(gentle piano music) - Welcome, Ron.

Thanks for coming to campus on this cold, snowy afternoon.

- Definitely.

- And I been thinking about the conversations we've had in the past and both about Japan and about the beauty of writing implements, of good writing implements, which I see you brought some.

- That's right.

So, and I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity to pick your brain about one of the great books that we read on the Eastern Classics Program, "The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon".

There's an aspect of it that I'd like to ask you about and get a better understanding of.

But before I go there, maybe I should say something about the book to fill in the audience on a book that they might not not have read or know about.

And so tell me if I'm getting this right.

So "The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon" was written by a 10th century Japanese woman in the Heian Court.

10th century.

So we think about this by the time of Anselm, right?

So Europe was emerging from the dark ages.

And so there's this high sophisticated courtly culture in Japan at the time that is full of beautiful and subtle things, paintings, the fabrics, and above all, the literature, you know.

So from that age, the two books that everyone now still read, well, not everyone, but people who can appreciate things still read is "The Tale of Genji" by Lady Murasaki, which is a massive book.

1,400 pages in English translation, one of the great classics of the world.

And this book.

- That's right.

- "Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon", which is not 1,400 pages, but it's a smaller thing.

Sei Shonagon was a court lady, a contemporary of Lady Murasaki, who wrote "The Tale of Genji".

They knew each other.

In fact, they loathed each other because there's some ways they were opposites in sensibility.

And she wrote in Japanese like Lady Murasaki.

The men of the time wrote in Chinese, in classical Chinese.

And so this was the time when Japanese literature took off as Japanese literature, right?

So you had women who were writing with no prior tradition and coming out with works that were utterly original, right?

And so "The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon" reads something like a journal or an imitation of a journal, right?

And so it's full of daily things.

Lists of things she likes, lists of things she doesn't like, little incidents, anecdotes, sometimes poetry contests, you know.

It's fragmented, right?

So one can jump in any time and there's no narrative structure, which is one of its appeals.

What else do I have to say?

What am I missing?

- It's also gorgeous.

- It's gorgeous.

- Other than that, I couldn't have said that any better.

- Yeah, it's one of the most beautiful examples of Japanese style.

- I would agree, I would agree.

- Yeah, so it's exquisitely written, it's lucid.

The translators have a hard time coming up - That's right.

- With renditions that are elegant enough.

- That's right.

- Incisive enough, right?

- That's right, that's right.

- So the book can be very beautiful.

- It can be very funny.

- That's right, quirky, you know?

- Quirky, quirky.

It can hit on sadness, right?

- It's true.

- Right?

So what I'd like to ask about is, and I'll just open this to paragraph 258.

And I'm reading as you are from the Meredith McKinney translation in Penguin Classics, which is the most recent fine translation.

So this is Sei Shonagon talking about receiving a gift from Her Majesty, the empress, about whom we can talk later.

But there's a very sort of intimate relation between Sei Shonagon and the empress.

Right, so she says, "I was talking with some people in Her Majesty's presence, or it may have been something I said as a result of her own words.

And I remarked, 'At times, when I'm beside myself with exasperation at everything, I'm temporarily inclined to feel I'd simply be better off dead, or I'm longing to just go away somewhere, anywhere.

Then if I happened to come by some lovely white paper for everyday use and a good writing brush, or white decorated paper or mikyunoku paper, I'm immensely cheered.

And find myself thinking I might perhaps be able to go on living for a while longer after all.

And when I unroll a section, a fresh green korai matting, thick and finely woven, and with the edging design in vivid black and white, I'm overcome with a feeling that life itself is just too wonderful.

And I really couldn't bear to relinquish it just yet.'

'The simplest trifles console you, don't they?

', remarked Her Majesty with a smile.

It must have been a very different sort of person who gazed at the moon above sad Ubasute Mountain.

The others who were present also teased me with such comments as, 'You've certainly come up with an incredibly easy version of a magical formula for averting trouble.'

Right, and then not long after this, when I'd gone back home and was in great distress, Her Majesty sent me a wrapped gift of 20 bundles of magnificent paper."

And it goes on in this vein, where you see somebody, who's somewhat prone to moody ups and downs, right?

She's a bit of a depressive melancholiac at times.

