Orienting Arthur Waley: Japonism, Orientalism, and the Creation of Japanese Literature in English, by John W. de Gruchy (review)
Japanese culture was an important part of the modernist movement in the arts and literature that took place in Europe from the late 19th c to the early 20th c. Japanese arts exerted a strong influence on impressionism, imagism, and on poets as Yeats and Pound. Less well-known is the crucial role played by English translator Arthur Waley (1889-1966), who introduced Japanese and Chinese literature to a wide public. Waley wrote nearly forty books and more than 130 articles. Of course, not all of these were about Japan - Waley's first translation was "A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems" (1918) and, from the mid-1930s when Japan invaded China, Waley stopped translating Japanese literature but focused on China.
[Arthur Waley by ]
In this study, John de Gruchy examines the historical and cultural circumstances surrounding Waley's translations from the Japanese. He "orients" Waley as a member of an elite Anglo-Jewish family; a top graduate of Rugby and Cambridge; and a younger member of the Bloomsbury group. He also locates Waley's translations within the political context of the japonism movement, British imperialism, and the development of Japanese studies in England.
De Gruchy looks in detail at three major translations Waley made from the Japanese: (1) "Japanese Poetry: The Uta" (1919); (2) "No Plays of Japan" (1921); and (3) "The Tale of Genji", in six volumes, (1925-1933). These three works mirror the development of Japanese studies in Europe. First came the struggle with the language, when dictionaries and grammars had to be compiled - this is reflected in "Japanese Poetry", which in contrast to Waley's beautiful translations from Chinese poetry made around the same time, gives only literal translations, with extensive grammatical notes - in other words, this small volume is not a literary translation, but a textbook which teaches how to read classical Japanese poetry.
It is a big step to the "No Plays of Japan", which presents us with a beautiful literary translation, although also this book is a scholarly text with a historical introduction and bibliographies of sources. Waley truly deserves the honor to have unearthed the important Japanese dramatist and critic Zeami.
The situation changes completely in "The Tale of Genji", which abandons the scholarly apparatus and presents itself as a modern English novel - it is the best and most important translation Waley ever made, with an unforgettable hero, and was very influential as English literature - and it is still eminently readable, although we now have three more full translations of the Genji. There were even English critics in Waley's time who (falsely) believed he had taken major liberties with the text, for they couldn't imagine a Japanese novel from around the year 1,000 could be that good... With his translation of "The Tale of Genji" Waley challenged contemporary European notions of cultural supremacy.
About Waley's personal life almost nothing is known (there are no diaries or letters) - he had a lifelong relationship with English ballet dancer and dance critic Beryl de Zoete, whom he met in 1918, but they never married; one month before his death, when he was already mortally ill, Waley married Alison Grant Robertson. Although he had many friends and traveled every year on the European continent, Waley was something of a "hermit scholar." De Gruchy speculates that Waley was a closeted homosexual who found in Japanese No plays and in the Genji "an aesthetic outlet for a suppressed and inhibited sexuality," but such connections - if they exist - are indeed very subtle.
Waley was different from modern scholars in the sense that he avoided academic posts (he had a connection with the British Museum for about 16 years, but for the rest he lived from his translations) and also that he never visited China or Japan - or even felt inclined to do so.
This is a fascinating study in which De Gruchy presents Waley's translations, especially the Genji, which strongly appealed to Western nostalgia for an aesthetic golden age, as an important part of English literature and culture in the years between both world wars.
I am only left with one question: when do we get a book about Waley's translations from the Chinese?
See my introduction to the Tale of Genji: https://adblankestijn.blogspot.com/2020/04/murasaki-shikibu-and-tale-of-genji.html.