Japanese and Western Literature. Armando Martins Janeira

visited her only at night and left her at dawn; during the day they sent each other delicate love poems, some of which, especially hers, were beautifully written. The prince went as far as to awkwardly ask her to write a poem that he would like to send to a lady with whom he had been secretly intimate and whose heart he wanted "to touch deeply." She was unwilling, but "thought it too prudish to refuse." Izumi's prose is as beautiful as her poetry, as we can see by one passage in prose she sent to him in which the elation of an exceptional moment of beauty is grasped: "There will be no moment like this in past or future."¹

      Elation fills the woman's solitude; it seems that her real happiness is the deep enjoyment of the solitary days that followed her nights of love, about which she very discreetly tells us nothing. Izumi's love was not altogether happy, because there was much gossip about her affair. This made her rebel against social conventions. Even Murasaki Shikibu in her diary wrote prudishly of her: "Lady Izumi Shikibu corresponds charmingly, but her behaviour is improper indeed." The prince took Izumi to the court to live in the same palace as his wife, and the wife became jealous, The value and enchantment of this diary is in the poetical atmosphere that envelops the romance; it gives us the very essence of a great love.

      THE DIARY OF MURASAKI SHIKIBU

      Murasaki Shikibu, the author of The Tale of Genji, has a diary of a completely different nature; she wrote a social diary of a court lady. Murasaki was a respectable woman; no scandal shaded her reputation. She had a great power of observation and could construct a scene with vivid realism. The description of the delivery of the Queen's child, for instance, is animated with colour and queer exoticism: the men are crying at the top of their voices to scare away the evil spirits, and the soothsayers are invoking the eight million gods who seemed to be listening with ears erect for their Shinto prayers." The Queen's substitutes are enticing the evil spirits, rows of abbots perform incantations, pray and swear till their voices grow coarse. Old women weep secretly; the Prime Minister joins in the prayer for a fortunate delivery. Then there is the sad spectacle of the Queen's head partly shaved, and the rice scattered "white as snow" on the head of important people for good luck and a peaceful delivery. Afterwards comes the ceremony of bathing the child for seven nights, and the celebrations. The Prime Minister examines the breasts of the wet-nurses, to which he very naturally devoted himself with the utmost care." The august child did the very unreasonable thing of wetting the Lord Prime Minister's clothes.

      The dances of the court, the fashions of the ladies, and the minute and subtle sense of the combination of the colours, the Prime Minister intoxicated and wanting to go into Murasaki's room at night, the court ladies and their adventures—all this is the world that Murasaki carefully observed. She had retired from the bustle of the intense social life of an idle class who could think of nothing more than pleasure and writing poems. She said, "I wish I could be more adaptable and live more gaily in the present world—had I not an extraordinary sorrow—but wherever I hear delightful or interesting things, my yearning for a religious life grows stronger." At the end of the diary her inclination for religion becomes ardent: "When my mind has become completely free from the burden of the world nothing will weaken my determination to become a saint.

      One of the greatest interests of Murasaki's diary is the portrait it gives us of the author herself. The life of the court she has described with much more detail in The Tale of Genji. Of course, in the diary the contact is more direct; her commentaries and judgements about people are more personal. But even in the intimacy of her diary she is discreet and cautious. She portrays the prominent ladies of the court, but only those she likes and can praise, saying, "I will be silent about the questionable and imperfect." Yet, she is not always so. She speaks of Sei Shonagon with open spite and probably jealousy. But Murasaki is really kind and good-natured, saying, "We ought to love even those who hate us, but it is very difficult to do it."

      The main interest of this diary lies in its intimate tone, the reflective voice of someone who was never absorbed by the bustle of feasts and pleasures which surrounded her, nor harassed by her social duties. She would persist in living her individual life, escaping to her thoughtful retirement, to her cherished solitude. We find today in Dag Hammarskjöld's diary, Markings, this same need for refuge in poetry and solitude in the midst of an intense life of duties and social functions.

      A portrait of Murasaki is left in these lines:

      Having no excellence within myself, I have passed my days without making a special impression on anyone. Especially the fact I have no man who will look out for my future makes me comfortless. I do not wish to bury myself in dreariness. Is it because of my worldly mind that I feel lonely? On moonlight nights in autumn, when I am hopelessly sad, I often go out on the balcony and gaze dreamily at the moon. It makes me think of days gone by. People say that it is dangerous to look at the moon in solitude, but something impels me, and sitting a little withdrawn I muse there. In the wind-cooled evening I play on the Koto, though others may not care to hear it. I fear that my playing betrays the sorrow which becomes more intense, and I become disgusted with myself so foolish and miserable am I.

      This constant discontentment, this shyness, this finding pleasure in solitude, this delicate sensibility and taste for art and beauty of nature remind us sometimes of the Journal of Katherine Mansfield, Murasaki's sister of ten centuries later.

      THE DIARY OF SEI SHONAGON

      Sei Shonagon is the most remarkable of the Japanese diarists. She begins her note-book, Makura no Soshi (The Pillow Book), confiding that she writes for herself alone. It is obviously untrue. There is too much art in her writing for us to believe it. It is known since the time of Confessions by Rousseau that the sincerity of the writer of a diary is a thing to be much, suspected. If men cannot be trusted in telling the truth, how can we trust a woman? Sei Shonagon unveils in her extraordinary book a spontaneous, witty, daring, and at times even impudent vein which for centuries did not show up again in Japanese literature. The sharp spirit of this most lucid woman was mature with wisdom, refined with cynicism. Her spirit, ardently loving love and enjoying the delicate beauty of fine things, again puts Japan ahead of everything that had until that time been written in this genre. The diary is obviously the most personal form of writing; the temper of the style, the quality of the emotions, the sharpness of analysis, the clear understanding, the depth, the grasp and the brilliance mark its particular value. It is therefore impossible to compare The Pillow Book with the Essays by Montaigne. Both touch that high level that distinguishes the work of a genius.

      The range of subjects that Sei Shonagon touches at random is vast. She shows deep knowledge of human nature, much stronger realism than Murasaki, more sophisticated cynicism and amorality, and more personal appreciation for the joyous rituals of love. Sei Shonagon is an accurate observer, an alert and lucid thinker on social relations, a refined aesthete and connoisseur of everything beautiful and delicate. She is a woman without illusions, who knows men and all their wiles, who enjoys love, and who is capable of pity and warm understanding.

      These qualities, together with a very fine style, vivid temper, and clever contrasts, make The Pillow Book an exceptional book in world literature.²

      The Pillow Book is not a chronological repository, but a book of reminiscence concerning small events of ordinary life and comment on court intrigue. It contains episodes of terse realism, rare intellectual clarity, movement, humour, and subtle detail. Again, probably the greatest interest of this book lies in the portrait the author makes of herself: she is outspoken, direct, sensitive, brilliant, very subtle, and gifted with a rare sense of poetry. In form she is a most refined artist. As a woman, she is capricious, unpredictable, always looking for sympathy and friendship in others, coquettish, and bold. She enjoys irresponsible love above everything else, but never falls into the snares of passion. She is ardent but never tragic, endowed with lucid reason and intellectual power, but still always warm, deeply human, and full of feminine charm and attraction.

      Arthur Waley says that she is, in her prose, "incomparably the best poet of her time. . .and the delicate precision of her perceptions makes diarists such as Lady Anne Clifford . . . seem mere purblind Hottentots."³

      The intellectual quality of her writing, when she makes use of it, is rare for a woman. Some headings of the book show this streak of her mind: "Disagreeable Things, Amusing Things," "Disappointing Things."

      The