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

[rachelmanija]

This sounds wonderful.

For quite some time, Sarashina Nikki was held in great disrepute, due to a collation error when a seventeenth-century copy's binding was resewn with the pages in the wrong order.

My God! That's like the Special Writer's Hell.

There was a previous English translation so awful that Morris is driven to quote from it in great indignation:

It was a smile-presenting sight. It give a feeling of loneliness to see the dark shadow of the mountain close before me.

And so is this.

Sarashina was shy and dreamy; she didn't wish to be Murasaki but fantasized about being one of Genji's lesser loves, Yugao maybe, or a woman in a later chapter than any of us have read.

Heh. Well, clearly he functioned as a good fantasy-object for at least some Heian women.

Here's a picture of sugi, also known as Japanese cedar. They have a strong resemblance to Northern California redwoods.

http://www.koyasan.org/about.html

[telophase]

Or do the cipher elements make it easier to turn him into a fantasy figure, perhaps? I'm just thinking of fanfics where the writers have turned whatever character they're writing about into their personal fantasy, resulting in someone that bears little relation to the figure seen in the original, and others where a character with very little screen time ends up with an elaborate personality and background in fanon.

[tekalynn]

Her self-portrayal as a girl is just darling. I always want to hug her. I especially like her story of the cat who was (perhaps) the incarnation of another young girl.

I also want to give her Prozac and a hankie and tell her "Buck up!"

[coffeeandink]

Her self-portrayal as a girl is just darling. I always want to hug her. I especially like her story of the cat who was (perhaps) the incarnation of another young girl.

Yes! I cynically suspect her sister made up the dream about the girl hating to be in a disused room just because she missed the cat herself.

[flemmings]

I also want to give her Prozac and a hankie and tell her "Buck up!"

That's my reaction to most Heian women, actually. Hopeless-copeless. But given the passivity expected by their society, who *wouldn't* be weepy and depressed?

[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

[coffeeandink]

I would recommend this over the Diary of Lady Murasaki. It's incredibly charming. I quoted from it less because I liked it more; it was easy to pick things to focus on in the diary of Lady M. because so much of it was dull, but here I would have quoted from almost every page.

[lisajulie]

I do believe I have read the previous awful English translation. It has been republished by Dover Publications and includes Murasaki's "Diary" and Isumi (Shibuku)'s Diary, as well.

For people curious enough to chase it down, the URL is http://store.yahoo.com/doverpublications/0486432041.html.

The translation is just as described, but the foreword has some pleasant information. I don't have it immediately to hand (it is in the other room and the reigning feline is sitting on my lap), but there's commentary on Japanese poetry forms something to the tone of (remarking on that there was a limited rhyme scheme) "they had the happy thought of calling upon rhythm" and then explaining haiku (transliterated hakku). There is also a timeline of events in the three ladies' diaries and a description of the lunar months, as well as a picture of lady and a warrior of the time and their costumes.

Not terribly expensive, I think (US) $12.95 and might be worth adding to the pile of reference.