Reading post: The Tale of Genji

I have finished my first book for the 2022 Classics Challenge: The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, which was written probably 1001-1008, a thousand years ago. I chose it to fulfill category #8, "A pre-1800 classic." 

I started reading the book on January 21st, and finished it today, February 10th, so it took exactly three weeks. It seemed like forever! The copy that I read was 1155 pages and I haven't read anything remotely that long in ages. Actually, what else is that long? It took a long time just to cast my eyes over that many pages, and it was also physically difficult to read because the little paperback from the library was so heavy. I tried to be careful with it. It's a well-bound book, but I wonder how many readings it can withstand?

The Tale of Genji is considered to be one of the first novels ever written (there were a couple of Japanese works in the previous century that might qualify as the very first), and also the first psychological novel, in that people's thoughts and emotions are what drives the story. The novel played an extremely important role in Japanese culture for hundreds of years (though it fell out of favor in the 1700s), despite the fact that the language in which it was written quickly became archaic and unreadable. It's not just westerners who need Genji translated; modern Japanese readers do as well. I'm guessing reading Genji in the original classical Japanese today is something like reading Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Maybe even more difficult.

I didn't really have any idea what I was getting into when I decided to read Genji. First of all, there are four main translations to choose from. How did I choose? I looked at what was on the shelf at the library and read that. It's the Waley translation, which is 100 years old. It's still liked by some people -- all the subsequent translations have issues too -- but this one really has issues. For starters, Waley omits one of the 54 chapters (chapter 38). No one knows why. To make up for this, he breaks chapter 49 into two parts in order to end up with the required 54 chapters. In addition, on the sentence/paragraph level, Waley adds, subtracts, and gets things wrong.

To help me read Genji, I found another book in the library called The Tale of Genji: A Visual Companion by Melissa McCormick. Harvard University owns a set of Genji illustrations for the 54 chapters that was completed in 1510 (the earliest known complete set). McCormick's book presents the painting and calligraphy page for each chapter, and describes what is going on in the picture and its connection to the chapter. So after I read each chapter of Waley's Genji, I looked at the related pages in McCormick's book. And I started to notice something odd -- McCormick often refers to things that I did not just read. Either they were missing entirely from Waley's translation or they were different -- things like the number of children someone has, or who said what to whom, or what someone's name is. I don't know whether it's always Waley who messed up, but McCormick's analysis is based on the Dennis Washburn translation (the most recent), which has issues of its own, but is supposed to be pretty accurate. So probably it's the Waley translation that's so off. It was very disconcerting.

Partway through this long book I started to think -- what on earth am I reading? Is it actually The Tale of Genji, or is it just a book sort of loosely based on Genji by some old British guy? (Waley was my paternal grandfather's age, actually, born in 1889.)

I thought about switching translations and starting over. I did, I thought about it, even several hundred pages in. And then I read more about the other translations. They're all problematic. The one I probably should have read, by Royall Tyler, is supposed to be quite difficult to understand, because he comes the closest to Lady Murasaki's original. And then I read, on a blog, the recommendation that one read an easy version, like Waley's Genji, first, and later try reading Tyler's version. Fine, I thought. Someday in the distant future when I have nothing else to read, I will read Tyler's Genji. Problem solved.

But I just want to make clear that I don't really know what I read, or how close or far it is from the original. This is always the problem with translations, and certainly with older translations of really old works. I thought about Beowulf, which I read in January 2008 (before my twins were born in March). Beowulf is probably older than Genji, though the text that we have of it was produced around the same time, about 1000 years ago. I read the Seamus Heaney translation, which has been criticized too. But I loved it! I enjoyed reading it so much, especially in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep due to being 7 months pregnant with twins. Heaney's translation provided me with an exquisite reading experience, and can you really ask more of a 1000+-year-old story?

Translation is problematic, but it is also a wonderful thing. If we didn't have translations, flawed though they may be, we'd miss out on what all the people who speak other languages are trying to say. And even though we don't get it exactly, we get a version of their words, we approach it, we try. I think it's worth it.

I'll probably have more thoughts about translation as we go along this year, since my first seven books will be translated texts. But Genji is really a special case, being so old and written in such a weird way, and having been translated so many times. In most cases I think I will be lucky to find even one translation. We shall see.

***

OK, so with all that said, what about the book? It's pretty amazing. I don't think I would put it on my Top Ten List of Favorite Novels, as this blogger does, but I'm not sure what's on that list for me anyway. I didn't find the book transcendental, as Moby Dick was (speaking of really long classic novels), but it was fascinating.

