Once upon a time there was a world, very different from our world. It was very beautiful — sometimes in ways that strike us as very ugly. But its inhabitants would not have cared what we think.
It was a tiny world, self-contained, thinly populated — aristocratic, cultured, wealthy beyond even the dimmest awareness that wealth has to be created, if not by one’s own sweat then by the sweat of others. Entitlement to the best of what life offered was unquestioned. It was an aristocratic birthright, nothing demanded in return except the love and cultivation of beauty. In that they were unstinting.
Scholars dispute the identity of the world’s first novel. “Don Quixote,” say some; “Tom Jones,” say others; perhaps “Robinson Crusoe.” Those are the leading among numerous candidates — all European, all of the 17th and 18th centuries. Wrong, say devotees of Japanese literature.