The Pillow Book (Sei Shōnagon, ca.995-1010)

 

There's a reputation that particularly old literature starts to gain, to the effect of 'It wouldn't have staying power if it wasn't dry and serious and somewhat socially-conscious of its time.'  And it's true, many of the examples of ancient works that we have fit that to a certain extent.  There are, after all, rather a lot of histories and biographies that have come to us from Greece and Rome.  Shakespeare has some remarkably fun comedies, but with the classics, he's considered something of an outlier.  He's the Bard of Avon, of course he's something special.

So let's just push that thought aside, right now.  There's plenty of lighter fare available in literature, even if it's centuries old, and I found one example, right here.  The Pillow Book is witty, light-hearted, and... well, social consciousness doesn't seem quite the intention here, but it's an utterly delightful read.

Written by a member of the court of the Empress Taishi, the first consort of Emperor Ichijō, this is a somewhat rambling work, happy to change directions with little warning, relate humorous anecdotes in whatever order they happened to come to mind, and generally acts like, well...  sort of a Heian miscellany, really.  There are lists of things that Sei Shōnagon finds to be beautiful, things that she finds distasteful, names of places and flowers and birds that are of poetic significance, and numerous incidents within the tiny, insular world of the Empress's court, all of which are positive in some way.

From the very start, Sei intended this to be anything but a serious work.  The story related in the text is that Taishi received a gift of paper similar to that being used by the Emperor's court engaging in the copying of a Chinese manuscript, and while debating over what to write on such fine paper, Sei suggested, "a pillow," at which point the stack of paper was passed to her to do just that.  There's some lost-in-translation-and-time pun work going on here, but the translator suggests that because the specific work being copied in the Emperor's court was "Shiki" (The Records of the Grand Historian, Shiji in Chinese), and "shiki" also refers to the 'mattress' part of a futon setup, the obvious pairing with that would be a pillow.

There's a lot of this stuff in here, homophones and poetry making reference to other poetry and...  I genuinely wish I was in a position to be able to appreciate all of what's going on in the poetry, because there's a lot of context that is lost simply because English can't elegantly do some of the things that classical Japanese could.  There's just over 100 pages of notes and appendices in the back to help with cultural and lost-in-translation things; it's actually very helpful, given the sheer cultural distance between the author and myself, across 1000 years and an ocean.

All that said, the combination of what was provided as the appendices and the sheer skill in Meredith McKinney's translation brings the images forward marvelously.  Sei has a particular affinity in describing clothing, focusing on the colors, patterns, and combinations thereof in the outfits worn by everyone around her.  There's a whole appendix devoted to giving illustrations of what courtly wear looked like (which was very useful for me; the Heian era predates the ubiquitous kimono so often seen in depictions of Japanese culture, which would have led me to very different mental images) and what the various poetically-named combinations given in the text actually mean in terms of the colors involved.

There are also a number of frankly splendid passages written in the second person, translated in present-tense (the implication being that the original was doing the same thing), describing a particular event in great detail.  This has the effect of letting a suitably-receptive reader experience the setting mentally, and I found these sections to be one of the best uses of second-person narration that I've encountered outside of interactive fiction.

What stands out for me the most in having read this, though, isn't the lists, or the descriptions (as delightful as the anecdotes are), or even the intimate descriptions of Sei's life within the court and her time as one of Taishi's favorite companions, and the entertainments that they devise for themselves.  Rather, it's the way that literature, and waka poetry specifically, is the very lifeblood of interactions between members of the nobility in this time.  If a gentleman spends the night with a lady, when he returns home afterward, he immediately sends a messenger with a poem, and the expectation that she will send a poem in return.  Poetry competitions are a recurring aspect of courtly life, both in structured situations and simply as a way for members of the Palace bureaucracy to engage in small flirtations with the cloistered women of Taishi's court.  Received poetry is shared between friends, responses carefully considered... it's almost like poetry in the Heian period was a spectator sport.

It's directly suggested in the text that Sei's position in Taishi's court is directly related to this literary sport.  She came from a family of poets, and her quick wit is brought up repeatedly as a great asset, often able to craft responses to poetic challenges that are difficult for the gentlemen on the other side of the exchange to top.  She's well-read, and knows her way around the Chinese classics that were essential reading for gentlemen of the courts, but as that kind of knowledge was considered somewhat uncouth for a lady, she has to come up with ways to subtly allude to the stories in conversation without making it clear that she's referring to them specifically.

This doesn't mean she's perfect, however.  There are multiple times that she tells about her difficulties in writing in more structured ways, and several times she brings up times that she worded things poorly, and was suitably chastised as a result.  She's also very much a product of her specific culture; there are numerous times where she writes that she's not fond of commoners, for a variety of reasons, and several times where she does things that seem downright mean (in one particularly cold-hearted passage, she describes how, in response to a commoner who was audibly depressed that his house had burned down as part of a huge blaze that destroyed an Imperial grain storage house, she gave the illiterate man a poem, implied that it was a promissory note, and told him go off to find someone who could tell him what it said as she was just too busy at that moment and was being called by the Empress).  Several times, her wit results in friendships and relationships being destroyed, as well; it may not be a huge surprise that Sei's literary rival, Murasaki Shikibu (who served in the court of Empress Shōshi, Ichijō's second consort), wrote in a decidedly unflattering way about Sei in her own diaries, albeit while respecting her wit and writing skills.

All in all, I'm glad to have read this.  It made for a very cozy read during a power outage, and I find myself rather wishing that I knew of anything else quite like it for me to keep on hand for when I need a bit of a cooldown after other, decidedly heavier tomes.

The largest book on my shelf, and one that's very much impending on my 'The Longing' reading list, is The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas père.  I don't know how heavy of a read that one is going to be prose-wise, but it's over 1300 pages and I know I'm going to need some lighter, shorter fare after that.  I think I'm going to stay light-hearted for the moment and go read some children's literature first, though.