Symmetry and Balance in Error Messages
Nobody likes error messages. But I spotted a fab variation on them from Adriana’s site of Fantastic Haiku.
Reminded me of the Japanese poetry in the Books about Muraski I particularly like The Tale of Murasaki a fictionalised history of the real lady who wrote Tale of Genji.
As I pondered this question of how to be a success at
court, I came to the conclusion that literary ambition was more likely
than not to bring a woman to a bad end.
Liza Dalby’s enchanting book The Tale of Murasaki is a brilliantly imagined fictional biography of the 11th-century Japanese writer Murasaki Shikibu, author of The Tale of Genji–the world’s first novel. The Heian period produced at least two great works of world literature: Murasaki’s The Tale of Genji and Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book;
Dalby’s fine first novel draws directly from the surviving fragments of
Murasaki’s own diary and poetry (as well as the occasional echo of Sei
Shonagon) to create a vivid and emotionally detailed portrait of an
intelligent, sensitive and complex woman drawn initially to writing
stories about the amorous encounters of Prince Genji as a means of
entertaining her friends and expressing her own richly creative
temperament. As the stories become public, however, she is forced,
against her own natural reticence, to take up a position at court, and
the Genji stories become a conduit for commenting on the mores and
intrigues of court life. Struggling to write and to stay true to her
literary vision, her last tales are inflected by Buddhist thought on
the transience and beauty of the world.
I have always felt compelled
to set down a vision of things I have heard and seen. Life itself has
never been enough. It only became real for me when I fashioned it into
stories. Yet, somehow, despite all I’ve written, the true nature of
things I’ve tried to grasp in my fiction still manages to drift through
the words and sit, like little piles of dust, between the lines.