The Pillow-Book of Sei Shōnagon Read Free Page A

literature— as if by doing so an author gained credibility and authority. Waley stresses the sheer factuality of The Pillow Book as one of its most valuable features (he seems to denigrate The Tale of Genji on this score since it is a work of fiction). Nowhere is this concern with truthfulness more apparent than in the emergence of the diary ( nikki ) as a dominant form of writing. For example, the Kager ō nikki , by the Mother of Michitsuna, had an enormous impact on Sh ō nagon’s generation of writers. The narrative voice of the diary is almost obsessively concerned with how her life will be perceived, and so she wishes to displace what she sees as the fabrications of earlier romances—stories that are distasteful to her precisely because they are fictional—with an account of her life that justifies her actions and expresses all that is real to her, including the mental suffering caused by her unhappy marriage. Similarly, the Izumi Shikibu nikki is a diary marked by a tension between the formal, conventional demands of prose narratives and the desire for truthfulness. In this case, however, the author strives to make the account of her real-life love affair conform to the idealized literary expectations created by the structure of romance narratives as told in poetic anthologies. In both these examples, what makes the handling of plot and character seem so compelling is that the authors do not take the truthfulness of words simply at face value, but assume that the sense of immediacy or reality that prose literature can create is the product of a heightened literary sensibility.
    The close relationship between poetry and prose, the critical awareness of how historical and cultural differences are reflected in genres and formal conventions, and the emphasis placed on trustworthiness and affective realism are a few examples of literary practices and concepts that reveal the sophistication of the tradition that Sh ō nagon was drawing upon. Her use of these disparate practices and ideas are reflected in the zuihitsu model she constructs. We are given examples of diary literature in those passages that chronicle the events of the court calendar, the ceremonies and celebrations specific to Teishi’s court, and the vignettes that provide brilliantly drawn glimpses into the manners and foibles of the aristocracy. These are unquestionably among her most memorable sustained pieces, and it is understandable that Waley is especially drawn to this kind of material. However, Sh ō nagon also creates a vivid narrative voice in essays that present her views on many different topics dealing with proper etiquette, literary taste, or the ideal courtier. Her essays are powerfully prescriptive and reveal a classical, conservative mind behind the self-confident arbiter of courtly tastes.
    Perhaps the most distinctive form of writing in The Pillow Book is the list or catalog of items, people, languages, customs or behaviors that exemplify a particular mood or value. These lists, which also include simple enumerations of the names of rivers or mountains (lists that seem at a cursory glance to be rather cryptic and of little value), may well have been the oldest materials, serving as cues or source works to aid poetic composition, a skill that Empress Teishi would have had to use on an almost daily basis. Such lists had a long history, and many courtiers, men and women, kept notes on poetry, ceremony, manners and customs not merely for the love of aesthetics, but because the political culture demanded such knowledge as a practical aspect of court life. Court intrigues and rivalries may have been expressed in part through art, music and literature, but the aestheticism of aristocratic culture was grounded in ruthless political and economic calculations.
    By taking a broader view of the historical context of composition—both the political economy of the court and the tradition of literary practices that Sei Sh ō nagon was able to draw