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Lady Murasaki's The Tale of Genji - Lecture on Chapters XLII-LIV (Patreon)

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2024-07-14 20:33:27
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Content

'This world of ours - why should we lament it? Let us view it as we do the cherries that blossom on the hills.'

Today our journey through Lady Murasaki's sublime masterpiece comes to a close. But for many of us, the saga will never end as we return to the world throughout our lives and keep these characters in our hearts forever.

We're discussing love triangles, Heian courtship, the floating bridge of dreams, maiden guardians of liminal spaces, polygamous cultures, fairytale romance vs psychological realism, ending in medias res, central vs peripheral protagonists, and much more.

Timestamps:

0:00 congratulations on reading this saga

2:00 how to reread your favourite books

4:00 did Lady Murasaki write the ending?

6:00 why forge on after Genji’s death?

8:00 Genji’s radiance is extinguished

10:00 when social cohesion is removed

12:00 continuing without the main character

14:00 books as communication devices

16:00 subverting happy ending conventions

18:00 no such thing as secondary characters

20:00 entering the interiority of Kaoru

22:00 suffering the sins of our past lives

24:00 Kaoru seen as the first anti-hero

26:00 the striking fragrance of Kaoru

28:00 how Niou competes with Kaoru

30:00 difference between Niou & Genji

32:00 medieval Japanese fan fiction

34:00 catching up with Tamakazura

36:00 the most remarkable man at court

38:00 beginning of a new fairytale novel

40:00 Prince Hachi & the Uji Princesses

42:00 on the daughters not being named

44:00 Kaoru discovers a hidden wild flower

46:00 the story of the Uji Bridge Maiden

48:00 guardians, bridges & liminal spaces

50:00 books as physicalisation of the writer

52:00 Kaoru learns the truth of his father

54:00 mourning the death of Prince Hachi

56:00 knowing the ephemerality of life

58:00 difference between Kaoru & Niou

1:00:00 experiential reality & relative time

1:02:00 paradigms of Heian relationships

1:04:00 the three-step courtship process

1:06:00 life for noblewomen of Heian Japan

1:08:00 the ritualised dating protocol

1:10:00 three nights of the pre-nuptial process

1:12:00 no ‘fallen women’ in Heian Japan

1:14:00 affairs as source of prestige for men

1:16:00 why was the society polygamous?

1:18:00 the age-old emotion of jealousy

1:20:00 Kaoru, Niou & Uji Princesses

1:22:00 the death of the older Princess

1:24:00 saga as sustained death knell

1:26:00 Niou becomes jealous of Kaoru

1:28:00 symphonic quality of the story

1:30:00 Kaoru-Niou-Ukifune love triangle

1:32:00 Ukifune thinks to drown herself

1:34:00 the floating bridge of dreams

1:36:00 reading the ‘end’ of this saga

1:38:00 how do we feel about the ending?

1:40:00 congratulations on your achievement

Questions to Consider:

1) What will you remember most from your journey through The Tale of Genji?

2) What did you make of the ending of this saga? How did the final parts of the novel compare with the earlier parts?

3) Will you continue exploring Japanese literature in the future?

4) How would you persuade another to read The Tale of Genji? And what advice would you give to facilitate a meaningful reading experience?

And please do share with us your impressions and favourite passages from the end of The Tale of Genji.

Congratulations on reading The Tale of Genji, everybody!

