A String of Flowers, Untied.Love Poems from the Tale of Genji

Murasaki Shikibu translated by Jane Reichhold with Hatsue Kawamura
Stone Bridge Press (2006)
ISBN 1880656620
Reviewed by Cherie Fisher for Reader Views (4/06)

Jane Reichhold’s translation of the famous 1000-year-old Tale of Genji is first-class.  When I sat down to read one of the world’s most famous series of tanka poems, I was a little worried that it might be beyond my comprehension.  But the author does a wonderful job with the 33 chapters that she has translated into present-day understanding while preserving the richness of cultural detail at the same time. 

The chapters translated in “A String of Flowers, Untied” are about the Emperor’s son Genji spanning through his 39th year.  They include his many love affairs, including one with a stepmother with whom he fathers a son, heartbreak and pursuit of pleasure, are all written in the tanka form.  Their alliances were often so complicated that I was hard-pressed to figure out which wife was in what order of importance and who was a concubine, and how the birth order of all their children worked. Whew!  No wonder they had little time for anything else. 

The author, Murasaki Shikibu, was an aristocrat whose stories and writing style were immensely popular among her contemporaries.  Her insight can be felt through her poetry even today.  Her background and access to the aristocratic class reminded me of Jane Austen’s stories about English aristocrats. 

Curious about the time period that they lived in, I looked it up at www.taleofgengi.org and read this about it: “The society depicted in the Tale is one of an elite group of aristocrats – perhaps 5,000 in all – uninterested in anything but their own leisure and with the emperor at the centre of their world.  Obsessed with rank and breeding, they were acutely sensitive to the beauty of nature the pleasures of music, poetry, Calligraphy and fine clothing.  Heian courtiers knew little of the world outside the capital and cared even less.  They rarely traveled and considered the common people as almost subhuman.”  This is a little reminiscent of all the great societies in their heights. 

I found “A String of Flowers, Untied” to be wonderful translation of an amazing tale and should not be missed by anyone. 

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