Page:Japanese Literature (Keene).pdf/22

10 gaining enlightenment as any other, as well as the very embodiment of the movement of life.

It may be seen that the effect of suggesting a whole world by means of one sharp image is of necessity restricted to shorter verse forms, and it is in fact in such forms of expression that the Japanese have in general excelled. The literature contains some of the longest novels and plays in the world, some of them of high literary quality, but the special Japanese talent for exquisite and suggestive detail has not been matched by a talent for construction. The earliest novels, if so we may call them, were often little more than a number of poems and the circumstances which inspired them. Such unity as these books possessed came from the fact that all the poems were credited to one man, or to one Emperor’s court, but no attempt was made to connect the amorous adventure which gave rise to one verse with the adventure on the following page. Even in the later novels there is no really sharp distinction between the world of poetry and the world of prose, probably because poetry played a more common role in Japanese society than it has ever played in ours. In The Tale of Genji, written about 1000, there are about 800 verses. Conversations often consist largely of poetry, and no lover would neglect to send a poem on the day after seeing his mistress. But however lovely these poems may be, it cannot be pretended that they are all essential to the plot of the novel. Most Japanese novels indeed tend to break up into almost entirely disconnected incidents in the manner of the old poetry-tales. In some of the novels there is at least the thread of historical fact to link the various anecdotes of disparate nature, but in other works we have digressions of no apparent relevance. Even in the modern Japanese novel, which has been much influenced by European examples, we find curiously lyrical sections floating like clouds over the rest of the work. For