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tags: Commonplace Book
rel: 19 ways of Looking at Wang Wei
NOTE
In studying commonplace books and digital gardens discovered this volume.
Introduction
The world of Sei was for the intimate world of the court. As we read her apparently crazy quilt of vignettes and opinions and anecdotes, we find ourselves deep inside this world…
Sei lived in the Heian period (roughly peace and tranquility from 794 to 1186) when Japanese culture flowered and came into its own. She lived in Heian-kyo, present day Kyoto. She was a gentlewoman. Little is known about her, despite the book. The woman in court lived a veiled, confined life, occasionally punctuated by intense pleasure of expeditions.
The Pillow book, A bundle of paper is presented to the Empress “what do you think we could write on this?” - “They are copying Records of the Historian over at his Majesty’s pillow court” “This should be a pillow then” I suggested.
okashi - amusing in that it entertains, intrigues, delights, beguiles. It is delightful.
Sei Shonagon was dreadfully conceited. She thought herself so clever and littered her writing with Chinese characters; but if you examine them closely there is a great deal to be desired.
The translation of Poetry presents a particular, virtually insurmountable problem. The traditional Japanese poetic form (waka) is syllabic rather than metrical in rhythm, has no rhyme, and uses no line division and largely depends on pervasive poetic allusion and other linguistic devices that are untranslatable and require copious notes for the foreign readers (and the Japanese one). Thus almost no element of the poem can be transferred to English beyond the barest denotive meanings of the words, which generally makes the poem sound mindlessly simple, stark, or just plain pointless. subverts Transmutation and Transformation
The Pillow Book
In summer, the night - moonlit nights, of course, but also the at the dark of the moon, it’s beautiful when fireflies are dancing everywhere in a mazy flight. And it’s delightful too to see just one or two fly through the darkness, glowing softly. Rain falling on a summer night is also lovely.
In autumn, the evening - the blazing sun has sunk very close to the mountain rim, and now even the crows, in threes and fours or twos and threes, hurrying to their roost, are moving in sight.
There are also those times when you send someone a poem you’re rather pleased with, and fail to receive one in reply. Of course there’s no more to be done about it if it’s to a man you care for. Even so, you do lose respect for someone who doesn’t produce any response to your tasteful seasonal references. It also dampens the spirit when you’re leading a heady life in the swim of things and you receive some boring little old-fashioned poem that reeks of the longueurs of the writer, whose time hangs heavy on her hands.
On a night when you’re waiting for someone to come, there’s a sudden gust of rain and something rattles in the wind, making your heart suddenly beat faster
The oak is a wonderful tree, and it’s awe-inspiring to know that there’s a god in it who protects its leaves.
The mountain dove is a very pure-hearted and touching bird– they say it can be comforted by showing it a mirror when it’s longing for its mate. It’s heart-breaking to imagine how they feel when they sleep separated for the night by a ravine.
Things that can’t be compared – Summer and winter. Night and day. Rainy days and sunny days. Laughter and anger. Old age and youth. White and black. People you love and those you hate. The man you love and the same man once you’ve lost all feeling for him seem like two completely different people. Fire and water. Fat people and thin people. People with long hair and those with short hair.
Rare things: You never find an instance of two people living together who continue to be overawed by each other’s excellence and always treat each other with scrupulous care and respect, so such a relationship is obviously a great rarity.
Copying out a tale or a volume of poems without smearing any ink on the book you’re copying from. If you’re copying it from some beautiful bound book, you try to take immense care, but somehow you always manage to get ink on it.
The plum trees before the Mumetsubo, white on the west side and red on the east, were just beginning to shed their blossoms, but they were still lovely, and what with all this and the glorious soft sunlight that lit the scene, I longed for someone to witness it.
Snow lying thick in a garden.
So I sent the following poem via one of the ladies, Ben no Omoto.
The cord’s knot is loose as ice on the water’s surface. It finds itself undone by the warm sunlight of a garland of festive fern leaves in the hair.
But Ben no Omoto was quite overwhelmed by it all, and couldn’t manage to get the poem out, so the Captain could barely hear it, and had to lean forward and say, ‘What was that? What did she say?’ She did her best to recite it grandly and make it sound truly impressive, but unfortunately she tended to stammer when nervous, and so the Captain never did manage to hear my poem properly – which was a relief to me really, since it saved me the embarrassment of having my poor poem exposed after all.
Embarrassing things: The heart of a man.
Men have most peculiar and unlikely feelings. How extraordinary it is to see a man abandon a truly lovely woman in favour of some unpleasant one. A man who’s constantly in and out of the palace, or the son of a fine household, can surely take his pick, and select a charming girl. And if he loves someone, even if she’s someone too exalted to be within his reach, a man must put his life absolutely on the line and devote himself heart and soul to her.
Overall, I have chosen to write about the things that delight, or that people find impressive, including poems as well as things such as trees, plants, birds, insects and so forth, and for this reason people may criticize it for not living up to expectations and only going to prove the limits of my own sensibility. But after all, I merely wrote for my personal amusement things that I myself have thought and felt, and I never intended that it should be placed alongside other books and judged on a par with them. I’m utterly perplexed to hear that people who’ve read my work have said it makes them feel humble in the face of it. Well, there you are, you can judge just how unimpressive someone is if they dislike things that most people like, and praise things that others condemn. Anyway, it does upset me that people have seen these pages.