Worlding Sei Shônagon: The Pillow Book in Translation

Tuncay Birkan (2006) Turkish

237 Tuncay Birkan Yastıkname Istanbul: Metis, 2006 This first Turkish translation, funded by the Japan Foundation ’s Support for Translation programe, acknowledges earlier versions by Morris, Beaujard and Watanabe, as well as two Japanese editions. Birkan, born in Istanbul in 1968, graduated from Bogazici University’s Department of English Language and Literature in 1991. He is a prolific translator of literary works, criticism, philosophy and social science, making authors as diverse as J. G. Ballard, Samuel Beckett, Charles Dickens, Stephen Jay Gould, Edward Said and Slavoj Zizek available to readers in his native language. Birkan also currently chairs Turkey’s literary translators’ society. Turkey is often characterized as the nation that literally straddles East and West, Europe and Asia. Although lacking any direct contact until the Meiji era, Japan and Turkey were historically connected at least tangentially by the Silk Road, of which they comprised the two most distant points. Probably the single most important event in the relations between these countries was the 1889 Ertugrul Incident, Tuncay Birkan (2006) 238 where citizens of Japan rescued a shipwrecked diplomatic mission sent by the Ottoman Empire—this incident lives on in the public consiousness even today. turkish 239 1. Baharda Şafak, Yazın Geceler… Baharda, günün en güzel vakti şafaktır. Hava yavaş yavaş ağarırken, dağların silüetleri ölgün bir kızıla boyanır, üzerlerinde leylak rengi bulut huzmelerinden bir yol oluşur. Yazın, geceler güzeldir. Mehtaplı geceler değil sadece, zifiri karanlık geceler de… ateşböcekleri oraya buraya uçuşurken, hatta yağmur yağarken, o kadar güzeldir ki! Sonbaharda, akşamlar… Altın gibi parlayan güneşin tepelerin sırtlarına kadar indiği, kargaların ikişerli, üçerli, dörderli gruplar halinde yuvalarına döndüğü günbatımı vakitleri… Hele ufukta küçücük benekler gibi görünen bir yabankazı sürüsü de varsa, bundan âlâsı olmaz. Güneş battığında, rüzgârın sesini ve böceklerin vızıltısını duydu ğunuzda yüreğiniz çarpar. Kışın, sabahın erken saatleri… Gece boyunca kar yağmışsa hakikaten çok güzel olur; ama yerler kırağıyla kaplan ıp bembeyaz olunca da muhteşemdir. Ayrıca varsın kar da kırağı da olmasın, sırf dışarıda ayaz varken, hizmetkârlar bir yandan odadan odaya koşturup ateşi coşturur bir yandan kömür taşırken bile kış keyfinize diyecek yoktur! Ama öğle vakti yaklaşıp da hava biraz ısınmayagörsün, kimse mangallar ı yanık tutma zahmetine girmez, çok geçmeden de geriye beyaz kül yığınlarından başka bir şey kalmaz. (p. 31) Tuncay Birkan (2006) 240 1. Dawn in Spring, Nights in Summer… In spring, the best time of the day is dawn. While it slowly gets lighter, the silhouettes of the mountains are painted to a darkish red, above them, a line is formed by the beams of light from the lilac-coloured clouds. In summer, the nights are beautiful. Not only the nights with a full moon, but also the ones that are pitch-black… it is just so beautiful, when the fireflies are flying about, and even when it is raining! In autumn, the evenings… The dusk hours, when the goldencoloured sun comes down on the shoulders of the hills, when the crows go back to their nests in groups of two, three, four… It is the best, especially if there is a flock of wild geese, looking like little dots on the horizon. After the sun sets, you feel your heart throbbing when you hear the wind blow or the insects buzz. In winter, the early morning hours… It is really beautiful when it snows all night long; but it is also magnificent when the ground is all white, covered in frost. Besides, even if there is no snow or frost outside, even when it is just cold weather, even when the servants are running from room to room, bringing the fires to flame and also carrying coal at the same time, there are no words to describe our winter pleasure! But once noon approaches and the weather gets warmer, nobody cares to keep the hearths burning, it doesn’t take long and the only things left are the white piles of ashes. [N. C...