Be Shonagon

Sei Shōnagon, late 17th century illustration

Sei Shōnagon ( Japanese 清 少 納 言 , Sei Shōnagon ; born around 966; died around 1025) was a writer and lady-in-waiting at the Japanese imperial court during the Heian period .

life and work

Sei Shōnagon came from the scholarly Kiyohara family , her father, Kiyohara Motosuke , was one of the 36 great poets of the country; Although the family had court offices, they were not very well off financially. Her actual name is not known: Sei denotes the family name, the Kiyohara, Shōnagon was in the Ritsuryō system the rank of a lowly cabinet official. It is not known exactly what connection she had with this title since neither her father nor her two spouses held this position. Like her father's, her poetry found its way into the official anthologies of the empire, but her fame was founded on her prose collection of sketchy treatises and reports, known as the pillow book .

After marriage and the birth of a son, she took up service at the imperial court in Kyoto in 993, possibly already divorced, as lady-in-waiting to the imperial wife Fujiwara no Sadako, called Empress Teishi (976-1001), the wife of Emperor Ichijō.

Outwardly probably not particularly attractive, she made up for this deficiency with the grace of style, education and a sensitive gift for observation, as expressed in her work. For ten years, from 1001 to 1010, she kept a diary under the title makura no sōshi ( sketchbook under the pillow , English pillow book ), which is one of the classics of Japanese literature .

Be Shonagon, according to e. Edition d. Pillow book from the 13th century

In the style of the Zuihitsu literature she founded ( where the writing brush leads ), Sei Shōnagon depicts seemingly trifles, personal and foreign experiences, everyday stories, even gossip from the imperial court, which helped a lot to understand the culture of that time and the sparse biography of her lady-in-waiting colleague and contemporary, Murasaki Shikibu , the author of the novel Genji Monogatari .

The approximately 300 texts of various lengths, which were initially circulated in transcripts at court and whose arrangement goes back to a later time, are written in a stylistically mature, sometimes laconic, concise and unaffected Japanese without Chinese or scholarly insertions - a reference to the author who, according to her own statement, could read and write Chinese, but also to the readers at court who preferred the simpler kana writing system . Knowledge of both Chinese and Japanese prose and poetry can be assumed from her.

Beyond the historical documentation, which hardly distinguishes it from other farm diaries ( nikki ), the well-read, educated, but sharp-tongued and quick-witted observer manages the life and goings-on at the court and the personalities of her surroundings as well as the mood of the Heian period ( 794–1185), where literature flourished. As confidante of the Empress, at whose court she lived from the age of 26, she shaped the prose of Japan to this day with her literary originality, her improvisational skills, her acuteness and critical spirit as well as her charm.

Chapter headings such as Music on a Rainy Day , Rare Things , Unseemly , What One Regrets , What One Loses Patience About , Birds or After a Rainy Day show the range of considerations in which nature, human psychology and the role of humans in society are one play a central role.

According to the diaries of her contemporary Murasaki, she made few friends with her open, self-confident, sometimes feminist perspective, which could even go as far as caricature.

• “Sei Shonagon, for example, was terribly conceited. She thought she was very clever and sprinkled all kinds of Chinese characters in her letters, but if you looked more closely, there was still a lot to be desired. Anyone who thinks they are superior to everyone else will inevitably experience suffering and have a bad end, and whoever is so precious ... to take every little opportunity to escape in the most inopportune situations soon seems ridiculous and artificial. How should this end in the future? "

Little is known about her further fate: after the death of her imperial mistress in childbed (1001), she stayed at court for a decade, after 1017 nothing reliable is known about her life. So she is said to have married again and had a daughter, after a long wandering on the island of Shikoku or as a nun in the outskirts of Kyoto , died lonely and abandoned.

reviews

• “It [the pillow book] describes… life on the farm in detail, but hardly reveals anything about life outside. We are presented with a small elite society that deals with art and literature and is always quick to hand when it comes to criticizing a bad brushstroke, a failed verse, an unsuitable shade or an awkward movement. We see refined connoisseurs of emotional life and strict judges of ceremonies and etiquette. ... You care about nothing but yourself. ”Sansom, Japan
• “In some ways, Sei Shonagon is less important as a person than the other diarists, but it is precisely these imperfections that make her book one of the most memorable of all.” Mason / Caiger, Japan, p. 92.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Donald Keene: A history of Japanese literature . Holt, Rinehart, and Winston [puis] Columbia Press, New York 1999, ISBN 0-231-11441-9 , pp. 412 .
2. ↑ Murasaki was the maid of honor of the second imperial wife, Shoshi .
3. ↑ "How I impressed the highest court secretary"; She also found classical Chinese “unfair”. Murasaki also reports in her diary ( Murasaki Shikibu Nikki ) about Shōnagon's knowledge of Chinese.
4. ↑ Whether Shonagon was still alive at this point is uncertain; The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Translated by Richard Bowring. Penguin, London a. a. 2005, p. 54. - See also Arthur Waley : Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji. A Novel in Six Parts. Modern Library, New York 1960, p. 10; see also Encyclopedia Britannica. Ultimate Reference Suite Chicago 2010 sv Shonagon; Mason / Caiger, Japan p. 92.
5. ↑ George B. Sansom: Japan. From early history to the end of the feudal system. Kindler, Munich 1967, p. 273 f.

Works

• A lady-in-waiting pillow book . From d. Japan. trans. u. ed. v. Mamoru Watanabe. Illustr. v. Masami Iwata. 15th edition. Manesse, Munich / Zug 2004, ISBN 3-7175-1364-8 .
• Pillow book . With detailed commentary, list of persons, glossary, afterword and editorial note. Edited and translation by Michael Stein. Zurich: Manesse, 2015, ISBN 978-3-7175-2314-7 .

literature

• Hans A. Dettmer: Be Shonagon . In: Kindlers New Literature Lexicon. (KNLL), Vol. 15 (1991), pp. 140-141.
• RHP Mason, JG Caiger: A History of Japan. Revised edition. Tuttle, Boston et al. 2004, ISBN 0-8048-2097-X , pp. 88-97.

Web links

Commons : Sei Shōnagon  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Sei Shōnagon in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Sei Shōnagon  in the German Digital Library