The Art of Murasaki
Most critics have agreed that the book is a remarkable one and that Murasaki is a writer of considerable talent; but few have dealt with the points that seem to me fundamental. No one has discussed, in anything but the most shadowy way, the all-important question of how she has turned to account the particular elements in story-telling which she has chosen to exploit. The work, it is true, is a translation, and this fact prevents discussion of Murasaki as a poet, as an actual handler of words. But it has for long been customary to criticize Russian novels as though Mrs. Garnett's translation were the original; nor is there any harm in doing so, provided actual questions of style are set aside.
One reviewer did indeed analyse the nature of Murasaki's achievement to the extent of classifying her as 'psychological' and in this respect he even went so far as to class her with Marcel Proust. Now it is clear that, if we contrast Genji with such fiction as does not exploit the ramifications of the human mind at all (the Arabian Nights or Mother Goose), it appears to be 'psychological.' But if we go on to compare it with Stendhal, with Tolstoy, with Proust, the Tale of Genji appears by contrast to possess little more psychological complication than a Grimm's fairy tale.
Yet it does for a very definite reason belong more to the category which includes Proust, than to the category which includes Grimm. Murasaki, like the novelist of to-day, is not principally interested in the events of the story, but rather in the effect which these events may have upon the minds of her characters. Such books as hers it is convenient, I think, to call 'novels,' while reserving for other works of fiction the name 'story'
