limits himself to distinguishing day from night; Murasaki (The Bridge of Dreams, chapter X) notes in a window "the blurred stars behind the falling snow." In the previous paragraph, she mentions a long bridge, damp in the mist, "that seems much farther away." Perhaps the first detail is implausible; the two together are strangely effective.

I have mentioned two visual details; now I would like to note a psychological one. A woman, behind a curtain, sees a man enter. Murasaki writes: "Instinctively, although she knew quite well that he couldn't see her, she smoothed her hair with her hand."

It is obvious that two or three fragmentary lines cannot take the measure of a novel of fifty-four chapters. I dare to recommend this book to those who read me. The English translation that has inspired this brief in­ sufficient note is called The Tale of Genji; it was also translated into German last year (Die Geschichte vom Prinzen Genji). In French, there is a complete translation of the first nine chapters (Le roman de Genji, 1928) and a few pages in Michel Revon's Anthologie de la litterature japonaise [Anthology of Japanese Literature (1910)].

[1938] [EW]