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CHAPTER III. THE DIARY

THE HEIAN DIARIES

The diary (nikki) appears very early in Japan, at the same time as the novel, and has its own very original features. The genre has reached great heights and, at least in one work, presents one of the world's best works. As in the case of the novel, women were the greatest writers. The originality of their diaries, when we compare them with those of the West, lies in the poetical tone of the subtle and subdued style, and in the sharp psychological observation of human character by means of the minute and delicate sensibility of a woman. Most of the classic diaries were written between the tenth and fourteenth centuries. The diary is so much to Japanese taste that their number today is uncountable.

The first diary known is that of the poet Ki no Tsurayuki, Tosa Nikki (The Diary of Tosa), written in 933, the first Japanese work of literary prose. It is a simple and charming description of the author's return from Tosa, where he was governor, to the capital at Kyoto.

Kagero Nikki (The Gossamer Years) is a realistic narrative about a housewife married to a most unreliable prince, but nevertheless a man whose character was good and kindly. The diary is remarkable in its abundant detail of social life, its realism, its vividness of narration (although never very imaginative), and the frankness with which the difficult relations with the capricious prince are described. But the really interesting diaries of the period are those of the poetess Izumi Shikibu, the novelist Murasaki Shikibu, and especially the diary of Sei Shonagon.

THE DIARY OF IZUMI SHIKIBU

The diary of Izumi Shikibu refers to the period 1002-3. The author is considered one of the greatest woman poets of Japan. Her diary is an intimate account of her love affair with Prince Atsumichi. She was then an experienced woman; she had been divorced, and, shortly after, her former husband died; she had a daughter who was also a poet. We know of her lover, Prince Tametaka, who had also died. The diary is the vivid confession of the intimate, deep exaltation of a matured woman transported by a passionate love. The whole diary speaks of nothing but love; there are no comments on other people, no observations on manners, no reference to events except those of her love. Reading this beautiful diary, we can imagine how a love affair was in tenth-century Japan between two people of cultured and refined taste. The prince visited her only at night and left her at dawn; during the day they sent each other delicate love poems, some of which, especially hers, were beautifully written. The prince went as far as to awkwardly ask her to write a poem that he would like to send to a lady with whom he had been secretly intimate and whose heart he wanted "to touch deeply." She was unwilling, but "thought it too prudish to refuse." Izumi's prose is as beautiful as her poetry, as we can see by one passage in prose she sent to him in which the elation of an exceptional moment of beauty is grasped: "There will be no moment like this in past or future."¹

Elation fills the woman's solitude; it seems that her real happiness is the deep enjoyment of the solitary days that followed her nights of love, about which she very discreetly tells us nothing. Izumi's love was not altogether happy, because there was much gossip about her affair. This made her rebel against social conventions. Even Murasaki Shikibu in her diary wrote prudishly of her: "Lady Izumi Shikibu corresponds charmingly, but her behaviour is improper indeed." The prince took Izumi to the court to live in the same palace as his wife, and the wife became jealous, The value and enchantment of this diary is in the poetical atmosphere that envelops the romance; it gives us the very essence of a great love.

THE DIARY OF MURASAKI SHIKIBU

Murasaki Shikibu, the author of The Tale of Genji, has a diary of a completely different nature; she wrote a social diary of a court lady. Murasaki was a respectable woman; no scandal shaded her reputation. She had a great power of observation and could construct a scene with vivid realism. The description of the delivery of the Queen's child, for instance, is animated with colour and queer exoticism: the men are crying at the top of their voices to scare away the evil spirits, and the soothsayers are invoking the eight million gods who seemed to be listening with ears erect for their Shinto prayers." The Queen's substitutes are enticing the evil spirits, rows of abbots perform incantations, pray and swear till their voices grow coarse. Old women weep secretly; the Prime Minister joins in the prayer for a fortunate delivery. Then there is the sad spectacle of the Queen's head partly shaved, and the rice scattered "white as snow" on the head of important people for good luck and a peaceful delivery. Afterwards comes the ceremony of bathing the child for seven nights, and the celebrations. The Prime Minister examines the breasts of the wet-nurses, to which he very naturally devoted himself with the utmost care." The august child did the very unreasonable thing of wetting the Lord Prime Minister's clothes.