But it's very striking that this good paper, good brush, this special paper, good matting, like this can pull her up again.

This happens several times in the whole book.

And more than several times, she mentions the quality of her utensils, right?

Her implements.

So I was thinking about this side of "The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon", this aspect of it where with the emphasis on, in a way, the ceremony of writing, the importance of good writing implements and atmosphere.

What do you make of that?

What is that about?

- It's a difficult question.

You know, the first thing that comes to mind is a realization, not particularly original, that I had in graduate school when I was just really getting into the ink as it were, of modern Japanese literature, which of course, required studying the ancient literature as well.

And one thing that I remember reading, essentially had this to say.

It said that the idea that you could write a poem and not have beautiful handwriting in the calligraphic tradition was unthinkable.

And for someone born so terribly late, you know, you open up these books.

And even if you've gone through the process of sort of assiduously learning this very difficult language, the ancient form of Japanese, and you read it, you tend to read it in a modern style book with regular font.

And of course, like one is thankful for that.

But you can begin actually by virtue of that media, of that particular medium, to imagine that the poem has an independent existence.

An existence independent of its physical instantiation.

Something about modern type just makes you think things are abstractly out there in the world.

There's something about regular font, oddly, which somehow almost triggers a certain, almost reflexive platonism.

- Yeah, right.

- That, you know what I mean?

That there's a sense that this poem exists.

And in every book that it's printed, for every one of them that's out there, the sort of reality of that poem, independent of the text, the physical text, seems to be more and more convincing.

But nothing could be farther from the truth.

Another scholar was talking about how, in addition, of course, to like beautiful handwriting, the actual paper that a poem might be written on.

And of course, one has to remember that the poems might be written and then sent to someone else in this particular courtly environment.

So it's not as if these poems simply are born outside of a particular social context.

And that social context involves people, very living people, exchanging language like a little post office, just sending signals back and forth, but not like ones and zeros.

Gorgeous, beautiful.

You could almost imagine a badly written poem still being embraced with real relish, simply by virtue of the fact that it was so beautifully presented.

- Yeah, and you have some in the "Tale of Genji", right?

- That's right, yeah.

- That's right, yeah.

Mediocre, aesthetically, or at least in terms of the language, but powerful in terms of its effect because the poem, unlike we're trained to think poems are today, do have a very profound physical presence.

So to get back to the question.

The fact that Sei Shonagon can feel herself cheered by receiving a big bundle of paper seems more easy to imagine.

One always sort of shutters to think like, to think sort of too boldly about what someone that long ago was thinking.

But I feel like it's safe to imagine that, how to put this, that it must have represented not just, oh, I can write this much, but that all of that paper, all the way down meant the possibility of engaging her actual world around her through the sort of physical vehicle of the paper.

That on the top of which was going to be, of course, like all the brilliant thoughts that she was then going to be able to commit to record and then distribute in a certain way in the world that she lived in.

I can only imagine it must've been like a giant microphone that she could use to engage the world that she was in, which of course, was small, like bounded in a nutshell, in a certain way, but of course, infinitely huge because what else exists beyond the capital?

So my sense is that, I mean, to take one pass at the question, I think it may a question one has to come back to a few times, but the physical beauty of the paper seems to me to represent the possibility for installing her language into an actual world onto which she was going to impose a kind of order.

The beautiful order of her mind that you see in the pages of this book.

- Yeah, no, that's wonderful.

So I'm thinking about your word platonism, which I found very helpful.

You know, so the idea of the platonic idea of the word is of a kind of symbolic representation of a thought that one has had that is not material, right?

And so then the idea, the thought comes first in the platonic and the Aristotelian version.

So that comes first and its abstract is immaterial, then that finds its way into a sound, and then that finds its way into writing, right?

So that's the platonic version, where essentially the word is an unembodied thing that is sort of abstract as unembodied.

It's kind of like outside the world.

- Sure, sure.

- Right, and then by some mysterious alchemy, it becomes embodied.

- Right.

- Whereas in this description of what happens, the word might even happen the moment she sits down with the brush.

- One imagines.

- Yeah.

- Especially, given that this is such a precious commodity.

I mean, you sort of start to think like what it must have been like to write.

It's not like you have a word process like you do today, where you can just sort of type away into infinite space.

