Worlding Sei Shônagon: The Pillow Book in Translation

Jorge Luis Borges and María Kodama (2004) Spanish

233 Jorge Luis Borges and María Kodama Sei Shonagon El libro de la almohada. Selección y traducción deJorge Luis Borges y María Kodama El libro de bolsillo. Literatura. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2004 Borges (1899–1986), the famed Argentinian writer, enjoyed a lifelong interest in both literary translation and Japan. He is said to have translated Oscar Wilde’s “The Happy Prince” at the age of nine, for example, and in the 1930s, he reviewed Waley’s version of The Tale of Genji. Kodama, a former student and subsequent personal secretary of Borges’s, who was born in 1945 in Buenos Aires of Japanese-German parents , is a university professor and photographer. Following a fifteen-year relationship, they married in 1986, less than two months before his death from liver cancer, and she now manages his estate. Borges and Kodama jointly produced several translations including works from Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic, and (based on Morris’s English version) these selections from Sei Shônagon, which may have been translated shortly before Borges’s death. The introduction to this posthumous edition does not specify to what degree the work was collaboratively done, nor does it make any mention of the other Jorge Luis Borges and María Kodama (2004) 234 Spanish-language versions available. Kodama’s introduction reads in part as follows: “This translation of The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon is a significant event for those who have read it in English, French or German translations, to cite only three, given their importance to both Japan and Borges; they will discover the pleasure of reading, in their own language, a translation by someone who considered this language his destiny as a writer” (8; my translation). She goes on to refer to our Japanese author’s “internal freedom” and states: “Who better to detect this in another writer than Borges, who wanted to be remembered as a poet and lamented never managing to write the perfect, archtypal poem, even though poetry is present not only in his poems but also in that magnificent poetic prose that reveals, just as with Sei Shonagon, the intricate, delicate architecture of a soul wrought from passion, sensitivity, and courtesy” (12). Spanish 235 En la primavera es el alba… En la primavera es el alba. Cuando la luz se desliza sobre las cumbres, sus perfiles se tiñen de rosado y hebras de neblina púrpura se extienden sobre ellos. En el estío, lo más bello son las noches, no sólo cuando hay luna sino también en la oscuridad, cuando las luciérnagas vuelan de un lado a otro y hasta cuando llueve, ¡qué hermoso es todo! En el otoño, lo más bello son las tardes, cuando el sol resplandeciente se hunde cerca del filo de la cumbres y los grajos vuelven volando a sus nidos en bandadas de tres, de cuatro y de dos. Aún más encantadora es una línea de gansos salvajes como manchas en el cielo lejano. Cuando el sol se ha puesto, el corazón se conmueve con el rumor del viento y con el zumbido de los insectos. En el invierno, lo más bello es la alborada. Es muy bello, por cierto, cuando durante la noche ha nevado; pero es espléndido también cuando la tierra está blanca de escarcha. También es bello cuando no hay nieve o escarcha pero sólo hace mucho frío y los servidores se apresuran de habitación en habitación, atizando el fuego y trayendo carbón. ¡Cómo armoniza todo esto con la estación del año! Cuando se acerca el mediodía y el frío se ha cansado, nadie se toma el trabajo de mantener encendidos los braseros, y sólo quedan unos montones de ceniza blanca. (pp. 13–14) Jorge Luis Borges and María Kodama (2004) 236 In the spring is the dawn… In the spring is the dawn. When the light glides over the summits , their profiles are dyed pink and threads of purple mist extend over them. In the summer, the most beautiful are the nights, not only when there is moon but also in the darkness, when the fireflies fly from one side to another and even when it rains, how lovely is everything! In the autumn, the most beautiful are the afternoons, when the dazzling sun goes...