Page:Japanese Literature (Keene).pdf/87

Rh attracted a man to a woman might be hearing her play a musical instrument as he passed by her quarters at night, or it might be a note in her handwriting of which he caught a glimpse, or it might be just her name. Any of these things could persuade a man that he was madly in love with a woman, and cause him to pursue her until she yielded, all this without ever having seen her except at night, or perhaps by the light of fireflies.

The only Western book of which I am reminded in reading The Tale of Genji is Marcel Proust’s A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. There are striking similarities of technique between the two works, such as that of casually mentioning people or events, and only later, in a symphonic manner, developing their full meaning. But above such resemblances in manner there are the grand themes common to the two. The subject of both novels is the splendours and decline of an aristocratic society, and in both the barons are noted less for their hunting and fishing than for their surpassing musical abilities, their flawless taste and their brilliant conversation. These were snobbish societies, extremely sensitive to pedigree and rank. In The Tale of Genji, for instance, the young princess who is being feared as a future empress is shocked beyond words when the truth, carefully concealed from her until that moment, is disclosed that she was born in the country and not in the capital! It is as if the Duchesse de Guermantes discovered that she had been born in some industrial suburb! In both novels, also, there is an overpowering interest in the passage of time and its effects on society. Proust is far crueller than Lady Murasaki describing how, with the passage of time, Mme. de Villeparisis, for whom fortunes were once squandered by her lovers, has become a wrinkled hag, or how the odious Mme. Verdurin in time becomes Princesse de Guermantes. But if Murasaki is kinder, she is none the less insistent on the point—the dashing