I mean, I imagine that a lot of the composition process was happening in a very dynamic way in the mind in relationship to the actual act of writing.

Again, I can't say much about it because in some ways I'm sort of, I was just born too late to really sort of imagine what that might have been like.

I know you're interested in film.

By way of analogy, there was a documentary I saw recently, where before digital cameras, before digital film, people talked actors about what it was like to hear the camera begin to whir.

That (imitates whirring sound), that sound that begins to happen?

Because it's literally the sound of capital.

Do you know what I mean?

It's like you know this is incredibly precious 'cause with every whir of the camera, money is being spent.

- Yeah.

- And how the actor in this documentary was talking about how it just focused the mind in a certain kind of way.

When imagine something maybe similar, might've been the case with this bundle of paper.

You know, the idea that you have this precious commodity and to which you're gonna commit your thoughts.

And with this really intimate engagement with that material, it must've really freighted everything you were saying with a certain kind of importance, certain kind of value, certain performative quality.

- Yeah, you don't make mistakes.

- You certainly avoid it if you can't.

- Yeah, you know.

- So tell me about the paper.

- Ooh, again, my area was more modern Japanese literature, so I can't say much about it, but what I do know is that book production ended in very beautiful affairs.

I mean, and this is not something that Western culture is entirely a stranger to.

You know, these sort of illuminated editions of books.

We've seen these that have a value as a physical object.

And the very beauty of which must have elevated the word in a certain kind of way.

You know, you think about you get images of gold leaf in your mind.

- Yeah, yeah.

- You know, really elegantly precisely rendered letters might have in a way opposite to the, well, maybe opposite to the platelets direction somehow, like the actual physical richness of the text.

Maybe gave one a sense that the language that those letters were freighted to carry were as precious, as beautiful, as powerful as all the forces material, economic, social, energetic, that went into actually assembling that object.

- That's right, yeah.

- It seems to me that, like, when you look at the Genji scrolls, I mean, it almost seems like a shame to even read them.

One can simply look at the book, almost in the way that like, maybe you imagine a person in her study just sort of admiring the beautiful tones on the wall.

Like Roka talks about the books that like you haven't read in some sort of foreign language.

Like in the sort of strange appeal that they have as objects beyond your understanding in a certain way.

One imagines, anyway, or at least I do, that the intense physical beauty of these things was maybe not equally stimulating, but comparably stimulating to the actual language within the texts.

- Yeah.

- Their actual physical beauty elevating the mind and heart and soul of the reader, maybe as much as anything actually written there.

- Yeah, yeah.

So I'm thinking, as you described me, I'm imagining as she sits down with brush and this precious paper, right?

That the empress gave her.

It's very high stakes, high pressure event.

- Indeed.

- The moment she puts the pen, the pen, the brush to the paper, it's got to be good, right?

- Yeah, that's right.

- And with he reputation as a female wit and a female poet in the court circles, every man was afraid of her intelligence.

- That's right.

- Right?

- That's right.

- And she knew that she of all people could not slip up.

- That's right.

- She cannot write anything bad.

- That's right, she of all people, - She of all people.

- That's right.

- And the presentation.

So once she's written this thing, it's gotta be good.

- That's right.

- In fact, it's gotta be perfect.

- I would think.

- Right and then she's gonna do this, wrap it up, fold it perfectly.

- That's right.

- With whatever perfect accessories there is to it, flower or a leaf.

- That's right, that's right.

- And then send it in the perfect way to the right person.

- I think that's right, yeah.

- All of that has got to work.

- Yeah, like, however the book finds its way to a larger audience, you can't imagine it being anything like, you know, sending a PDF off into the cosmos and hoping for the best.

Seemed like a very different kind of affair.

And the fact that she given her sort of very particular social position and being a person upon whom all of these amazing expectations rested, I can only imagine that she, in writing this, felt herself uniquely privileged.

Maybe we need a word between privileged and cursed, I'm thinking - Yeah, right.

Like, you have an amazing opportunity to write this document.

At the same time, historically speaking, as this other document is being written, this Chinese text that people know at the time is being composed or being written rather or copied.

And then now almost in counterpoint to that, this gift is made of her, where she's going to write a document, a woman not writing in the Chinese tradition.

