Literary Summits

The Tale of Genji wastes no time getting underway — in the opening pages, I’ve already heard the story of a controversial love that rocks the emperor’s court and that ends in the untimely death of a beloved mother and wife.

It seems that Alan Ball and his Six Feet Under writers were borrowing from a formula developed at least 1,000 years earlier.

And although Murasaki Shikibu, author of The Tale of Genji, wasn’t the first to use this narrative technique, she’s a master at it.

It reminds me of Six Feet Under, the HBO series about a family of undertakers that started each episode with a death — usually an accidental and quite creative death. The rest of that episode would weave in the story of that person’s funeral, and often the events leading up to their death.

So as Genji’s mother is laying on her deathbed, she composes a poem in response to the emperor’s desperate command for her to stay with him. She “was so touched that she managed to breathe:

Now the end has come, and I am filled with sorrow that our ways must part:
the path I would rather take is the one that leads to life.”

This is the first of some 795 poems in the volume (according to translator Royall Tyler’s introduction). It’s a good one to start with — talk about cutting to the quick. This little poem, which sounds to me a bit like Robert Frost’s “road less traveled,” carries a truckload of sadness.

Her death plunges the court into intrigue, and we start to find out more about her 3-year-old son, Genji. He’s much beloved by the emperor, he’s incredibly good looking, and he’s limited by his mother’s lower status that prevents him from becoming an acceptable heir to the throne.

Death in the opening act. Sounds like as good a place as any to begin. I’m ready for more…