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(★)("NI-0151" es mismo libro. "CL-0011" es version anterior de este libro.／ Translated by Donald Keene／ Between 1330 and 1332 the Buddhist priest Kenkoo, having as he put it, ´nothing better to do´, turned to his inkstone. He jotted down his thoughts, observations, and opinions ; anecdotes that he found interesting, amusing, or instructive ; accounts of customs and ceremonies --everything that seemed to him worthy of preservation. Donald Keene´s complete translation admirably presents this extraordinarily influential Japanese classic.／ The little essays --none of them more than a few pages in length, and some consisting of but two or three sentences-- not only achieve Kenko´s purpose, but give us in addition the self-portrait of a most engaging gentleman. He loves the past : every scrap of tradition is precious to him. He is haunted by transcience, by the vanity of human desires and ambitions, by the inevitable approach of death. He values modesty and simplicity, even as he appreciates subtlety and formality. Sometimes he contradicts himself, as a journal keeper may so easily do, but these lapses are in themselves endearing.／ However, Kenko is consistent in his statement of the peculiarly Japanese aesthetic principle : beauty is intrinsically bound to its perishability. The imperfect, the irregular, the understated, beginnings and endings --these have a charm of their own which surpasses that of completion.／ ´Essays in Idleness´ has been, writes Professor Keene, ´a central work in the development of Japanese taste. Though Kenko´s argument is not sustained and often consists merely in a brief statement of perceptions, he succeeded in defining with great sensitivity aesthetic preferences that have been true of Japan ever since.´／ ◆Kenkoo (also known as Urabe no Kaneyoshi or Yoshida no Kaneyoshi) is believed to have lived from 1283 to 1350. His family were hereditary Shinto priests of modest rank, but the youthful Kenko´s poetic abilities won him a place at court. He took Buddhist orders in 1324, after the death of the Retired Emperor Go-Uda, whom Kenko had served. Though Buddhist thought figures prominently in this book, Kenko was no hermit-priest : he remained in Kyoto, as familiar with worldly gossip as with pious reflections on the vanity of this world. ´Essays in Idleness´ was apparently unknown to the public during Kenko´s lifetime, but he achieved a considerable reputation as a poet and an expert on old traditions.／ Donal Keene is professor of Japanese at Columbia University. His many distinguished translations include those of works by Yukio Mishima, Osamu Dazai, and Kobo Abe. He is editor of ´Anthology of Japanese Literature´ and ´Modern Japanese Literature´, and author of ´Japanese Literature : An Introduction for Western Readers´ and ´World Within Walls : Japanese Literature of the Pre-modern Era, 1600-1867´. He received the Order of the Rising Sun in 1974 for his services to Japanese literature.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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