The following selection, "On the Art of the Novel," comes from Chapter 19 of The Tale of Genji. In this passage, Genji discusses the function of prose literature with his adopted daughter, Tamakatsura. He initially teases her for her fascination with romance novels, and then gives his own theories about the popularity of fiction and the ways that it should be constructed. For a thousand years, critics and readers alike have seen this passage as Lady Murasaki's description of her own craft as a writer. This passage is rhetorically notable because it couches the author's own aesthetic philosophy in both the larger narrative of The Tale of Genji and the specific dialogue between Genji and Tamakatsura.
One day Genji, going around with a number of romances which he had promised to lend, came to Tamakatsura's1 room and found her, as usual, hardly able to lift her eyes from the book in front of her. "Really, you are incurable," he said, laughing. "I sometimes think that young ladies exist for no other purpose than to provide purveyors of the absurd and improbable with a market for their wares. I am sure that the book you are now so intent upon is full of the wildest nonsense. Yet knowing this all the time, you are completely captivated by its extravagances and follow them with the utmost excitement: why, here you are on this hot day, so hard at work that, though I am sure you have not the least idea of it, your hair is in the most extraordinary tangle. . . . But there; I know quite well that these old tales are indispensable during such weather as this. How else would you all manage to get through the day? Now for a confession. I too have lately been studying these books and have, I must tell you, been amazed by the delight which they have given me. There is, it seems, an art of so fitting each part of the narrative into the next that, though all is mere invention, the reader is persuaded that such things might easily have happened and is as deeply moved as though they were actually going on around him. We may know with one part of our minds that every incident has been invented for the express purpose of impressing us; but (if the plot is constructed with the requisite skill) we may all the while in another part of our minds be burning with indignation at the wrongs endured by some wholly imaginary princess. Or again we may be persuaded by a writer's eloquence into accepting the crudest absurdities, our judgment being as it were dazzled by sheer splendor of language.
"I have lately sometimes stopped and listened to one of our young people reading out loud to her companions and have been amazed at the advances which this art of fiction is now making. How do you suppose that our new writers come by this talent? It used to be thought that the authors of successful romances were merely particularly untruthful people whose imaginations had been stimulated by constantly inventing plausible lies. But that is clearly unfair." . . . "Perhaps," she said, "only people who are themselves much occupied in practicing deception have the habit of thus dipping below the surface. I can assure you that for my part, when I read a story, I always accept it as an account of something that has really and actually happened."
So saying she pushed away from her book which she had been copying. Genji continued: "So you see as a matter of fact I think far better of this art than I have led you to suppose. Even its practical value is immense. Without it what should we
1. Tamakatsura: the daughter of Genji's friend, adopted Tamakatsura and treats her as his own To No Chujo, by a woman who later became daughter. Genji's concubine. By this chapter, Genji has
know of how people lived in the past, from the Age of the Gods down to the present day? For history books such as the Chronicles of Japan[122] show us only one small corner of life; whereas these diaries and romances which I see piled around you contain, I am sure, the most minute information about all sorts of people's private affairs.". . . He smiled, and went on: "But I have a theory of my own about what this art of the novel is, and how it came into being. To begin with, it does not simply consist in the author's telling a story about the adventures of some other person. On the contrary, it happens because the storyteller's own experience of men and things, whether for good or ill—not only what he has passed through himself, but even events which he has only witnessed or been told of—has moved him to an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart. Again and again something in his own life or in that around him will seem to the writer so important that he cannot bear to let it pass into oblivion. There must never come a time, he feels, when men do not know about it. That is my view of how this art arose.
"Clearly then, it is no part of the storyteller's craft to describe only what is good or beautiful. Sometimes, of course, virtue will be his theme, and he may then make such play with it as he will. But he is just as likely to have been struck by numerous examples of vice and folly in the world around him, and about them he has exactly the same feelings as about the pre-eminently good deeds which he encounters: they are more important and must all be garnered in. Thus anything whatsoever may become the subject of a novel, provided only that it happens in this mundane life and not in some fairyland beyond our human ken.
"The outward forms of this art will not of course be everywhere the same. At the 5 court of China and in other foreign lands both the genius of the writers and their actual methods of composition are necessarily very different from ours; and even here in Japan the art of storytelling has in course of time undergone great changes. There will, too, always be a distinction between the lighter and the more serious forms of fiction. . . . Well, I have said enough to show that when at the beginning of our conversation I spoke of romances as though they were mere frivolous fabrications, I was only teasing you. Some people have taken exception on moral grounds to an art in which the perfect and imperfect are set side by side. But even in the discourses which Buddha in his bounty allowed to be recorded, certain passages contain what the learned call Upaya or Adapted Truth[123]—a fact that has led some superficial persons to doubt whether a doctrine so inconsistent with itself could possibly command
According to the principle of upaya, the Buddhist teacher should adapt the lesson to the needs of the audience, focusing on the larger goal of enlightenment rather than on any particular doctrine.
our credence. Even in the scriptures of the Greater Vehicle[124] there are, I confess, many such instances. We may indeed go so far as to say that there is an actual mixture of Truth and Error. But the purpose of these holy writings, namely the compassing of our Salvation, remains always the same. So too, I think, may it be said that the art of fiction must not lose our allegiance because, in the pursuit of the main purpose to which I have alluded above, it sets virtue by the side of vice, or mingles wisdom with folly. Viewed in this light the novel is seen to be not, as is usually supposed, a mixture of useful truth with idle invention, but something which at every stage and in every part has a definite and serious purpose."
UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT
Why might have Lady Murasaki chosen to use the male prince Genji to advance her own argument instead of one of the female characters whose position in the court would be closer to her own? What is the rhetorical effect of the novel's main male character making these arguments?
According to Genji, what kinds of reactions can we have to a fictional narrative? Are these reactions ever contradictory? Which of these reactions are primarily emotional and which are primarily intellectual?
What connection does Genji draw between telling lies and writing fiction? Does Tamakatsura agree? Which position does the author herself seem to hold?
What does Genji suggest is the value of fiction as compared to the value of history? Can fictional stories illuminate elements of the past that are not available through reading history books and primary public documents?