Difficulties of Marriage and Love
In this satirical tale, Ryunosuke Akutagawa borrows the atmosphere of an Arabian romance to examine the absurd difficulties of choosing a partner. The beautiful and intelligent Princess Zeraide evaluates a parade of royal candidates, each impressive in one respect and grotesquely unsuitable in another. Akutagawa’s mock-scholarly references, extravagant descriptions, and deadpan catalog of defects turn the conventions of fairy-tale courtship into comedy. Yet beneath the farce lies a sharper observation: romantic desire does not obey status, reason, beauty, wealth, or carefully constructed standards. The story’s final reversal deliberately clashes with both Zeraide’s meticulous search and the reader’s expectations. Some descriptions reflect the racial and social attitudes of the period in which the work was written.
Have you heard the story of Zeraide? Zeraide was a beautiful princess. If the written sources are to be believed, her feet were like soapstone, her thighs like ivory, her navel like a pearl cradled in mother-of-pearl, her belly like an alabaster jar, her breasts like bouquets of lilies, her neck like a white dove, her hair like fragrant herbs, her eyes like the pools of a palace, and her nose like the tower above a castle gate. She must have been a beauty such as not one person in ten thousand could rival.
When Zeraide came of age, it was decided that she should choose a suitable husband and marry. Had this happened in Japan, she would probably have entrusted the arrangements to some thoroughly unreliable person—a relative, an acquaintance, or perhaps the headmistress of a girls’ school. Had it happened in the West, she might have made her mother or sister her chief strategist and drawn up a campaign plan for capturing a future husband. But Zeraide was not only a princess; she had also been born remarkably intelligent. She therefore decided to select, by her own standards, either a prince or the son of a grand vizier.
The following list of candidates is said to have been compiled over the three years, seven months, and sixteen days after Zeraide resolved to marry. The original can be found as Document No. 138 under Z in the Arabian section of the Oriental Library, so serious scholars may consult it for themselves. Here I shall reproduce only an outline, omitting the names and other details.
Candidate No. 1: An Indian prince. His physique is exceptionally imposing, but he is not very intelligent. On one occasion he mistook an elephant for a mountain and narrowly escaped being trampled to death.
Candidate No. 2: A Persian prince. He is as beautiful as a woman, but reportedly every bit as licentious. Even now he has six hundred wives, twenty-three hundred concubines, and female slaves—how many tens of thousands of those there are, apparently no one can even guess.
Candidate No. 3: The son of the grand vizier of Zeraide’s own country. Though still young, he possesses great learning and intelligence. It must, however, be admitted that it is most unfortunate he was born a hunchback.
Candidate No. 4: The king of Babylonia. His stores of gold, silver, pearls, and precious stones may well be the greatest in the world. Regrettably, however, he delights in cruelty and is said frequently to slice off his ladies-in-waiting’s ears and eat them with onions.
Candidate No. 5: A Chinese prince. He is said to be every bit as handsome as the Persian prince. Yet he seems extraordinarily lazy: it is reported that he even has his eunuchs blow his nose for him.
Candidate No. 6: The son of the king of Lydia’s grand vizier. He has no particular faults worth mentioning. He does, however, have twenty-five children by his former wife and concubines, one of whom is a monster whose legs are both those of a chicken.
Candidate No. 7: The son of the king of Media’s grand vizier. He is renowned for his military valor. At present, however, his debts are apparently so great that he might even sell his own father’s head.
Candidate No. 8: The son of the king of Judea’s grand vizier. He is said to be accomplished in poetry and music. But since his affections are directed toward men, he is unlikely ever to marry.
Candidate No. 9: An Egyptian prince. He is handsome, highly learned, and said to be without equal as an archer. If I were to marry this prince, even the long journey across the desert might be pleasant. Tomorrow morning I shall ask Their Majesties at once—According to news that has just arrived, however, the prince has unfortunately been eaten by a crocodile while bathing.
Candidate No. 10: Jan ben Jan, king of the jinn. Whereabouts unknown.
Naturally, these were not the only candidates. Indeed, Document No. 138 under Z in the Arabian section of the Oriental Library lists no fewer than two hundred and eighty of them. In the end, however, not one of them appears to have met Zeraide’s hopes. Day after day she lived among her ladies-in-waiting in the royal palace, where pomegranates and saffron flowers bloomed.
But love, which rules us all, could hardly fail to capture this beautiful Arabian princess as well. One clear, moonlit night, Zeraide quietly slipped out of the palace with her lover. Dejial the Great, Arabia’s poet of love above all else, sings of her in these words:
Zeraide! Rose of the desert!
Fortunate is your lover!
You are your lover’s staff,
You are your lover’s teeth,
Blessed is your lover!
Oh, Zeraide! Fountain of the desert!
“Your lover’s staff” and “your lover’s teeth” may sound rather strange. But who do you suppose the beautiful Zeraide’s lover was? He was an ugly Black slave said to have been seventy-six years old.