as noted by Edmund Wilson when he labeled A La Recherche du Temps Perdu a symphonic structure rather than a narrative in the ordinary sense. Pattern, according to E. M. Forster, is something which springs mainly out of the plot, and to which the characters and any other element present also contribute."8 Both Murasaki and Proust used pattern and rhythm to give cohesion and harmony to their long novels.
Another device for which Murasaki has been compared to Proust is the use of the introduction of a character not yet mentioned as if the reader knew him before and were already familiar with him. Thus Princess Asagao is introduced in the second chapter of The Tale of Genji. This process, as critics have noted for both writers, can produce a suggestive realistic effect. Still another device frequently used by both authors consists of hinting at the existence of a character before he or she enters into the action, or of making a vague allusion to events which will happen many years later, Ivan Morris quotes examples of all these devices in his interesting book The World of the Shining Prince,9 and his points are easy to see when reading Murasaki's novel. But if it is true that some literary devices are similar in Murasaki and in Proust, there is no similarity whatsoever between the recurring leitmotif patterns employed by each.
Edward Seidensticker in a recent article points out a peculiar Japanese characteristic of Murasaki's pattern which consists of associating the full moon with tragedy. Three of the women important in Genji's life die on or very near the night of the full moon. In each case the circumstances are horrifying: the three are possessed by the spirit of a fourth woman who is insane with jealousy. In each case, again, the most beautiful moon of the year, the full moon of the lunar month, is associated with disaster. Each time the image recurs, Seidensticker concludes, it brings a mixture of grief and terror.10
By building the character through a succession of multiple states, and conceiving human relations as a series of failures by one person to meet and to understand another, both Murasaki and Proust achieve rich and surprising effects,11 A complete comparative study between the two masterpieces should reveal many more common points, since they are two extraordinarily rich and extensive works. Murasaki had not only the genius to discover by herself the technique necessary to give life to a very long narration, but also the power to capture the interest and imagination of the reader through her highly artistic skill.
All this shows the surprisingly modern aspects of this first novel of love in world literature. Later we deal with another point in which Murasaki has been compared to Proust—the use of the element of Time.
The Tale of Genji, in its large panorama of the passing of human lives, reminds one of Tolstoi's War and Peace: the master-motif that underlies the former is the same one that Percy Lubbock observed in the latter—the story of youth. Man is at the mercy of time: Genji, still young and handsome, talks with his young friends a whole rainy night about different types of women. Genji, already old, holds in his arms the little child of his young wife, Princess Nyosan, with dark thoughts that the father of the child must be his own son. That son, Kashiwagi, did to Genji what Genji himself had done to his father the emperor when he seduced his new wife, Lady Fujitsubo. Time sees repetition of life with its eternal patterns; man fulfils his destiny and vanishes.
But what gives The Tale of Genji an air of modernity is really its theme: love. It is only after Honoré d'Urfé, who lived about three hundred fifty years ago, that European fiction began to occupy itself with the sentimental story, built up coherently around a certain number of episodes. Before d'Urfé, duty, family, city-policy, or adventure were the themes of poems, plays, and stones in Greece and in Rome. When love inspired a writer, it was rather to create songs exalting the beauty of its physical aspects, as with Ovid.
The Tate of Genji is the first novel to deal with the sentimental aspects of love and to analyse the intimate feelings of the heart. For this also it has a particular place and meaning in world literature.
THE CONCEPT OF LIFE
Perhaps the most striking feature of aristocratic Heian life, writes Edward Seidensticker, is its emphasis on good taste. In action it gave rise to vast and minute cultivation of taste and form. Infinite care was dedicated to the selection of an ensemble, to the composition of a letter, to the concocting of a perfume. The days were spent in ceremonies, in elegant pastimes viewing the cherry blossoms, burning incense, or seeing the moon in the melancholy of night; the main occupation was to read and write poems, to court, and to embark on gallant adventures. As has been written, the real religion of Heian was the cult of calligraphy. Religion became an art and art a religion.
Buddhist rites were a spectacle; Chinese poetry was an intellectual game. George Sansom writes:
Heian courtiers were great connoisseurs in emotion and judges of ceremonies and etiquette; sentimentally aware of the sadness of this dew-like fleeting world, but intellectually unconcerned with all its problems; prone to a gentle melancholy but apt to enjoy each transitory moment, and quite without interest in any outlook but their own.12
Japanese Heian writers were not much troubled by the problem of evil. We see, though, Genji preoccupied with sin, and even preoccupied with the fate of his father's soul after he sees him in a dream burdened "by a load of earthly sin." The Japanese, notes Sansom, have cared little for abstract ideas of good and evil, but have always been concerned with problems of behaviour towards society. They were very superstitious; natural disasters and disease, for which they had no explanations, made them resort to religion and magic practices.
There is in the Japanese soul a light and pleasurable side lit by the sunshine of Shintoism, which rejoices at the pleasures and virginal forces of the earth. There is also the sombre side in which Buddhism brings its deep concern of the suffering of life. The nucleus of Murasaki's art lies in the combination of the two.
The Buddhist concept of life deeply imbued Murasaki's novel. "The purpose of The Tale of Genji may be likened to the man who, loving the lotus flower, must collect and store muddy and foul water in order to plant and cultivate the flower, writes Norinaga Motoori, one of the greatest Japanese literary theorists and Murasaki's fervent admirer,"The impure mud of illicit love affairs described in the Tale is there not for the purpose of being admired but for the purpose of nurturing the flower of the awareness of the sorrow of human existence. Prince Genji's conduct is like the lotus flower which is happy and fragrant but which has its roots in filthy muddy water. But the Tale does not dwell on the impurity of the water; it dwells only on those who are sympathetically kind and who are aware of the sorrow of human existence."13
From Buddhist thought comes the feeling of sorrow, pity, and sympathy for things, mono no aware. It is a connection between beauty and the sadness of the world, because the greatest beauty is the one that lasts the shortest time. Life flows away with its pleasures, all things are evanescent. The aspects and changes of nature respond to changing human emotions and passions. And both men and tilings suffer from this poignant feeling of irreparable loss. As Ivan Morris pointed out, in scene after scene The Tale of Genji reaches its emotional climax in the union of aesthetic enjoyment and sorrow.
THE CONCEPT OF LOVE: A CULT OF BEAUTY
Love in Heian aristocracy consisted of an elaborate code of courtship which was very strict in its rules of composing and answering poems, but lenient in allowing a suitor to enjoy his belle's full charms. We see in the novels of the time that it was difficult for a lady (and probably not very polite) to refuse a gentleman of good birth when approached according to the rules of poetical courtship. A man would easily fall in love at the mere glimpse of long, bewitching tresses of hair or a beautiful kimono sleeve. Love was an irresponsible adventure without future, compromise, or any sense of sin.
Ivan Morris writes:
The love life of the Heian aristocracy is marked by a curious mixture of depravity and decorum. The absence of any ideal of courtly love involving fealty, protection, romantic anguishing,