The dances of the court, the fashions of the ladies, and the minute and subtle sense of the combination of the colours, the Prime Minister intoxicated and wanting to go into Murasaki's room at night, the court ladies and their adventures—all this is the world that Murasaki carefully observed. She had retired from the bustle of the intense social life of an idle class who could think of nothing more than pleasure and writing poems. She said, "I wish I could be more adaptable and live more gaily in the present world—had I not an extraordinary sorrow—but wherever I hear delightful or interesting things, my yearning for a religious life grows stronger." At the end of the diary her inclination for religion becomes ardent: "When my mind has become completely free from the burden of the world nothing will weaken my determination to become a saint.

One of the greatest interests of Murasaki's diary is the portrait it gives us of the author herself. The life of the court she has described with much more detail in The Tale of Genji. Of course, in the diary the contact is more direct; her commentaries and judgements about people are more personal. But even in the intimacy of her diary she is discreet and cautious. She portrays the prominent ladies of the court, but only those she likes and can praise, saying, "I will be silent about the questionable and imperfect." Yet, she is not always so. She speaks of Sei Shonagon with open spite and probably jealousy. But Murasaki is really kind and good-natured, saying, "We ought to love even those who hate us, but it is very difficult to do it."

The main interest of this diary lies in its intimate tone, the reflective voice of someone who was never absorbed by the bustle of feasts and pleasures which surrounded her, nor harassed by her social duties. She would persist in living her individual life, escaping to her thoughtful retirement, to her cherished solitude. We find today in Dag Hammarskjöld's diary, Markings, this same need for refuge in poetry and solitude in the midst of an intense life of duties and social functions.

A portrait of Murasaki is left in these lines:

Having no excellence within myself, I have passed my days without making a special impression on anyone. Especially the fact I have no man who will look out for my future makes me comfortless. I do not wish to bury myself in dreariness. Is it because of my worldly mind that I feel lonely? On moonlight nights in autumn, when I am hopelessly sad, I often go out on the balcony and gaze dreamily at the moon. It makes me think of days gone by. People say that it is dangerous to look at the moon in solitude, but something impels me, and sitting a little withdrawn I muse there. In the wind-cooled evening I play on the Koto, though others may not care to hear it. I fear that my playing betrays the sorrow which becomes more intense, and I become disgusted with myself so foolish and miserable am I.

This constant discontentment, this shyness, this finding pleasure in solitude, this delicate sensibility and taste for art and beauty of nature remind us sometimes of the Journal of Katherine Mansfield, Murasaki's sister of ten centuries later.

THE DIARY OF SEI SHONAGON

Sei Shonagon is the most remarkable of the Japanese diarists. She begins her note-book, Makura no Soshi (The Pillow Book), confiding that she writes for herself alone. It is obviously untrue. There is too much art in her writing for us to believe it. It is known since the time of Confessions by Rousseau that the sincerity of the writer of a diary is a thing to be much, suspected. If men cannot be trusted in telling the truth, how can we trust a woman? Sei Shonagon unveils in her extraordinary book a spontaneous, witty, daring, and at times even impudent vein which for centuries did not show up again in Japanese literature. The sharp spirit of this most lucid woman was mature with wisdom, refined with cynicism. Her spirit, ardently loving love and enjoying the delicate beauty of fine things, again puts Japan ahead of everything that had until that time been written in this genre. The diary is obviously the most personal form of writing; the temper of the style, the quality of the emotions, the sharpness of analysis, the clear understanding, the depth, the grasp and the brilliance mark its particular value. It is therefore impossible to compare The Pillow Book with the Essays by Montaigne. Both touch that high level that distinguishes the work of a genius.

The range of subjects that Sei Shonagon touches at random is vast. She shows deep knowledge of human nature, much stronger realism than Murasaki, more sophisticated cynicism and amorality, and more personal appreciation for the joyous rituals of love. Sei Shonagon is an accurate observer, an alert and lucid thinker on social relations, a refined aesthete and connoisseur of everything beautiful and delicate. She is a woman without illusions, who knows men and all their wiles, who enjoys love, and who is capable of pity and warm understanding.

