First Novel Ever?

by KM Rockwood

Murasaki Shikibu’s Genji Monogatari, or The Tale of Genji, may be the first novel ever written.

 The Tale of Genji was an ambitious project. Translating its 54 chapters into English takes 1300 pages. It features over 400 characters and the story spans several generations over 70 years.

 

This classic piece of Japanese literature was written in the early 11^th century by noblewoman and lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu.

 

She was born into the family of provincial minor nobility. In families of wealth and stature, husbands and wives maintained separate households. Although they had a patrilineal system, children generally lived and were educated in the mother’s home.

 

However, Murasaki and her brother Nobunori were raised in their erudite father’s household. Their mother had died when they were young, possibly in childbirth.

 

With the intent of preparing his son for a role in government, the children’s father engaged scholars to provide an education for Nobunori. Women, however, were considered incapable of real intelligence, so little attempt was made to teach them literacy.

 

Murasaki’s diaries have been preserved. She wrote, "When my brother ... was a young boy learning the Chinese classics, I was in the habit of listening to him and I became unusually proficient at understanding those passages that he found too difficult to understand and memorize. Father, a most learned man, was always regretting the fact: 'Just my luck,' he would say, 'What a pity she was not born a man!'"

 

The diaries reveal Murasaki was aware that others saw her as "pretentious, awkward, difficult to approach, prickly, too fond of her tales, haughty, prone to versifying, disdainful, cantankerous and scornful.”

 

Unlike most noblewomen, who entered arranged marriages at puberty, Murasaki did not marry until her late 20’s, or possibly early 30’s. She married a friend of her father, a much older second cousin. He was a court functionary and bureaucrat at the Ministry of Ceremonials, with a reputation for dressing extravagantly and as a talented dancer. In his late forties at the time of their marriage, he supported multiple households with an unknown number of wives and offspring.

 

The couple's daughter was born in 999. Two years later Murasaki’s husband died during a cholera epidemic. As a married noblewoman Murasaki would have had servants to run the household and care for her daughter, giving her ample leisure time.

 

It’s unclear when she began writing fiction, but after she was widowed, she began to distribute portions of “The Tale of Genji.”

 

The structure of this novel might be recognized today as a “novel in short stories.” Each chapter was a tale in itself. Murasaki produced them in “concertina” style, several sheets of connected paper folded accordion style. She would have passed them on to female friends or acquaintances, who might have made new copies and continued to circulate the stories.

 

At the comparatively late age of her late 30’s, Murasaki joined a noble court as a lady-in-waiting attending to a young princess. This gave an even wider and more prestigious audience for her work.

 

The Tale of Genji is the story of a prince who is the son of the emperor and a low-ranking concubine. His mother dies when he is three, and, probably due her lack of noble status, he is demoted to life as a commoner, becoming a dashing imperial officer.

 

The chapters follow his romantic exploits and connected intrigues. In one, he falls in love with his stepmother, who becomes pregnant with his child. They tell no one, and the baby is raised as the son of the emperor. He conquers (or kidnaps) many other girls and women.

 

One aspect of the book that can make it difficult to follow is that none of the characters are addressed by their names. References to characters are by position, characteristic or family lineage. Murasaki Shikibu itself is not a name as we know it, but can be translated as “Lavender Lady,” a reference to her standing in the court and either the flower or the color, or both. Her real name is unknown.

 

The word “Genji” means “two beginnings,” possibly referring to the central character’s royal birth and his subsequent life as a commoner, although a very well-connected one. Murasaki is said to have written the character of Genji based on the “Minister on the Left.”

 

This lack of names stems from court manners that would have made it unacceptably familiar and blunt to freely mention a person's given name.

 

Although there are 54 chapters, Murasaki may have written only the first 33, or possibly the first 41. 

 

One chapter entitled “Vanished into the Clouds" is left blank and implies the death of Genji. Subsequent ones follow the next generation.

 

Later chapters show uncharacteristic continuity discrepancies, and computer analysis has turned up "statistically significant" discrepancies of style between chapters 45–54 and the earlier portions.

 

The novel ends abruptly. That may have been intentional, akin to modern works with ambiguous endings, or later chapters may have been lost. Or the author may have had no concept of narrative endings the way we understand them.

 

The abruptness gives Genji a modern feel and reinforces the novel’s pervading Buddhistic sense of “mono no aware,” a phrase associated with the “beautiful yet tragic fleetingness of life.”

 

The Tale of Genji would be extraordinary for any time or culture, but in 11^th century Japan, with no precedent of which we are aware, it is truly remarkable.

 

There are, of course, other contenders for the title of “first novel,” from ancient Greek and Roman tales to sophisticated stories from India, depending on how “novel” is defined. And, if we include stories in verse, like the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” novels reach back further still.

 

 

Sources:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_Genji

 

https:// bookriot.com-the-worlds-first-novel

 

https://interestingfacts.com/ancient-world-facts/ZLcibQ6hCgAH9Kfi?liu =449daac 77cb58ac09ef407f533c1eea3&utm_source=blog&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1868319312

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murasaki_Shikibu