Worlding Sei Shônagon: The Pillow Book in Translation

Kazuya Sakai (1969) Spanish

155 Kazuya Sakai “En la primavera, el amanecer” “El Libro de Almohada (Makura no Sôshi). Selección, traducción y notas de Kazuya Sakai” Estudios orientales. El Colegio de México. 9: 4.1 (1969): 49–69. Sakai (1927–2001) was born in Buenos Aires of Japanese parents. Educated in Japan from the age of seven, he obtained a degree in Literature and Philosophy from Waseda University before returning to teach Oriental Philosophy at Argentina’s National University of Tucumán and to lecture widely throughout that country. Sakai was also a self-taught abstract painter with numerous solo and group shows to his credit. Although perhaps best known as a visual artist, he was a frequent contributor to this Mexican journal, supplying articles on and translations of a wide range of Japanese texts. The Centro de Estudios Orientales of the Colegio de México had been founded in 1964, in collaboration with UNESCO , to train and support specialists in the languages, history , and culture of China, Japan, India and the Middle East. Sakai’s books include Japon: Hacia una Nueva Literatura [Japan: Toward a New Literature], and translations of both Mishima Yukio (his modern Noh plays) and Akutagawa Ryunosuke (for which Borges supplied the prologue). At one Kazuya Sakai (1969) 156 point, he also edited a Spanish-language journal of Japanese culture titled Bunka [Culture]. This version of selections from The Pillow Book, comprising a total of twenty-four passages, appears to have had very limited circulation and been more or less forgotten, as none of the other translators comment on its existence. Sakai is here working from a Japanese source, although he does point out the existence of both the partial Waley translation and what he calls the “too literal and academic” (48; my translation) Beaujard version, and acknowledges Morris’s as “without doubt the best translation ever into a Western language” (48). For his part, Sakai claims to have done his best to “preserve the poetic character of the original” (48), despite what he sees as the need to eliminate certain of Sei’s characteristic features. For example, he states that the repetition of vocabulary was “impossible to adopt in Spanish” and thus that many passages depart “considerably” from the source text (48). Sakai claims that trying to make his “free” translation “more literally obey … Sei Shônagon’s laconic and frequently ambiguous style would have rendered it almost illegible for Spanish readers” (48). Spanish 157 1. En La Primavera, El Amanecer EN LA PRIMAVERA, el amanecer. Su belleza es incomparable cuando, a medida que la luz invade las montañas y enrojece tenuemente sus perfiles, delgadas bandas de nubes violáceas se extienden sobre ellas. En el verano, las noches. ¡Qué bellas son cuando brilla la luna, cuando en la oscuridad se entrecruzan enjambres de luciérnagas, o cuando son una o dos las que vuelan solitarias con sus luces fugaces; e incluso cuando llueve! En el otoño, el atardecer. Es hermoso cuando el sol se acerca al contorno de las montañas, y cuando los cuervos regresan a sus nidos, de a dos, de a tres, de a cuatro, pero más encantador aún es ver a los gansos salvajes que vuelan alineados en el cielo distante, y nada es comparable a ese momento en que cae el sol y empieza a oírse el soplo del viento o el canto de los insectos. En el invierno, las mañanas, temprano. Indescriptiblemente bellas cuando la noche anterior ha nevado, pero tambi én espléndidas cuando todo está cubierto de blanca escarcha . También cuando el frío no llega a ese extremo, pero la mañana es helada, no deja de ser delicioso ver a los sirvientes ir de prisa encendiendo el fuego y llevando carbón de un lugar a otro. Cerca de mediodía, cuando el frío ha disminuido, nadie se preocupa por mantener el fuego de los braseros, y no es muy agradable constatar que lo único que va quedando son blancas cenizas. (p. 49) Kazuya Sakai (1969) 158 1. In the Spring, the Dawn IN THE SPRING, the dawn. Its beauty is incomparable when, as the light invades the mountains and tenuously reddens their silhouettes , thin bands of violet clouds extend over them. In the summer, the nights. How beautiful they are when the moon shines, when in the darkness swarms of fireflies intertwine, or...