So the book tells the story of Genji, a son of an Emperor of Japan and one of his concubines, in the 10th century (note that it's actually historical fiction, since Lady Murasaki was writing in the early 11th century). Genji is made a commoner -- removed from the line of succession -- but nonetheless takes an active part in court life. At one point he is banished to a distant town by a subsequent Emperor (his half-brother), but is later pardoned, and the next Emperor (who is actually Genji's son, though believed to be the son of Genji's father) eventually raises Genji to the rank of Retired Emperor, even though he was never Emperor. And then Genji dies, and the last 400 pages are about the adventures of two young men, Genji's supposed youngest child, Kaoru (who isn't actually his) and Genji's grandson Niou, son of the current Emperor (the Empress is Genji's daughter).

None of this political stuff is very important to the story, however, at least it didn't seem that way to me. (I guess it's important as a frame for the story, to explain, in part, why Genji behaves as he does.) The bulk of the story is about Genji's love affairs -- and later Kaoru's and Niou's love affairs. Genji has almost no self-control, constantly jumping into bed with new women, but he treats them well afterwards. At one point he builds a new palace for himself with special quarters for each of his women. Kaoru and Niou, on the other hand, are sort of anti-Genjis (as well as sort of doppelgangers of each other), and neither of them treats women particularly well. Niou jumps from bed to bed, paying no attention to the damage he causes, while Kaoru holds back and has trouble acting when he needs to.

I know I'm not supposed to impose my modern sensibilities on the book, but the Heian period in Japan had very strange rules for male-female relationships, judging by Genji. High status men could sleep around widely, have multiple wives and concubines, and there was no shame involved in the children who naturally resulted. Their access to these women was very limited, however, until they had managed a conquest. All their (non-written) communication took place with the women hidden behind screens and curtains. Over and over the story describes the hasty putting up of screens when a man shows up. And the men all turn into peeping toms, trying to find ways to see even the tiniest glimpse of a woman's sleeve, or a lock of her hair -- at which point, they fall madly in love/lust with her. The McCormick book was helpful here, as many of the paintings show Genji or Kaoru peeping through a hole in a fence, etc., to see this or that woman.

Sometimes a man does manage to grab a woman's sleeve through the curtain, and then it's all over -- he rapes her and she belongs to him. Of course, it's not described as rape. That's my modern sensibilities getting in the way again. The men stay until dawn and by then the women have fallen in love with them too. It's all very odd.

The other way that people communicate is by letter, and they often enclose a poem they've just written. People also make up poems as part of regular conversation, and there are poem competitions. These poems are waka style, five lines of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables, and the book is chock full of them (795 in all, according to McCormick). The Waley translation folds them into the text, but other translations set them out, so they look more obviously like poems. Being able to quickly make up appropriate poems (often including puns and allusions to famous poems and stories) is considered a necessary skill for the upper classes, as is beautiful calligraphy which of course they use to write down these poems. Genji and others make a lot of snap judgments about people based on their calligraphy. Choice of paper matters too. Or sometimes someone might send a small branch from a flowering tree with a poem on a scrap of paper tied to it.

Despite the weirdness of all this, I kept thinking of connections with modern life. For example, the poems reminded me of social media. Back in the year 1000 or so, in royal Japanese society, people were expected to come up with snappy little poems at the drop of a hat; in the year 2022, people are expected to come up with snappy little tweets just as quickly. Also, these days couples apparently often don't meet in person until they've first become acquainted through the "screen" of a dating site. It's really not so different.

Many times while reading Genji I got tired of it and wanted to quit. And then I'd come to a chapter that completely captivated me, and I couldn't put it down. When Genji died, I really didn't want to go on reading. He annoyed me constantly throughout the first 750 pages, but when he died, I felt absolutely bereft (as did many of the other characters). The first line of the next chapter: "Genji was dead, and there was no one to take his place." It's so sad! 

But people do take his place, specifically Kaoru and Niou, and they do a very bad job of it. I was so annoyed with them both for a long time. But then I became captivated by the story of Ukifune (who they both chase), and I couldn't put the book down. That's why I finished today -- yesterday I read about 150 pages straight through.

I should mention that the book is generally felt to be "about" the impermanence of life, mono no aware in Japanese. The fact that the book is so long, and we watch characters grow up, grow old, and die -- and other lives go on afterwards -- makes this concept easier to see.

I haven't done the book justice in this post, but I think I'm going to stop here. If you're interested in the book, there is plenty of information about it on the web. I found this blog useful, as well as another I linked to up above. And of course Wikipedia and all that. 

Do I recommend The Tale of Genji? Well, it depends on what you're looking for. If you'd like to read an enormously long story about a wildly different culture of 1000 years ago, then yeah, go for it. As I said above, it's pretty amazing.