These qualities, together with a very fine style, vivid temper, and clever contrasts, make The Pillow Book an exceptional book in world literature.²

The Pillow Book is not a chronological repository, but a book of reminiscence concerning small events of ordinary life and comment on court intrigue. It contains episodes of terse realism, rare intellectual clarity, movement, humour, and subtle detail. Again, probably the greatest interest of this book lies in the portrait the author makes of herself: she is outspoken, direct, sensitive, brilliant, very subtle, and gifted with a rare sense of poetry. In form she is a most refined artist. As a woman, she is capricious, unpredictable, always looking for sympathy and friendship in others, coquettish, and bold. She enjoys irresponsible love above everything else, but never falls into the snares of passion. She is ardent but never tragic, endowed with lucid reason and intellectual power, but still always warm, deeply human, and full of feminine charm and attraction.

Arthur Waley says that she is, in her prose, "incomparably the best poet of her time. . .and the delicate precision of her perceptions makes diarists such as Lady Anne Clifford . . . seem mere purblind Hottentots."³

The intellectual quality of her writing, when she makes use of it, is rare for a woman. Some headings of the book show this streak of her mind: "Disagreeable Things, Amusing Things," "Disappointing Things."

The parallel with Madame de Sévigné comes naturally: both wrote of court life, both were passionately interested in people. Both were attracted by the amazing variations or human nature and had the gift of explaining them; both were intelligent women with a lucid sense of their superiority over most men, but Sei Shonagon is natural where de Sévigné is conventional. The latter excels in a sharper, constant acumen for analysis, while the former has a much deeper and more delicate poetic sense for the beautiful things of life.

THE NOTEBOOKS OF KAMO NO CHOMEI AND KENKO YOSHIDA

With these diaries we should mention other writings of random impressions and personal judgements of the world: Hojoki (The Ten-feet-square Hut) by Kamo no Chomei, and Tsurezuregusa (Idle Thoughts) by Kenko Yoshida. These are moral books which could be compared to numerous excellent ascetic writings in European languages inspired by primitive Christian feeling, or even with the subtle writings of Arabic ascetics. The transience of wordly things, the vanity of earthly life, the comforting feeling of solitude and contemplation are dominant characteristics of this type of book.

What distinguishes these two remarkable books of soshi (impressions) from the books of the moralists and ascetics of the West is their interest in living things. Being apart from other men, living a solitary life, having broken all ties with the "wicked and impure world," they praise the pleasures of enjoying the beauty of the seasons, and do so with liberty and freedom in their hermitage.

Kamo no Chomei (1154-1216), after having seen wars, earthquakes, plague, famine, and immense human suffering, retired to the depths of Mount Hino and lived on the fruits of the mountain so that he could follow the law of the Buddha." In the poverty of his ten-feet-square hut, he found the peace of heart he praised so much.

Kenko Yoshida (1283-1350) shows a less pessimistic wisdom and greater disposition for enjoying the pleasures of his solitude, the perfume of flowers, and "the strange fascination of the withered leaves of winter. "Who can remember grief, when he sits absorbed in the beauty of the moon?" And evoking the gaiety of his souvenirs: "How charming is the Tanabata festival!" He is happy in his poverty in the mountain: "Solitude is never wearisome and it drives away the clouds from the thoughts, leaving them clear and serene." In the solitude of his life "devoted to Lord Buddha," away from the world, Kenko thinks still of men and reflects upon the amazing ways of human nature. He can see deep into the heart of men, and observe with a kind scepticism. As he said, "Why waste your time in reforming what is not worth reforming?"⁴

His mysticism and solitude never made him lose the perspective of what is really human: "A man who does not cherish love's pleasures, however excellent he may be in thousands of other things, is extremely unstable. He is like a wine-cup which is made of precious stones but without bottom."⁵

Kenko belongs more to a former age than to his own time. He has been compared to Montaigne, but they are of very different natures. Kenko has the serenity and detachment of a man who lives in solitude, without contact with other men, despising the ordinary pleasures of life. He never tries to pursue the power of analysis with the accuracy and pleasure so typical of French moralists, and does not show the same capacity for construction and discourse. While Montaigne retires to his rich castle in the Perigord "tired of the servitude of official duties" to "enjoy his liberty, his tranquillity and his leisures," Kenko is contented with a poor monk's hermitage, for he believes that "all that is essential can be summed up in a book, a lamp and one's own company."⁶ Indeed, he asserts, "The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty."⁷

THE POETIC DIARIES OF BASHO AND ISSA

A follower in the footsteps of Kenko three centuries later is Basho (1644-94). At a mature age, after the death of his mother, he put on priestly robes and went travelling as a poor pilgrim in the southwest and north of Japan, both on foot and on horse.

