دانلود کتاب Genji Days

"A journal-like text describing Seidensticker's experiences tranlating The Tale of Genji."

"This is a book of excerpts from a diary kept continuously since New Year's Day, 1959. They are from the _Genji_ years, or some of them, the years when translating _The Tale of Genji_ was my principal concern. The first of the really earnest _Genji_ years, reference to my diary tells me, in answer to a question frequently asked, was 1966 - although the first three chapters had been done in rough draft at some earlier time. Considerable excerpts from the late sixties have already been published in Japanese, in the magazines _Chuo Koron_ and _Jiyu_. About midway through the _Genji_ years there came what might be called the Kawabata interlude, a time of concentration upon Kawabata and his doings and writings. It was the time of the Nobel award and two book-length translations...The contract for the complete translation was signed in April, 1972. A first draft was finished in September, 1973....In making transcripts, however, several times bulkier than this volume, I presently found myself adding material not related to the _Genji_, such material as dreams, with which the diary is studded; and so the entries gathered here are conglomerates, _Genji_ matters mixed in with others, as they are in the original diary."

Edward Seidensticker, 1921–2007, was a distinguished translator and scholar who was responsible for introducing the works of a number of important modern Japanese novelists to the English-speaking world. At the time of the writing of this book, he was spending half of the year in New York where he was Professor of Japanese at Columbia University and half of the year in Tokyo.

"It is interesting to read the diary of someone who is in process of translating a masterpiece such as, _Tale of Genji_. Truly done in a journal style it is fearless in certain ways --the admission of sexual orientation and desire for pornography being but two of the starling things found in the text. What is truly interesting is how the author related to the original text of Genji and the Waley translation. The importance of these things loom large in the diary. For the hard core Japanese literature buff are the conversations with Kawabata and Mishima who the author knew very personally."

"In the past I have read translations of his by such esteemed writers as Yasunari Kawabata, Yukio Mishima and Junichiro Tanizaki. Throughout the journal entries he often refers to these writers as well, especially Kawabata and Mishima since both of the m committed suicide during the writing of these journal entries that comprise the memoir, which take place largely form 1970-1974. He reveals that earlier in 1968, Mishima had essentially told Seidsticker that he was planning on killing himself, but Seidensticker was caught off guard by Kawabata's suicide that followed world recognition after winning the Nobel Prize and to which he attributes fatigue and inability to sleep as the most likely reasons for his suicide. Seidensticker makes observations about the volatile politics that were taking place in the US and on his campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. For example, he goes out of his way to see Huey Newton's speech at the campus. In another section, he discusses the ramifications of terrorist acts taken by young Japanese radicals in Tel Aviv. More often than not he is not impressed with the rhetoric and almost finds himself in opposition to the youth politics of the day, which he often sees as frivolous and not particularly deeply considered. There are more prosaic aspects such as his discussions of trips to the market, buying flowers, stop overs in Hawaii, visiting sex shops, and recording dreams. However, throughout the memoirs Seidensticker makes interesting observations about literature, Murasaki, Arthur Waley's influential translation, and The Tale of Genji."