The Tale of Genji

by Murasaki Shikibu

“Even I get perfectly ordinary letters from ladies of one rank or another, in the course of my correspondence with them. The letters worth reading are those sent when the writer was angry, or when dusk was falling and she anxiously awaited her lover's coming.”

I had passed over Genji's trials and tribulations in silence, out of respect for his determined efforts to conceal them, and I have written of them now only because certain lords and ladies criticized my story for resembling fiction, wishing to know why even those who knew Genji best should have thought him perfect, just because he was an Emperor's son. No doubt I must now beg everyone's indulgence for my effrontery in painting so wicked a portrait of him.

At home again, he lay down and wept all day.

A new roundness of figure and a face wasted by suffering gave her now a truly peerless beauty.