The travelling of Basho should not be taken superficially for mere tourist curiosity. Travels at that time were made under precarious conditions. Basho was certainly influenced by the examples of ancient Chinese poets like Li Po and Tu Fu, who wrote poetry while roaming on visits to famous places of natural beauty. Basho refers in his third diary to the "immemorial art of keeping diaries while on the road," and mentions Ki no Tsurayuki and Kamo no Chomei. The fact that Basho wrote five travel diaries, though some of them are very short, shows that the literary value of travelling was important to him. But Japanese critics have seen a much deeper meaning in Basho's wish to roam. They interpret it as a way of casting away the self after having cast away earthly attachments, to attain the complete liberation of selflessness. After going through agonizing stages of self-scrutiny, says Nobuyuki Yuasa, he left his home convinced that there was no other alternative before him, "caring not for his provisions, in the state of pure ecstacy," as Basho himself wrote. The title of his first diary is in itself a note of humility and selflessness: Nozarashi Kiko (Record of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton). He went away, his spirit completely free: "I bent my steps in whatever direction I wished, having no itinerary to follow." He dragged his "sore heels," and carried all he needed: "a paper raincoat, the cotton-stuffed mantle, the hat, straw sandals, an inkstone, a brush, writing paper, medicine and a lunch basket." His only mundane concerns were "whether I would be able to find a suitable place to sleep at night and whether the straw sandals were the right size for my feet."⁸

In several of his diaries Basho wrote some thoughts on the philosophical pleasures of travelling. Here there is meditation as well as description of natural beauty. In Oi no Kobumi (Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel) he promises the reader a random collection of the views of the road which have remained in his heart. He does not mention all the things of interest because he feels bound not to betray the secrets that he must keep "in accordance with the rules I must obey as a pilgrim."

There is great enchantment and sheer poetry in these random thoughts and descriptions. Sometimes, like in the brief description of Mount Gassan, we feel the greatness of the descriptions of some famous Chinese poets. Other passages of Basho show a strange impressionist touch:

Matsushima is a cheerful laughing beauty, while the charm of Kisagata is in the beauty of its weeping countenance. It is not only lonely but also penitent, as it were, for some unknown evil. Indeed it has a striking resemblance to the expression of a troubled mind.

The diaries of Basho are written in the particular Japanese form of haibun (a mixture of prose and haiku poems), which we saw in Tsurayuki's Diary of Tosa and in Izayoi Nikki (Diary of the Waning Moon), both notebooks of journey, the first made in 935 and the second in 1277. It is thought that in his last and longest diary, Oku no Hosomichi (Narrow Road to the Deep North), Basho attained the perfection of balance between prose and poetry. Here he unveiled the fountainhead of his longing to travel.

This book of travel, the best of his five travel diaries, is full of poetic thoughts which he had during his progress on the remote road:

Months and days are the travellers of eternity. And so are the years that pass by. Those who steer a boat across the sea or drive a horse over the earth, spend every minute of their lives travelling. From ancient times many died on the road. I myself have been tempted by a strong desire to wander.

The transient joy of the present and the sorrow of time past is given profound accent:

Mountains crumble and rivers dry, new roads replace the old, stones are buried and disappear in the earth, trees grow old and give way to saplings. Time passes and the world changes. The remains of the past are shrouded in uncertainty. And yet, here before my eyes was a moment which none would deny had lasted a thousand years.

The life and work of Basho present the Westerner with one of the most baffling literary cases of all literature. Basho preached poetry as the apostles preached religion. The "everlasting self which is poetry" filled his life, and the disciples who followed him showed deep reverence only accorded to saints and prophets in the West. In small remote villages where he passed, poetry lovers would compose poems with Basho in deep concentration, or would accompany him in contemplating the moon. This is not only due to Basho's exceptional gifts; it must also be due to a particular quality of the Japanese soul. This quality is present today in modern writers such as Soseki Natsume. Soseki speaks with the same kind of religious reverence for pure poetry and of the artist, the sole privileged dweller in the exquisite realm of beauty.

