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nydus/The Tale of GenjiPublic

Murasaki Shikibu, a lady-in-waiting to Empress Akiko in the early eleventh century, writes this multi-volume work during her time at court. The narrative is established as a classic of Japanese literature by 1022 and features a structure comprising fifty-four chapters.

Page 90 of 332
Table of Contents

CHAPTER III UTSUSEMI

Utsusemi, though she had so fiercely steeled herself against his love, seeing such tenderness hidden under the words of his message, again fell to longing that she were free, and though there was no undoing what was done she found it so hard to go without him that she took up the folded paper and wrote in the margin a poem in which she said that her sleeve, so often wet with tears, was like the cicada’s dew-drenched wing.

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