Worlding Sei Shônagon: The Pillow Book in Translation

Simon Cozens (ca. 2003) English

229 Simon Cozens Pillow Talk Ca. 2003. web.archive.org/web/20050328023705/blog. simon-cozens.org/shonagon/ Accessed January 20, 2010. Cozens (b. 1978), a computer programmer and preacher— he moved to Japan in 2007 to work as a missionary—with additional interests in music and photography, created this now archived webpage for what he describes as “a new translation of Sei Shonagon’s ‘Pillow Book,’ a 10th century blog.” He wishes he “had had time to complete the whole work” (personal communication), but in any case has opted to reorder these fourteen translated “postings” as he sees fit. Cozens has a degree in Japanese from Pembroke College, Oxford. While translating from the original (with the comment : “I knew those classical Japanese lessons would be useful someday”), he does also borrow from the footnotes of Ivan Morris “to try and turn the entries into a coherent stream.” In keeping with his characterization of the text as a “blog”—this passage is labelled “Posted by sei on March 3, 987” and is followed by comments from readers—Cozens’s version is among the most deliberately idiomatic and up Simon Cozens (ca. 2003) 230 -to-date in this compilation. Note the use of a “you” directly addressing the reader, as well as the contractions “there’s” and “can’t”, which combine to make the overall tone highly conversational. Cozens makes full use of both sentence fragments and run-on sentences, such as one might well find in a typical Internet posting. English 231 Times and seasons Spring: dawn. The light creeps over the hills, turning them faint red; purple clouds trail over them. Summer: nights. The moon shines, and fireflies flitter to and fro on the darker nights. When it rains, too, it’s beautiful. Autumn: eveningtime. The day comes to an end, the sun sinks over the hills, birds fly back to their nests in threes and fours, or twos and threes. Geese and crows and things in flocks, like tiny specks, so small you can hardly make them out. And I can’t forget the sound of the wind and the sound of the insects when the sun has gone down. Winter: early mornings. Nothing better than the snow falling at night. White frost on the ground. Or when there’s no frost or snow but it’s really cold and the servants run around stoking the fires—it really feels like winter. When the afternoon comes and it’s not so cold, the fires in the braziers turn to white ash. (n.p.) ...