Following in the steps of Basho was another great Japanese poet, Issa Kobayashi(1763-1827). He, too, wandered about Japan and left several diaries with reminiscence of his travels and poems he composed along the road. After the example of Basho, the roaming in travel became associated with poetic reverie. "I made my mind to travel north this year," writes Issa, "to get more practice in writing haiku. I slung my beggar's wallet round my neck and flung my little bundle over my shoulder,"⁹

Like Basho, Issa took a pseudonym (Issa meaning "a cup of tea"), adopted the tonsure and priest's robes, and wrote haiku all his life. Once, after a poetry party, Issa composed more than one hundred poems. He also used the haibun form created by Basho.

Issa's beautiful book Ora ga Haru (The Year of My Life), which has been translated into English, condensed the experiences and thoughts from the best years of his life (though they were all interwoven and all referred to as the year 1819), In reading the work we can sense a vivid yet delicate feeling of complete identification with nature, a deep Buddhist compassion for all creatures. On the day he married he made this simple entry in another of his diaries: "11th April, Fair wife came."

He speaks with touching tenderness of his little daughter playing and dancing with a group of children under the moonlight:

Watching her, I quite forgot my old age and my sinful nature, and indulged myself with the reflection that when she should be old enough to boast long hair with waving curls, we might let her dance, and that would be more beautiful,I fancied, than to hear the music of the twenty-five celestial maidens.

When she died of small-pox, he contains his deep sorrow, saying that it was no use to cry because "blossoms that are scattered are gone beyond recall. Yet, try as I would, I could not, simply could not, cut the binding cord of human love."

For a Western reader a book like The Year of My Life gives an invaluable insight into the Japanese soul, because from the commentaries in prose the feelings which are deeply imbued in haiku come in clear and expressive tones; therein Issa has more human warmth than Basho.

CONFRONTATION WITH WESTERN DIARIES

If we want to find a counterpart to the Ten-feet-square Hut, Idle Thoughts, or The Year of My Life in the West, we had best turn to Spain and Portugal in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Portugal has a very rich ascetic literature; and Spain, the richest mystic literature of the world. The Iberian writers of that time were ascetic monks who lived a solitary life as did the Japanese.

We see how mysticism has similar manifestations in all religions. Ascetism is a moderate and reasonable form of mysticism, one with no exaltation, raptures, or visions, but rather a concentration on the moral lessons of religion. It practises solitary meditation that brings the ascetic man nearer to nature, to the beauty of things, to the love of men and all animals as creatures of God.

In Spain we find also a deep love for the beauty of nature shown in a work of Fray Luis de Granada (1504-88), Introducción al Símbolo de la Fe, which was one of the first books printed in Japan, in 1592, translated (in part) under the title Fides no Doxi, The passing of seasons show impressions of joy and melancholy like those of Japanese ascetics. Sometimes he reminds us of Kenko, in commenting on the serene pleasure of looking at the moon:

How agreeable it is, in the middle of summer, to look at the moon, so full and so bright that with its shining light it covers all the stars!

Or we see the joyous enthusiasm for spring:

Who could be able to express the beauty of the purplish violets, of the white lilies, of the resplendent roses, and the grace of meadows tinted with flowers of so many colours, some golden, some red, some with infinite mixed hues.

Fray Luis de Granada shows this same ardent love for animals, to such a point that with his candid kindness he proposes that a dog which died for his master is an example or the perfection of Christian lire." It is in his love for all creatures and love for the infinite beauties of nature that the candid friar finds, in his solitude, the way to God. There is no doubt that in the fundamental stream of poetry that runs through both works we can find many signs that these two writers, however far apart, are brothers in spirit.

We have already discussed the books of prose and poetry, haibun, and their unique Japanese character. It is impossible to find anything similar in Western literature. When the English translation of the travel books of Basho appeared, a critic quoted Henri Michaux as the only Western writer having used a similar genre of prose and poetry to register the impressions of his journeys and moments of his rare, most originally expressed emotions. Michaux, in Passages, for instance, has used a literary process similar to Basho and Issa; but he seems far from them if we consider his love for the absurd and for the fantastic, his acid, biting phrase (it is enough to remember the bitter chapter on Japan in Un Barbare en Asie).

Nearly everybody knew of the book of Ramón Jiménez, Platero é Yo, when this Spanish poet received the Nobel Prize a few years ago. Platero is the name of the charming little donkey in whose "Christian" company Jimenez travelled around Spain. (R. L. Stevenson also travelled with a donkey.) But this book of Jimenez is in prose. Nearer to the form of the haibun and of the human lyricism of Issa is the Portuguese writer Miguel Torga. Torga, also a poet, wrote a book of short stories, Bichos) translated in English and impregnated with the most tender love for animals. But it is in his diary that Torga uses a composition, part poetry and part prose, which suggests traces of the diary of Issa.

