Things that make your heart beat fast
by Sei Shōnagon
A sparrow with nestlings.
Going past a place where tiny children are playing.
Lighting some fine incense and then lying down alone to sleep.
Looking into a Chinese mirror that’s a little clouded.
A fine gentleman pulls up in his carriage and sends in some request.
To wash your hair, apply your makeup and put on clothes that are well-scented with incense.
Even if you’re somewhere where no one special will see you, you still feel a heady sense of pleasure inside.
On a night when you’re waiting for someone to come, there’s a sudden gust of rain and something rattles in the wind, making your heart suddenly beat faster.
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The Pillow Book (Makura ni Soshi) was written by Sei Shōnagon (c. 966–1017) during the peaceful Heian period in Japan. She was a gentlewoman in the imperial court known for her wit and clever poetry. (Poetry was a big deal then — you would be justified in severing all contact with a lover if he sent you poor poetry - I agreed) The Pillow Book is a compendium of Sei’s thoughts on various subjects, in the form of anecdotes, poems, rants, and 164 lists.
‘There are no details about Shōnagon’s life after the year 1017, and very few records of her after the death of the Empress Teishi/Empress Sadako in 1000. According to one tradition, she lived out her twilight years in poverty as a Buddhist nun. Another tradition has her marrying Fujiwara no Muneyo, the governor of Settsu province, after her court services ended, and having a daughter, Koma no Myobu. The Pillow Book is thought to have been finished sometime between 1001 and 1010, while Shōnagon was in retirement’. Legend states that Sei Shōnagon spent her old age in misery and loneliness, what is not exactly a new story.
From 'The Art of Heterogeneous Juxtaposition: Sei Shonagon’s Makura no Soshi’,
'Early Japanese writing used Kanbun and Kanji systems. They were hybrid systems that were heavily reliant on Chinese characters, grammar and vocabulary. As a result, men were often trained in the classical Chinese language and writing. This included poetry, which was written by men in Chinese. Women rarely learned how to write Kanbun or Kanji and hence learned little Chinese. Men, on the other hand, typically spoke a Sino-Japanese hybrid full of Chinese loan words and constructions.
Cases in which people say the same thing but sound different: The speech of men and women.
With the advent of man’yōgana, a phonetic script for the Japanese language, the language that women spoke could now be written down. This transformed Japanese culture and many of the era’s best writers were women. The women wrote with a linguistic purity not found in the writings of men. Outside of a few names and quotations there is hardly a Chinese character to be found in the entire Makura no Soshi. Women, whose realm was the house and the court, paid less attention to wars, battles, journeys and adventures, and more attention to the nuance of individual motivation and social relations. This led to the creation of a special kind of prose, written in a purified Japanese language, with great psychological depth. Again Murasaki’s Genji Monogatari is the exemplar of this kind of writing. Shōnagon shared the linguistic purity and psychological depth of Murasaki, but her prose was unique. Unlike most women of the period she had extensive exposure to Chinese poetry. Her father, Kiyohara no Motosuke, had compiled imperial poetry collection Gosenshu and it is likely that she had read and been influenced by this style of writing. Much Chinese poetry works through the juxtaposition of objects and images. Each image is rich with historic or symbolic associations and meaning is compounded through association and contrast with the other images. This style of reading through juxtaposition of images applies to all of the essays and anecdotes of Makura no Soshi but shows up most clearly in her lists
Things that gain by being painted: Pines, Autumn fields. Mountain villages and paths. Cranes and deer. A very cold winter scene; an unspeakably hot summer scene.
The most appealing, and challenging parts of Makura no Soshi are her lists. They are clearly different from the lists that you or I usually make. The lists we make are homogeneous. They are collections of similar grouped items. They are related, similar, consistent and exclusive. We make grocery lists (milk, eggs, apples, bread, baking soda…), lists of thing to do (change oil, pick up dry cleaning, cut the grass…) and perhaps occasionally taxonomies (mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds, fish…). Sei Shonagon’s lists are heterogeneous. They contrast, overlap, contradict. They are symbolic or psychological, even paradoxical or impossible:
I shall say absolutely nothing about the spindle tree’
I am in love with this story. Peter Greeway's film is as marvelous, as the lists of Sei Shonagon.
