Borrow and Biography

BORROW AND BIOGRAPHY 213 makes textual criticism of it infinitely harderl because so many factors bear on the acceptability of words or passagesl including those which contradict one another. If our author made mistakesl as modern commentators like to saYI it still has to be determined how she came to do so; and this will often be impossible. Other aspects of the Ukifune episode are treated by Shirane Haruo and Amy Vladeck Heinrich. Shirane explains the Heian upper-class marriage system, and how the actions attributed to Genji and others flouted convention by interposing romantic ideals. He interprets these actions on various levelsl psychologicat sociat and dramatic. Heinrich is concerned with the poems which throughout the novel are frequently exchanged between its characters. Her translations of the Ukifune poems are leaden, but her explication of them squeezes meanings from every syllable and will probably be useful to students of the Japanese text. Lastly, Pekarik's own essay is about the conventions governing love and flirtation in the snobbish world of the Shining Prince. He compares the Ukifune affair with other love-episodesl notably those in which Genji himself had been involved, and writes with compassion about the plight of Heian women. Murasaki, like Marcel Proust, managed to create a whole world with one book; and lit for commentators a sacred and everlasting fire, before which they have been warming themselves for a thousand years. Anyone who has read the Waley or Seidensticker translations of Genji should be ready to tackle the present volume, even ifparts of it are directed to the specialist; anyone who is not afraid to be one of E.M. Forster's pseudo-scholars, who 'classes books before he has understood or read them,' should also find profit in it; and both kinds of reader may be assured that it is reliable, that it offers solid information not to be found outside Japanese sources, and that it contains a number of striking and original ideas. Perhaps Pekarik can follow it up with a volume to illustrate the critical heritage of The Tale of Gen;i. Borrow and Biography w.J. KEITH David Williams. A World ofHis Own: The Double Life of George Borrow Oxford: Oxford University Press '982. x, 178, illus. $17.95 Michael Collie. George Borrow: Eccentric London: Cambridge University Press 1982. ix, 275. $39.50 Perhaps because of the Borrow centenary Guly 1981) - in which case both books were, in Borrovian fashion, late - or perhaps because our modern interest in the deconstruction and reconstruction of texts makes Borrow's autobiographical fabrications of special interest, the almost simultaneous appearance of two biographical accounts of the author of The Bible in Spain and Lavengro is a curious but explicable event. At any rate David Williams and Michael Collie are UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 53, NUMBER 2, WINTER 1983/4 214 W.1. KEITH courageous men since they plunge (with Borrow the image is irresistible) into decidedly perilous waters. The hard but unavoidable fact that all Borrow biographers must face is the absence of corroborative evidence for the most interesting and disputed sections of his life. Borrow preferred his own society, and when he needed companions he chose gypsies, road-girls, tinkers, or local peasant-guides. Such people neither write memoirs nor preserve records. For most of Borrows adventures, and he claimed to have adventures regularly, we have nothing but his own say-so. Earlier biographers (there have been a dozen or so before the two under review) approached their task with all sorts of preconceptions and milked the readily available material dry in an effort to prove their hunches. What new facts, insights, or interpretations can Williams and Collie offer? Williams, alas, has nothing new to add in terms of hard facts. All he can do is go over the uncertain ground yet again and endeavour to calculate the likelihood of Borrow's statements. His book is a competent popular biography but no more. It contains no footnotes and only a skimpy bibliography. This includes no item later than 1953 and thus takes no cognizance of the numerous recent articles (dutifully consulted by Collie) that record small but important new nuggets of information. Again, Williams gives...