Torga probably does not know any more of Issa than Issa could know of him; it is one of those parallel phenomena which often have been pointed out in the world of culture. Torga has travelled around Portugal, tasting the bread and wine of every village; he is taken by "an irresistible urge to know the hardness and colour of the earth, taste the bread, drink the wine, caress the stones, listen to people's voices." He loves the landscape, with a "chaste love"; he cannot speak of a mountain covered with snow without feeling clean and deeply moved, nor "of a leaf without trembling as a leaf"; nor can he look at an abyss without a deep shadow in his eyes. This is why he says, "At certain hours I am stone, dew, flower, mist."

Torga feels the same deep love for nature, but he expresses it with less refinement and more strength, and at times even with violence: "The day was an ox that died here, near a meadow. He was labouring, and suddenly he fell right on the soil. They took his skin and buried him just there. The plough shining on his tomb was his crown of flowers."

The diary of Torga frequently intermingles with poetry the author's reactions to great problems of the modern world and to fundamental questions of Portuguese life. In it are echoes of a reality which is transient but irrefutable for the poet of today. Nevertheless, it often shows the poet's moments of transfiguration while elated. In these moments, the same kindness and humble simplicity, the same tender respect for earth's beauty and the same love for men make Torga similar to Issa. The two poets, so separated in time and space, are similarly open and sensitive to the wonders of the common things of life.

It would be interesting to go further and make a comparison between the Japanese diaries and the literary currents that in the West have produced a similar genre.

France is the richest country in mémoires. As early as the fifteenth century, Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris appeared as a valuable contribution. In the sixteenth century we find the memoirs of Comines, full of commentaries on the times of Louis XI and Charles VIII; in the seventeenth century there were those of Sully, Richelieu, and de la Rochefoucauld, and the celebrated memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, which Voltaire has praised as having the air of grandeur, impetuous genius, and inequality. In the eighteenth century we find the Confessions of Rousseau, so touching in their nakedness; the memoirs of Beaumarchais, which, according to Voltaire, are the most singular, the strongest, the boldest and the most comic; and also the writings of the men of the French Revolution: Talleyrand, Napoleon, Barras, Guizot. In the last century, the two thick volumes by the Goncourt brothers are a minute report of the literary and artistic Paris of their day.

It could be said that all notable writers have thought it important to deliver the judgements and secrets of their intimate life to us. Gide left the most interesting journal of this century. After him came François Mauriac, with Mémoires Interieurs; then Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Marcel Pagnol, Jean Giono, and many others. There is even Anti-Mémoires by André Malraux. The politicians, too, thought memoirs indispensable for the sake of their posterity. Among the memoirs of this century, the ones that might be said to attain real grandeur, political and literary, are those of General de Gaulle. All the others are more or less clever literary variations, and to some of them we may append the phrase that has been written today about the journal of Goncourt: a monument of stupidity and vanity."

In England, after the seventeenth century an abundant production of diaries began to appear. The famous diary of John Evelyn comments on seventy years of English life; during about the same period Samuel Pepys was writing what the British delight in calling "the most illustrious diary of the world." Jonathan Swift and Walter Scott left their memoirs, as well as Wellington; James Boswell wrote a long register of his travels, of the manners and politics or his time. In our day Katherine Mansfield just as other women who wrote memoirs in England has left us a journal full of delicately graceful poetry. Churchill, who incarnated the bold spirit of an epoch, has also built a monument for history with his memoirs.

In Italy, Benvenuto Cellini, Vittorio Alfieri, and Silvio Pellico became famous through memoirs; in Germany, the memoirs of Goethe, Weber, Frederick II, and Metternich are the most remarkable of a copious production.

In Russia, the diary of Marie Bashkirtsef in the second part of the last century had a sensational posthumous publication. The author was a fascinating beauty (who died at twenty-four) with an admirable talent for the intimate confession. The memoirs of great writers like Tolstoi and Gorki help us to better understand their personalities and their work. Today Ilya Ehrenburg has published two volumes containing some interesting pages about his youth in Paris and the dark days of the Stalin era. About Stalin and the Stalin era, his daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva has recently written Twenty Letters to a Friend, It is a fascinating human document—though of no political value—helping us reflect on the influence of the idiosyncrasies of one man not only on the lives of many people but also on the life of a great nation. It is a pity that the author did not send her manuscript abroad while remaining in her own country, waiting in proud modesty for the consequences reserved for her in the future, as Boris Pasternak did.

