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Lunchtime Seminar: ‘Exploring A(h)ware and (W)okashi, or the Exquisite in the Trivial: An Attempt to Identify Far-Eastern Sensibilities and Aesthetics in Virginia Woolf’s Writings’, Yukiko Kinoshita

Friday 19th June, 2015

1pm, Room 136, Arts 1 Building, Mile End Campus

In 1925, Virginia Woolf reviewed Arthur Waley’s translation of Lady Murasaki’s The Tale of Genji, a Japanese classic supposedly written around 1000. The second chapter of Murasaki’s novel reveals to the reader her aesthetics and aesthetic of novel-writing, which, I would like to suggest, appealed to Woolf’s pacifism, feminism and aesthetics and encouraged her to explore her own themes and Modernist method of writing. Lady Murasaki’s aesthetic sensibilities were shared by her contemporary and rival, Sei Shonagon, well known for her masterpiece, The Pillow-Book, part of which Waley translated in 1927. Theirs could be summarized as heightened sensibilities which perceive the exquisite in the trivial or the ordinary. The attitude to discover things that matter in the seemingly trivial and common, poetic prose style, keen sensibilities and pictorial descriptions conscious of colour scheme—these characteristics are something in common between the two female Japanese authors, although Lady Murasaki’s characteristics lie in her sense of “a(h)ware” —an impassioned response to beauty—whereas Sei Shonagon’s in her sense of “(w)okashi”—an intellectual response to beauty.

The two authoresses’ aesthetics or approach to beauty is subjective, and I would like to suggest that it is, in nature, close to what Walter Pater termed as “strangeness in beauty” and “sweet strangeness,” and, therefore, something that Woolf as well as other Western readers can identify. My presentation is an attempt to introduce to the audience the aesthetics and sensibilities which the two terms—aw(h)re and (w)okashi—represent, to clarify the connection between Woolf’s and the two Japanese authoresses’ sensibilities, aesthetic and aesthetics, and to throw light on the development of Woolf’s Modernist aesthetics and method.