it is available to Western readers, who can now judge for themselves whether it is not only the world’s first real novel, but one of its greatest.
About the author of The Tale of Genji, Lady Murasaki (c. 975–c. 1025), we know few facts, but we fortunately still have her diary, which affords us interesting insights into her character. She says of herself:
“That I am very vain, reserved, unsociable, wanting always to keep people at a distance—that I am wrapped up in the study of ancient stories, conceited, living all the time in a poetical world of my own and scarcely realizing the existence of other people, save occasionally to make spiteful and depreciatory comments upon them—such is the opinion of me that most strangers hold, and they are prepared to dislike me accordingly. But when they get to know me, they find to their extreme surprise that I am kind and gentle—in fact, quite a different person from the monster they had imagined; as indeed many have afterwards confessed. Nevertheless, I know that I have been definitely set down at Court as an ill-natured censorious prig. Not that I mind very much, for I am used to it and see that it is due to things in my nature which I cannot possibly change. The Empress has often told me that, though I seemed always bent upon not giving myself away in the royal presence, yet she felt after a time as if she knew me more intimately than any of the rest.”[1]
We, too, as we read The Tale of Genji, feel that we are learning a great deal about Lady Murasaki, especially in such asides as
“You may think that many of the poems which I here repeat are not worthy of the talented characters to whom
- ↑ The Tale of Genji, introduction by Waley, p. xv.