In the United States two irreverent and outspoken men have appeared in modern times: Frank Harris and Henry Miller. Harris (1856-1931), in My Life and Loves, gives a sketch of the European artistic and mundane scene at the end of the last century and the first quarter of this one with description of gallant adventures so vivid in eroticism and lewd detail that it would make Casanova blush.

Henry Miller (b. 1891) is a much more powerful writer: his autobiographical works are full of a fierce joy of living, the force of the natural impulses, passion, humour, energy, and audacity. He takes a rowdy part in the comedy of life and laughs at it boisterously. Among his books, Tropic of Capricorn, Tropic of Cancer, and Black Spring overflow with robust individualism, gusto for adventure, and strong verve tinged with extremes of lyricism and cruel sarcasm. He pretends to be the inheritor of Rabelaisian tradition, and is indeed the best successor.

Of all the books of memoirs of this century, Letter to Greco by the Greek Nikos Kazantzakis stands out as a report of a soul in quest of liberty and truth. The search is made through the communion with those encountered in his path: Christ, Buddha, Lenin, Ulysses, and the figures of amazing men and women who lived life to its fullest but left no name.

This vast panorama of memoirs verily began much before with the memoirs of Socrates, written by Plato, the memoirs of Xenophon, the commentaries of Caesar, the confessions of Saint Augustine. The fundamental differences between these Western works and the congeneric works of Japan derive from the fact that Japanese diaries are written without a historical perspective, and do not intend to record important facts for posterity. They pretend neither to impose the writer himself nor to explain his or her own personality to influence the judgement of future critics and historians.

We get the impression when we read the diaries of Heian ladies that they wrote for themselves, or, at most, for the people of their own time (the court, their friends, and their living critics). They followed the general custom of diary-writing; they never imagined that we would read and write about them today. Even in Murasaki Shikibu's work, the historic perspective is absent. Sei Shonagon gives us the impression of writing for her own pleasure. The bitter authoress of The Gossamer Years seems to have written for her own consolation and pleasure. She complains about her unfaithful husband, and thus alleviates her suffering.

Another point on which the Japanese and Western diaries differ is the way the authors disclose facts about their intimate lives. The Japanese never confide completely, never dare to declare the deep feelings and apprehensions of their souls. The Western diary is the report of the fight between a writer and his pride to express all his deep, intimate feelings at the risk of wounding his own dignity and his honour.

Rousseau pledges: "I want to show, my fellowmen, man in all the truth of nature, and this man is myself." This he considers an enterprise which has no example." The same is the pledge of Chateaubriand in the Mémoires d'Outre Tombe, in which he wants to give an account of myself to myself," to "explain my inexplicable heart." Chateaubriand's unreserved wish to communicate the life of the soul and his anxiety to go deep into its secrets are mingled with shame, the threat of truth, and humiliation. This is unknown in classic Japanese literature.

Later in the Meiji era we find more intimate works when travel diaries and journals appear. One written by Ichiyo Higuchi(1812-96) became a classic. But maybe the most interesting among these was Romaji Nikki (The Romaji Diary) (1909) of Takuboku Ishikawa. While showing its kinship to the classic Japanese diary in its serene candour and natural simplicity, it is related to the West in its vibrant confused emotion, vehemence, and the tortured individualism of its deep confessions. Though some of his verses intermingled with prose retain an old lyricism, others are redolent of brutal Western analysis: "Your eyes must have the mechanism of a fountain pen."

If we go deeper, we can find a common line joining Eastern and Western diaries: the aim to explore the rational meaning of experience, to understand deeply, to explain man's nature, and so to attain wisdom. As the Greeks taught us, the knowledge of one's self is not an aim, it is a way to wisdom. That is what Montaigne pondered in retirement at his chateau de Perigord; and what Kamo no Chomei sought in his ten-feet-square hut. And the light of wisdom that both East and West seek to attain does not differ: it is the light that makes clearer our way to happiness; it is accumulating experience and offering it to men of the future so that they may be able to enjoy a fuller life.