Genji Monogatari

Currently reading The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu - a substantial novel from tenth century japan. It's a lovely volume with accompanying woodcuts. It is one of those books that I have been trying to read off and on for years now - I read a little of it, get distracted, come back to it, start again and so on. In part I blame the size of the thing - it's too big to casually walk around with to the bathroom or  as a work-book i.e a book to be read on the train to and from work and at lunchtimes (very anti social I know).

I suppose also the culture of Heian Japan is often baffleing. People get upset about very obscure things, such as hearing the coarse  voices of ordinary people from within the house but seem to accept being abducted and possibly raped (it isn't quite clarified) as fairly normal if potentially embarassing. I suppose the more I read, the more I will understand. Interestingly though I find Heian women's accounts of their real lives are by no means so alarming as in this fictional creation. I can't see Sei Shonagon tolerating strange men (even princes) carrying her off in the middle of the night. It seems a bizarre conceit as well that these women are depicted as so small and frail that they can just be picked up and carried around like dolls or infants. All sorts of questions could be raised here about women writers and readers and the propensity in certain circumstances to romanticise a less liberated state than the one actually prevailing. Look at the craze a few years ago for wretched Bridget Jones and love of all things Jane Austen.

Went charity shop foraging again yesterday and came away with purple and black cotton/silk dress knee length and also rather serious full length black linen dress with lots of buttons.

Successful Foraging

A successful charity shop forage produced a linen/cotton mix grey striped suit for my interview this week - £15. Before that had omlette and chips in a cafe with G- who I met up with in town after morning volunteering in Patients' Cafe. The chips were a bit too dry and healthy. Then we had a nice sunny walk back along the front.

Dorian Grey

Last night I went to see the film adaptation of Dorian Grey. My reactions were largely positive. The film stayed true enough to the book, keeping intact the characters of Henry Wotten and Basil Hallward while using the license of the visual media and the benefit of hindsight to expand upon the implications of the tale. As might be expected, unlike the text the film left little to the imagination as to what terrible depravities Dorian might have got up to. The scenes of debauchery lent the late 1890s quite a 1960s air with young people dancing excitibly to drumming in a respectable drawing room. I tend to think that the demystifying of depravities in texts such as Jekyl and Hyde or Dorian Grey can only be disappointing and banal.

Unless one is going to summon the shadow of the Ripper, what can one say a depraved gentleman has been up to in the East End of London save smoking opium, drinking gin and having sex with the socio-economically deprived?

One thing the film did do particularly well I thought was illustrate the shocking nature of Dorian's failure to age. Having wrought his worst for the time being on the Capital, he decides to go on a lengthy sojourn around the world, there doubtless to engage in further unspeakable actions. Months turn into years and we see Dorian return to a London in which carriages have been replaced by ponderous motor cars, in which young ladies now wear straight unfussy skirts and have a straight, unfussy manner of address. Dorian has returned in the middle of the first world war and the unfussy and staight talking young lady is Sir Henry's daughter who appears to be the same age as Dorian himself. There is a stunned silence as he walks into the drawing room and we see all his old acquaintence very visibly aged while he of course remains the same.

One major objection I did have to the film was that the Portrait made horrible noises which seems entirely wrong.

"The Sundering Flood" Part Two

Finished "The Sundering Flood". As expected all turned out happily.. The last section of the book was primarily dedicated to filling in what happened to Elfhild following her abduction. Having in fact been kidnapped by a scurrilous and cowardly merchant who had lustful designs upon her, Elfhild is rescued by a chivalrous knight who is in love with her. Elfhild honourably warns him that her heart is given to another but he redeems her nonetheless and maintains her as a guest in his castle until he is killed in battle and Elfhild must flee from the cruelty and displeasure of the good knight's unpleasant mother. The striking thing about Elfhild's adventures is that while she is a largely passive figure herself - a beautiful noble object to be handed from one person to another - it is in fact an old witch who is active on her behalf. This "carline" uses all manner of trickery and magic to protect and further the interests of Elfhild, despite having no family relationship to her. She is a sort of surrogate grandmother replacing the two female relatives who were first rather uncaring guardians of Elfhild and then in turn died, leaving her alone other than this old woman. It is interesting that Morris chooses to make his heroine rather helpless and (at least in this section of the narrative) characterless while allowing an elderly woman to be wise and resourceful in her stead.

"Steelhead" reappears again, like a deus ex machina, to save the life of Osberne when he was treacherously set upon by enemies in a deserted place. He scares off his assailants and then carries the badly wounded Osberne to one of those healing hermits most beloved of Arthurian legend. Steelhead, though courteous, expresses some scepticism as to the validity of the hermit's Christian faith. This confirms the impression that Steelhead belongs to some older pagan tradition. His patronage of Osberne recalls to some degree the patronage of gods to Homeric heroes but I suspect his origins could be better found in a study of Norse or Germanic lore which was a subject of particular interest to Morris.

Osberne and Elfhild live out their lives happily at Osberne's old farmstead, scorning any grander fate despite Osberne's great renown. Osberne specifically forswears any further dabbling in knightly adventures. The life of the yeoman is to be preferred to that of the knight or noble.

An engaging and mysterious tale.

"My thoughts on The Sundering Flood" Part One

I am currently reading The Sundering Flood by William Morris. It was dictated from his deathbed and published posthumously in 1897. The novel is important as a work of proto-fantasy fiction; although it is strongly influenced by medieval romance, it differs in being set in an entirely imaginary alternative world.

The work is written in a somewhat tortured pseudo-medieval style which can be irritating particularly at first. One of the great pleasures of reading works written in Middle English is the sometimes startling freshness and directness of phrase.

It tells of the adventures of a young man Osberne a shepherd boy in a remote village which is cut off from its nearest community by an impassible channel of water - the "Sundering Flood". The boy early shows his prowess and hardihood by the slaying of wolves that harried his family's flocks. He also meets a young girl, a shepherdess who lives on the other side of the Sundering Flood so the two can only communicate across the abyss. There is a strong pastoral tone to their early innocent meetings, strongly reminiscient of Longus' Daphnis and Chloe. Osberne also has a mysterious otherworldly ally, wierdly called Steelhead, who gives him sword and arrows of supernatural deadliness and accuracy. Although Osberne is only a young man, his fame grows as his high deeds mount but things are brought to a head when his girlfriend is carried off by raiders. Osberne leaves his farmstead on a quest to recover the maiden and this leads to his serving under a noble knight and aiding him in his wars (once he is convinced they are just wars and that the innocent will be spared from slaughter). True to his socialistic principles, Morris depicts the farmers' son refusing the offer of a knighthood and also aiding his patron in ridding a neighbouring kingdom of its king and setting up a commonwealth run by guilds. He is no closer however to finding Elfhilda and after five years of having no news of her is ready to give up and return home. I shall see what happens next.

What did Aleister Crowley say to his spider plant before he went away on holiday for two weeks?

Do As Thou Wilt