紫式部
c. 973–c. 1014 · Japan
“In a certain reign there was a lady not of the first rank whom the emperor loved more than any of the others.”
Peak-work percentile in the canon.
Portraits
The single most-reproduced likeness of Murasaki: a late-17th-c. Tosa Mitsuoki hanging scroll at Ishiyama-dera showing her seated at her writing table, brush in hand; serves as the Wikipedia infobox image. Imagined likeness — no contemporary portrait survives.
Tosa Mitsuoki
Kanbun-period (1661-1673) single-figure painting of Murasaki at the Bibliotheque nationale de France (shown at the Musee Guimet Genji exhibition) — a clean seated portrait. Imagined likeness.
Famous Quotes
“Anything whatsoever may become the subject of a novel, provided only that it happens in this mundane life and not in some fairyland beyond our human ken.”
“It does not simply consist in the author's telling a story about the adventures of some other person. On the contrary, it happens because the storyteller's own experience of men and things, whether for good or ill, has moved him to an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart.”
“Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams.”
“The memories of long love gather like drifting snow, poignant as the mandarin ducks who float side by side in sleep.”
About 紫式部
Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese noblewoman, lady-in-waiting, and writer during the Heian period. She wrote The Tale of Genji, widely considered the world's first novel. Little is known about her life with certainty; even her real name is lost, 'Murasaki Shikibu' being a court sobriquet.