Morris, Ivan: As I Crossed the Bridge of Dreams (Penguin: London, 1975)

[coffeeandink]

"One thousand years ago a woman in Japan with no name wrote a book without a title." (p. 1)

The woman called "Lady Sarashina" is named, like Murasaki Shikibu, after her own work; in Japan this book is called Sarashina Nikki or Sarashina Diary after not a poem in the book itself, but an allusion by a poem in the book to another poem which does not

Comments

[telophase]

Plus, how much of it is the "Livejournal effect" - where someone's online persona isn't quite the same as their in-person persona? I can see where the portrayal of her self and her emotions in her diary would be molded according to social expectations. I recall the section of The Confessions of Lady Nijo where Lady Nijo just helped the retired emperor she's married* steal into another woman's bedchamber and spend the night, and she spends the entire night sitting outside the room in order to accompany him back to his quarters when he's finished, and the only clue to her internal state we get is that she's a bit catty about how the woman protested, as Heian women supposed to when a man sneaks into their bed, but didn't really resist enough to be properly seemly (plus she reports the former emperor thought she didn't resist enough, either). It may also be intended to be a literary convention to contrast with her first nights with the former emperor, when she resisted enough the first night that he didn't do anything, and the second night she resisted enough that he tore her clothes. Nijo is certainly writing for an audience, instead of a private diary, however.

* I just realized I've forgotten if she's officially married to him or is instead a lover/mistress/concubine sort of thing, but I think she's formally married to him as a secondary wife. It's been a while since I read it.