Worlding Sei Shônagon: The Pillow Book in Translation

by Valerie Henitiuk

Overview

The Makura no Sôshi, or The Pillow Book as it is generally known in English, is a collection of personal reflections and anecdotes about life in the Japanese royal court composed around the turn of the eleventh century by a woman known as Sei Shônagon. Its opening section, which begins haru wa akebono, or “spring, dawn,” is arguably the single most famous passage in Japanese literature.

Throughout its long life, The Pillow Book has been translated countless times. It has captured the European imagination with its lyrical style, compelling images and the striking personal voice of its author. Worlding Sei Shônagon guides the reader through the remarkable translation history of The Pillow Book in the West, gathering almost fifty translations of the “spring, dawn” passage, which span one-hundred-and-thirtyfive years and sixteen languages. Many of the translations are made readily available for the first time in this study. The versions collected in Worlding Sei Shônagon are an enlightening example of the many ways in which translations can differ from their source text, undermining the idea of translation as the straightforward transfer of meaning from one language to another, one culture to another.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780776607283
Publisher:	University of Ottawa Press
Publication date:	06/16/2012
Series:	Perspectives on Translation
Edition description:	Bilingual
Pages:	330
Product dimensions:	5.75(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.71(d)

About the Author

Valerie Henitiuk is senior lecturer at the Universityof East Anglia and director of the British Centre for Literary Translation. She is the author of Embodied Boundaries (2007, Gateway Press, Madrid) and co-editor of One Step towards the Sun (2010, Rupantar, India).

 

Table of Contents

Preface i

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction 1

The Author, Sei Shônagon 2

Makura no Sôshi, or The Pillow Book 9

Syntactical and Lexical Points of Interest 15

Western Translation of The Pillow Book 18

Adaptations, Imitations and Other Forms of Homage 25

Japanese Modernizations and Imitations 33

How to Use This Book 36

Sei Shônagon Classical Japanese 47

First Generation of Western Translators 51

August Pfizmaier (1875) German 53

T. A. Purcell and W. G. Aston (1889) English 59

Koumé Kéitchirau (1892) French 63

W. G. Aston (1899) English 67

Henry-D. Davray (1902) French 69

Karl Florenz (1906) German 73

Takéshi Ishikawa (1909) French 77

Michel Revon (1910) French 81

Paul Adler (1926) German 87

Second Generation 91

Kuni Matsuo and Steinilber-Oberlin (1928) French 93

Arthur Waley (1928) English 97

Nobuko Kobayashi (1930) English 101

André Beaujard (1934) French 105

E. M. Kolpakchi (1935) Russian 111

Helmut Bode (1944) German 115

Gerhart Haug (1948) German 119

Mamoru Watanabe (1952) German 123

Zhou Zuoren (1958) Chinese 127

Ryôzô Matsumoto (1961) English 131

Unity Evans (1965) English 135

André Beaujard (1966) French 139

Third Generation 143

Ivan Morris (1967) English 145

Lydia Origlia (1968) Italian 149

Kazuya Sakai (1969) Spanish 155

Marcello Muccioli (1969) Italian 159

Nelly and Wolfram Naumann (1973) German 163

Stanca Cionca (1973) Romanian 167

Vera Markova (1975) Russian 171

Miroslav Novák (1984) Czech 175

Tzvetana Kristeva (1985) Bulgarian 179

Paul Heijman (1987) Dutch 183

Anita Kontrec (1987) Croatian 187

Lin Wenyue (1989) Chinese 191

Charlotte Rohde and Lone Takeuchi (1989) Danish 195

Helen Craig McCullough (1990) English 199

Javier Sologuren (1993) Spanish 203

Fourth Generation 207

Mark Jewel (ca. 1998) English 209

David Greer (2000) English 211

Mercè Comes (2000) Spanish 215

Amalia Sato (2001) Spanish 219

Iván Augusta Pinto Román, Oswaldo Gavidia Cannon, and Hiroko Izumi Shimono (2002) Spanish 223

Kenneth L. Richard (ca. 2003) English 227

Simon Cozens (ca. 2003) English 229

Jorge Luis Borges and María Kodama (2004) Spanish 233

Tuncay Birkan (2006) Turkish 237

Meredith McKinney (2006) English 241

Valerio Alberizzi (2006) Italian 245

Xavier Roca-Ferrer (2007) Catalan 249

Jos Vos (2008) Dutch 253

Appendix I Romanization of original and Romanization with English gloss 257

Appendix II A selection of book covers from the translations 261

Appendix III A selection of modern Japanese versions 273

Tanabe Seiko (1986) 274

Hashimoto Osamu (1987) 278

Óba Minako (1991) 282

Munakata Kazu (2001) 286

Bibliographies 293

Sei Shônagon, works by 293

Pillow Book Translations 293

The Pillow Book Translators, selected works by and about 298

Additional Resources

Classical Japanese Literature, General Reference 301

Classical Japanese Literature, Selected Works 301

Sei Shônagon and The Pillow Book 303

Translation Studies, General 304

Translation, East-West 306

Comparative Translation 308

Pillow Book Adaptations, Imitations and Homages 309

Editorial Reviews

This fascinating collection offers a unique resource for courses in translation, in women's writing, and in East/West studies, and it is also a pleasure to read in itself: a gallery of reflections and refractions of Sei Shonagon's masterpiece through a kaleidoscopic array of translations across time, space, and culture.
- David Damrosch, Harvard University

From the Publisher