Word: genji
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...PILLOW-BOOK OF SEI SHONAGON- Translated by Arthur Waley-Houghton Mifflin ($2.50). The Tale of Genji, recently done into English, revealed a highly sophisticated civilization in loth Century Japan. Lady Murasaki's novel is fiction glossed with decadent romance, but her accuracy of atmosphere and circumstance is corroborated by this loth Century Japanese diary. Sei Shonagon was in the service of Empress Sadako at the elaborate court of Heian. Not the least of her qualifications for the post was her handwriting-the cult of calligraphy amounting almost to a religion at court. Love affairs often began by some chance...
...Story. Through three volumes of well-bred indiscretions Prince Genji proved himself master of the delectable art of making love. In the fourth, with old age creeping on, he proves himself master of the art of being betrayed. Kashiwagi, Prince Genji's friend, cuckolds him with his girl-bride, Nyosan. In the fury of discovery Genji plans glorious revenge. But his usual dignity, mellowed by age, prevents him from hasty action, and allows of reconsideration. For it has occurred to him that in his youth he had seduced a concubine of the old Emperor, his own father, and though...
...more interested anyway in the heroine of his youth, his older wife, Murasaki* of the versatile wit and mature charm. "Coming from the presence of younger women, such as Nyosan, Genji always expected that Murasaki would appear to him inevitably (and he was willing to make allowance for it) a little bit jaded, a trifle seared and worn. . . . But as a matter of fact it was just these younger women who failed to provide any element of surprise, whereas Murasaki was continually astounding him . . . her clothes scented with the subtlest and most delicious perfumes...
When at last she died Genji mourned her with elaborate ceremonies (blue trousers were part of the mourning costume), and decided upon monastic retirement. If indeed he took pleasure some months later in the liveliness of one Chujo No Kimi's features, the red and yellow of her trousers, the sombre purple of her robe, it was but the lifetime habit of chivalry in the presence of beauty...
...Significance. With the appearance of each volume of The Tale of Genji critics burst into frenzies of enthusiastic comparison: "Fielding's Tom Jones with music by Debussy" . . . "as if Proust had rewritten The Arabian Nights" . . . "Don Quixote with a dash of Jane Austen" . . . fortunately the ancient Japanese document is no such mongrel monstrosity as all of this. But the reviewers' floundering tributes indicate something of its variegated appeal. In limpid prose The Tale combines curiously modern social satire with great charm of narrative. Translator Waley has done service to literature in salvaging to the Occident this masterpiece...