Murasaki Shikibu is mainly known for her The tale of Genji,
but she has made another important contribution to the literary heritage of old
Japan, and that is her diary, or nikki as they are called in Japanese. A nikki
is a collection of reflections and describtions of events, but not perhaps in a
way a modern diary-writer would understand the task. Fair enough, this is
written a little over a thousand years ago, conventions on writing change over
time.
This diary is written in the first years of the 11th
century, in a period called Heian. She is recently widowed and has a place at
the imperial court, and the first part (and the end) is a description of life
in the imperial household. The diary begins when the second consort of emperor
Ichijo, Shoshi, was expected to give
birth to her first child, and then revolvs around this, the rituals
surrounding birth and newly borns, but also court life as such. The second part
of the book has the shape of a letter, both telling of Murasaki's thoughts on
life (which come across as rather gloomy) and her opinions on other courtiers.
The main focus is descriptions. She describes rituals,
people, nature and clothes. Everything is very beautiful and to the point in a
way any modern writer could take notes from. But this is an old text and to a
modern reader that can present a problem, you have to know quite a bit to be
able to fully appreciate the text. That is why I would recommend any reader to
sit down with a version with extensive footnotes. It might sound a bit boring,
but it really isn't, and if you don't you will soon see the problems: not only
are the officialls mentioned only by their titles and in a way that hints very
little of who they were, but even the colours of the ladies in waiting's robes are described in ways unknown to most
modern readers (not to mention non-Japanese), and let's face it, most of us
know precious little about rituals and their shape and meaning in Heian Japan.
0 comments:
Post a Comment