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Comments

Tatiana

Proust/Murasaki #1 - The Aristocracy of Art The first chapter of Shirley Loui’s book Murasaki’s Genji and Proust’s Recherche, A Comparative Study, which was a Ph.D thesis, is titled The Aristocracy of Art. Both Proust and Murasaki were inside the world of aesthetic aristocracies but limited by their status, Proust as a Jewish homosexual bourgeois, Murasaki as the daughter of a provincial governor. Both lived in salon societies but Proust’s observations of the upper class were limited to this as he was never invited into the private lives of the people he mingled with. Murasaki’s limitation was that as a female, she had almost no visibility into the world of politics and economics, though she did overcome the restriction of women learning the court language, Chinese. “The entire Tale of Genji, like the Recherche, is a complex in-depth study of the outer and inner worlds of its main characters. It deals with the passing of time, coping with the present, the kind of suffering and emotional insecurity all humanity experiences, self-discovery through love or deprivation of love, and development of a sensibility which deals with life from an ethical perspective.” “The rescuing of the self from oblivion of time and the transience of life is accomplished by producing an artifact which is one’s own life transformed into literature.” "Their ultimate vision of artistic creativity is significantly bonded in a vision of art as a refiner of sensibility and a metaphor for one's own life."

Tatiana

Proust/Murasaki #2 Loui notes that while both books give us visibility into the elegance, grandeur and elitism of their respective societies, in both cases the authors depict the inner questing of their central characters whose “sensibilities refused total accommodation to the lush ‘ways’ of their small societies and instead turned inward to find more satisfying answers. As did Proust and Murasaki themselves. In the case of France, “the need for achievement being common to both king and pauper, the privileged class required some ‘product’ of their leisure, but one which would show that that ‘one’s time had not been spent in industrial employment.” In Heian Japan we note a more pervasive dedication to the arts in every aspect of life, both personal and public, the cult of ‘yoki hito” – the good person of aristocratic birth and emotional/artistic sensibility. In both cases this devotion led to preciosity. The details of these practices in the two oeuvres are extensive and indeed exhausting but serve to ground this lifestyle in a credible physical reality. And in both cases the inherent decadence of the elite signals the end of a cycle in preparation for a new socio-economic construct. Note that the artistic focus of both societies was dominated by women, in France the salons were run by hostesses, in Heien Japan the entire literary culture with a few exceptions (The Tale of Heike) was female. The succeeding cultures in both cases swung heavily to the male, in the case of Japan, the rise of several hundred years of samurai culture, in France, the rise of the industrialized, technologized and geopoliticized future.

Tatiana

Proust/Murasaki #3 - On Character Depiction “Both Lady Murasaki and Proust’s techniques dramatically demonstrate two things: the passing of time and the deceptive quality of knowledge. In either case we are obliged to ‘think back’ to previous impressions of a given character, uniting them to our present observations.” “Aspects of character are revealed to us slowly over long periods of time, and sometimes seem inconsistent with what has gone before. Yet the cumulative information eventually produces the complex personality Proust or Lady Murasaki intended us to confront.” “Thus a chequered assimilation of character traits and identities reveal both the ambiguous totality of a given personality and our inability to totally ‘know’ another person.” Proust essentially denies the possibility of finding happiness in another person. Lady Muraski suggests the same with Genji’s never ending quest for something better, together with the omnipresent Zen perspective that the whole world is illusory and cannot be a source of ultimate fulfillment. Hence the title of the final chapter in Genji, “The Floating Bridge of Dreams.” Also, "both Genji's and Marcel's inclinations toward multiple and 'mirror' attachments might be attributed, as many have suggested, to the narcissistic workings of their personalities." Jealousy and the self-absoption it implies plays an outsize role in both books, continuing beyond the grave: Rojuko's hauntings, Genji's refusal of Kashiwaga's posthumous apology, Marcel's obsession with Albertine's lesbianism long after she has died. " Both come to recognize, however, the error of their subjective idealism... Transience and time demonstrate that the ideal can only be a product of experience and imagination rather than an experiential goal." Both Marcel and Genji end in self-reflective solitude. "Our individuality removes us from others; death removes others from us."

