After her first love affair with a man ends, Murasaki dutifully acquiesces to her father's choice of husband - a match that works out surprisingly well and results in the birth of her daughter, Katako. At 18 his boyish handsomeness was charming, his clothing impeccable, but it was his quietly confident attitude that drew people to him."īefore long, Genji takes on a life of his own, and his adventures, originally set down in a series of letters, slowly make their way into the wider world, where they are devoured by an ever-growing audience. In "Night of the Hazy Moon," Murasaki's first tale, she writes, "Even in the crowd of elegant courtiers, Genji stood out. ![]() ![]() While Murasaki resists her father's attempts to find her a husband, she and her friend Chifuru begin making up stories about a dashing dream lover whose passion and poetry stand in sharp contrast to the dull, arranged marriages that await them. Murasaki doesn't seem to mind this in fact, as a young woman she is repelled by men, and seems content to embark on a series of intimate relationships with close female friends. Yet because she sticks so closely to her literary and historical sources, Dalby never quite manages to make the imaginative leap needed to bridge the gap between first-rate social science and compelling fiction.Īs the story begins, Murasaki's mother has just died, and, before long, Murasaki is running the household of her father, Tametoki, a poet and scholar of Chinese who has seen to it that his daughter is similarly well-educated - a trait that puts her at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to attracting suitors. The book overflows with rich descriptions of customs, scenery, rituals and nature that evoke a lost world and often rise to the level of art. Dalby, who has written two books of nonfiction, "Kimono" and "Geisha," which recount her experiences as the only Western woman to become a geisha, sets herself a daunting task here: to tell Murasaki's own story through a work of "literary archaeology" that incorporates not only a fragment of the ancient author's actual journal but also hundreds of her "waka," the short, haikulike message poems that seemed to flow as freely as e-mail among those in Murasaki's circle.Īs a work of literary archaeology or, more fittingly, anthropology, "The Tale of Murasaki" is a stunning success. Liza Dalby's "The Tale of Murasaki" imagines the life of Genji's creator, Murasaki Shikibu, in a fictional memoir that takes the form of a poetic diary. "The Tale of Genji," the 11th century Japanese literary work considered by many to be the world's first novel, boasts an irresistible hero: a sweet-smelling, sensitive Shining Prince who woos and wins every lady he meets.
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