Virginia Woolf’s 1925 Review of "The Tale of Genji"
Our readers will scarcely need to be reminded that it was about the year 991 that Aelfric composed his Homilies, that his treatises upon the Old and New Testament were slightly later in date, and that both works precede that profound, if obscure, convulsion which set Swegen of Denmark upon the throne of England.
Perpetually fighting, now men, now swine, now thickets and swamps, it was with fists swollen with toil, minds contracted by danger, eyes stung with smoke and feet that were cold among the rushes that our ancestors applied themselves to the pen, transcribed, translated and chronicled, or burst rudely, and hoarsely into crude spasms of song.
>Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing cuccu
— such is their sudden harsh cry.
Meanwhile, at the same moment, on the other side of the globe the Lady Murasaki was looking out into her garden, and noticing how "among the leaves were white flowers with petals half unfolded like the lips of people smiling at their own thoughts".
The World of Lady Murasaki
While the Aelfrics and the Aelfreds croaked and coughed in England, this court lady—about whom we know nothing, for Mr. Waley artfully withholds all information until the six volumes of her novel are before us—was sitting down in her silk dress and trousers with pictures before her and the sound of poetry in her ears, with flowers in her garden and nightingales in the trees, with all day to talk in and all night to dance in. She was sitting down about the year 1000 to tell the story of the life and adventures of Prince Genji.
But we must hasten to correct the impression that the Lady Murasaki was in any sense a chronicler. Since her book was read aloud, we may imagine an audience; but her listeners must have been astute, subtle-minded, sophisticated men and women. They were grown-up people, who needed no feats of strength to rivet their attention; no catastrophe to surprise them.
They were absorbed, on the contrary, in the contemplation of man's nature:
- How passionately he desires things that are denied;
- How his longing for a life of tender intimacy is always thwarted;
- How the grotesque and the fantastic excite him beyond the simple and straightforward;
- How beautiful the falling snow is, and how, as he watches it, he longs more than ever for someone to share his solitary joy.
An Age Propitious for the Artist
The Lady Murasaki lived, indeed, in one of those seasons which are most propitious for the artist, and, in particular, for an artist of her own sex. The accent of life did not fall upon war; the interests of men did not centre upon politics. Relieved from the violent pressure of these two forces, life expressed itself chiefly in the intricacies of behaviour, in what men said and what women did not quite say, in poems that break the surface of silence with silver fins, in dance and painting, and in that love of the wildness of nature which only comes when people feel themselves perfectly secure.
In such an age as this, Lady Murasaki—with her hatred of bombast, her humour, her common sense, her passion for the contrasts and curiosities of human nature, for old houses mouldering away among the weeds and the winds, and wild landscapes, and the sound of water falling, and mallets beating, and wild geese screaming, and the red noses of princesses, for beauty indeed, and that incongruity which makes beauty still more beautiful—could bring all her powers into play spontaneously.
It was one of those moments when it was natural for a writer to write of ordinary things beautifully, and to say openly to her public:
>"It is the common that is wonderful, and if you let yourselves be put off by extravagance and rant and what is surprising and momentarily impressive you will be cheated of the most profound of pleasure."
For there are two kinds of artists, said Murasaki: one who makes trifles to fit the fancy of the passing day, the other who "strives to give real beauty to the things which men actually use, and to give to them the shapes which tradition has ordained."
How easy it is, she said, to impress and surprise; "to paint a raging sea monster riding a storm" — any toy maker can do that, and be praised to the skies.
>"But ordinary hills and rivers, just as they are, houses such as you may see anywhere, with all their real beauty and harmony of form — quietly to draw such scenes as this, or to show what lies behind some intimate hedge that is folded away far from the world, and thick trees upon some unheroic hill, and all this with befitting care for composition, proportion, and the like — such works demand the highest master's utmost skill and must needs draw the common craftsman into a thousand blunders."
The Essence of Her Charm
Something of her charm for us is doubtless accidental. It lies in the fact that when she speaks of "houses such as you may see anywhere" we at once conjure up something graceful, fantastic, decorated with cranes and chrysanthemums, a thousand miles removed from Surbiton and the Albert Memorial. We give her, and luxuriate in giving her, all those advantages of background and atmosphere which we are forced to do without in England today.
But we should wrong her deeply if, thus seduced, we prettified and sentimentalised an art which, exquisite as it is, is without a touch of decadence; which, for all its sensibility, is fresh and childlike and without a trace of the exaggeration or languor of an outworn civilisation.
The essence of her charm lies deeper far than cranes and chrysanthemums. It lies in the belief which she held so simply that the true artist "strives to give real beauty to the things which men actually use and to give to them the shapes which tradition has ordained".
On she went, therefore, without hesitation or self-consciousness, effort or agony, to tell the story of the enchanting boy — the Prince who danced "The Waves of the Blue Sea" so beautifully that all the princes and great gentlemen wept aloud; who loved those whom he could not possess; whose libertinage was tempered by the most perfect courtesy; who played enchantingly with children, and preferred, as his women friends knew, that the song should stop before he had heard the end.
To light up the many facets of his mind, Lady Murasaki, being herself a woman, naturally chose the medium of other women's minds. Aoi, Asagao, Fujitsubo, Murasaki, Yugao, Suyetsumuhana—the beautiful, the red-nosed, the cold, the passionate—one after another they turn their clear or freakish light upon the gay young man at the centre, who flies, who pursues, who laughs, who sorrows, but is always filled with the rush and bubble and chuckle of life.
A Star, But Not of the First Magnitude
Unhasting, unresting, with unabated fertility, story after story flows from the brush of Murasaki. Without this gift of invention we might well fear that the tale of Genji would run dry before the six volumes are filled. With it, we need have no such foreboding. We can take our station and watch, through Mr. Waley's beautiful telescope, the new star rise in perfect confidence that it is going to be large and luminous and serene — but not, nevertheless, a star of the first magnitude.
No; the lady Murasaki is not going to prove herself the peer of Tolstoy and Cervantes or those other great story-tellers of the Western world whose ancestors were fighting or squatting in their huts while she gazed from her lattice window at flowers which unfold themselves "like the lips of people smiling at their own thoughts".
Some element of horror, of terror, or sordidity, some root of experience has been removed from the Eastern world so that crudeness is impossible and coarseness out of the question, but with it too has gone some vigour, some richness, some maturity of the human spirit, failing which the gold is silvered and the wine mixed with water. All comparisons between Murasaki and the great Western writers serve but to bring out her perfection and their force.
But it is a beautiful world; the quiet lady with all her breeding, her insight and her fun, is a perfect artist; and for years to come we shall be haunting her groves, watching her moons rise and her snow fall, hearing her wild geese cry and her flutes and lutes and flageolets tinkling and chiming, while the Prince tastes and tries all the queer savours of life and dances so exquisitely that men weep, but never passes the bounds of decorum, or relaxes his search for something different, something finer, something withheld.