The Summer of Genji

Gretel Ehrlich once compared the “sense of time” in The Tale of Genji to a long scroll unfolding, and that experience of it has only been heightened by deliberately reading the novel sprawled...

https://summergenji.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/our-summer-of-genji/

The commander, who had awaited eagerly, was confounded by this inconclusive outcome. The conclusion of The Tale of Genji is, like poor Kaoru’s tryst with Ukifune, left inconclusive, and that o...

https://summergenji.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/genji-in-midair/

Kobai the Grand Counselor has heard a great deal about the princes Kaoru and Niou – how fashionable they are, how handsome, how easily they’re cutting a swath through court society. He’s re...

https://summergenji.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/after-genji/

The room was furnished very simply indeed, and it felt sadly quiet and empty. If the experience of reading The Tale of Genji has shown anything it is that a great work of literature does not end ...

https://summergenji.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/crying-as-geese-cry/

In his last post, Steve notes the appeal of Genji’s walk-ons. Agreed; having passed the halfway mark, I find that much of the book’s appeal for me lies in the characterizations, the beating h...

https://summergenji.wordpress.com/2010/08/15/the-kids-are-all-right/

In the midst of all the more serious goings-on that still engage us in “Spring Shoots” parts 1 and 2, surely we can pause a moment for the sake of Kashiwagi’s cat?   Animals abound in worl...

https://summergenji.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/kashiwagis-cat/

The extras who populate any large-scale epic always generate undue curiosity in me. It’s obviously not what the writer intends – emphasis is always given where they feel emphasis is due – b...

https://summergenji.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/genji-extras/

Although every new chapter makes it clearer that we’ve picked the right translator for our Summer of Genji (I keep alternating between noticing the herculean work Royall Tyler put into his vers...

https://summergenji.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/of-whom/

These pleasures had lasted all too briefly, and a night of which one would have gladly had a thousand passed blandly into day. We have come to what I think is The Tale of Genji’s most nearly pe...

https://summergenji.wordpress.com/2010/08/05/it-is-because-cherry-blossoms-fall/

We are reminded at every turn of the easy mastery that fills Genji; there’s hardly a Western work to rival it for endless virtuoso displays of seemingly offhand brilliance. Middlemarch comes cl...

https://summergenji.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/wisteria-blossoms/