Tatiana

Proust/Genji #4 On Time “Time is the antagonist in each work, and art – with meaningful repetition – is the protagonist.” In both "past and present occurrences in the narratives are united through memory to produce a temporal metaphor, one which contains the essence of the two experiences and produces an artistic foil for evanescence." (I had to read that sentence three times to grok it.) Narrative Structure “Lady Murasaki, like Proust, provided her narrative with surprising and realistic shifts of perspective in order to deepen our understanding – if through temporary misunderstanding – of her ultimate “truth,” that all knowledge is mobile, illusory, incomplete, a poignant and on-going process in this ‘dream of life.’” Perfection The drive for perfection in all aspects of his individual life lies at the heart of each hero’s search, and involves intellectual, social, aesthetic and emotional tests.” Two Key Differences “Just as Genji is a practitioner of the arts and Swann, the observer and the appreciator, so Genji is the activist practitioner of love and Marcel, its critic and analyst.” In this Murasaki demonstrates traditional story-telling by showing, while Proust leans to telling. The one leans more to the sensual, the other to the cerebral. "Metaphor becomes art in Genji's poetry, and art becomes metaphor in Proust's poetic response to reality.

Tatiana

Proust/Genji #5 - Nature I have not yet read this chapter but in a summary Loui shows the connection between rural settings and Paris/Kyoto, plus "in the Recherche as in Genji the seasons become a structural device for marking time, initiating flashbacks and dressing landscapes." There is a whole chapter comparing Gilberte Swann and the Akashi Lady, exploring how "specific landscapes, seasons and floral symbols... can illustrate both the subtle and obvious uses to which nature is put by both authors." By the end of this book you want to reread both Genji and Recherche... I am rereading Proust.

Vida
>>145987109

Hi Tatiana! This is amazing. There is so much to think about, consider and reconsider. I need to reread your posts several times to get a better sense of them. Many of these points already resonate with me. I agree with you that this makes us want to reread both. I wish Benjamin would go back to Proust at some point. I see that you have pt so much time and effort into this. Thank you so much, Tatiana!

Lydia R

When reading the last quarter of Genji, I found myself frustrated with the princess characters. I don’t know if it was because they lived in isolation so long that they allow their fears of what a world they’re not even really mixed in with might think of them control their actions. Then I was reading Montaigne essay “On Fear” today and it occurred to me that the evil spirit that was maligning the Elder Princess and Ukifune. People with a pressing fear of losing their property or being driven into exile or enslavement also lose the desire to eat drink or sleep, whereas those who are actually impoverished banished or enslaved often enjoy life as much as anyone else (Montaigne, 83) The Younger Princess may not been as happy as we could wish her to be but she also didn’t die or throw herself into the river because of the fear of ‘what if’. Ukifune’s rush into nun hood out of fear instead of spiritual piousness makes appear the malevolent spirit might have appeared again, though she seems to be a magnet for sexually pushy men.

Nigel Burmester
>>145960832

Thanks for summarizing this book, Tatiana. These notes are gold! I particularly like your second to last quote on this comment. I wrote it down as I think it holds one of the main reasons I was drawn to both these masterpieces.

Paul Fincher

I have finally finished this novel!!! Have not had a greater sense of accomplishment from finishing a book since War and Peace. Thank you Ben for scheduling this book.

Susan Considine

I am just about to start this book. Please recommend the best translation. Thank you!

Jonathon Glover

There are many great texts where a single word jumps out at me, as being one that the author is particularly drawn to. I think of ‘singular’ with Arthur Conan Doyle and ‘Will’, ‘satisfied’ and ‘nothing’ for Shakespeare and for this read, at least the Washburn translation, it has to be ‘auspicious’ And I think that Ben’s choice was an auspicious one, as there are many, myself included, that may not have finished this without his guidance. A few other things that I will always think of include: - dew of flowers - the 9th month - tears on sleeves - admiring (or flat out disrespecting) someone’s calligraphy - the 800 poems - the 300 times where the author metafictively comments on how average the poem is 😂 - the eternal battle between spring and autumn for seasonal supremacy The deaths of Genji and Murasaki feel like the natural end of the story for me, and the blank page the perfect ending. Someone went all Pixar and decided that we needed a Toy Story 4. But overall, a very special read with so aesthetic beauty and character complexity. And again, thanks to the lectures Ben, as I’m not sure I would’ve got through it without them.