I mean, it must've been an awesome responsibility, but clearly, you know, centuries by now of scholarship, of fandom, have testified unambiguously that she really did rise to the challenge, to sort of put into word and to the word made physical, all the sort of the strange liquidities of court life, creating this document that seems to represent the aesthetic, the ethos, the mood of Heian culture.

I mean, it's astounding.

- Yeah, yeah.

What accounts for her happiness in receiving this paper, the brush?

- Well, I mean, don't you think it's interesting in the part of the text that you read, that on the one hand you have the possibility of suicide.

- Yeah.

- However, it might have been somewhat overdramatized.

It might have been somewhat theatrical.

It might have been somewhat tongue in cheek, or it may have been quite serious.

You know, the language seems to allow for a range of imaginative possibilities there.

But in any event, you know that a serious voice is speaking, whether it's jocular or whether it's deadly serious, literally deadly serious.

And you know, on the one hand you have that.

You know, and you think in our sort of hopelessly modern terms about like, what would be the kind of thing that would lift one's spirits?

What would be the thing that would allow one to go on?

You know, Hamlet, like, I still have to kill my father.

Like, is that what's gonna get you out of bed?

In this particular case, paper, which I just can empty paper.

And then in the description that you read, the passage that you read, you know, there's all the talk about the blankness.

- Yeah.

- Which is an amazing thing.

And that somehow, that seemed to represent human possibility, a reason to continue living.

I mean, all the aspiring writers in the world, you can only envy a problem like that, a challenge like that, - You know, so I'm thinking about the high stakes game of courtly life in the Heian court for a woman, right?

- Particularly.

- It's one false step and you are permanently humiliated.

- Yes.

- Right, and so it's unlivable.

Your life will be not worth living if you look stupid.

- Right, not viable.

- Yeah, or clumsy.

- That's right.

You know, so she spends the day walking a tightrope, right?

Various kinds of tightrope.

You know, they're confined to what, three rooms?

So three rooms, they don't get to see men's faces.

- That's right.

- Right, the men operate from behind a screen.

- That's right, that's right.

- A little bit like kind of Zoom, where they have a black screen.

- Right, that's right.

- So it looks like a very, very confined life.

And any word that you put out, anything that you put out there into public space is potentially dangerous.

- Sure, right.

So great risks.

- Yeah, that's right.

- Involved in any expression.

- That's right.

- So she lives in that world.

She seems to like it.

- Yeah, yeah.

- She seems to like the challenge.

- Yeah.

- So I'm thinking, okay, so the empress.

One of the things that struck me is that the empress, in a way, is giving her a contest.

Is saying, "Okay, do this."

But there's a kind of intimacy between Sei Shonagon and the empress.

You know, the empress is the only person that Sei Shonagon has a crush on.

And you know, she's doesn't seem that interested in the men.

She evaluates them objectively.

But the one person whose opinion that she really cares about is the empress'.

- That's right, that's right.

- Right, and I think the empress knows that.

Part of the striking thing about this interchange is that Sei Shonagon is touched by the empress's recognition of her emotional needs, right?

The empress gets her.

- That's right, that's right.

- But I think that increases the high stakes, right?

She cannot disappoint now.

- That's right.

This problem, which could seem perhaps, I mean, probably never a problem like this would seem unreal, but must have seemed particularly focused.

You know, it reminds you of Emily Dickinson in some ways.

Like, you know, in her brother's wife, with whom of course famously maintains a spirited, often erotically charged exchange of letters in a way that isn't identical to, but helps one imagine maybe court life in a sense.

A kind of aristocracy.

You know, a certain exchange, a certain like lettered culture and epistolary culture.

And when you look at those letters between Dickinson and her, dear, dear, dear friend, you sort of imagine that maybe she had, in her, a kind of concretization of the reader.

A sort of person that, in relation to whom your own poetic utterances were going to acquire a kind of superhuman focus.

I am writing for you in a certain way.

And it's as if the universal were just made incredibly particular.

- Right.

- And if I can trusting your mind as I do, convey my thoughts to you, and by you be understood, then it means that you and I, when we read Dickinson all these years later, can recognize the universe in a certain way because it was so perfectly crafted to such a profound ear.

(gentle piano music)