Author: Sugawara No Takasue no Musume File Type: pdf A thousand years ago, a young Japanese girl embarked on a journey from deep in the countryside of eastern Japan to the capital. Forty years later, with the long account of that journey as a foundation, the mature woman skillfully created an autobiography that incorporates many moments of heightened awareness from her long life. Married at age thirty-three, she identified herself as a reader and writer more than as a wife and mother enthralled by fiction, she bore witness to the dangers of romantic fantasy as well as the enduring consolation of self-expression. This readers edition streamlines Sonja Arntzen and Moriyuki Itos acclaimed translation of the Sarashina Diary for general readers and classroom use. This translation captures the lyrical richness of the original text while revealing its subtle structure and ironic meaning, highlighting the authors deep concern for Buddhist belief and practice and the juxtaposition of poetic passages and narrative prose. The translators commentary offers insight into the authors family and world, as well as the style, structure, and textual history of her work.**ReviewAs the first translation to do justice to the complexity of the Sarashina Diary, Arntzen and Itos work offers a fresh perspective on premodern Japanese diary literature as well as an accessible yet scholarly window into Heian culture, the life of one woman, and the transformation of a life into literature. (Christina Laffin, University of British Columbia, author of Rewriting Medieval Japanese Women Politics, Personality, and Literary Production in the Life of Nun Abutsu) This sparkling new version of the Sarashina Diary opens out an eleventh-century classic for twenty-first-century readers. Sonja Arntzen and Ito Moriyuki situate the diary culturally and historically, and their translation conveys both the vivid realism of Takasue no Musumes prose and the haunting melancholy of her poems. As the author herself says of Mount Fuji, this unique work looks like nothing else in the world. (David Damrosch, Harvard University) Arntzen and Ito accept the theory, generally disregarded by twentieth-century scholarship, that the author of the Sarashina Diary was also the author of several court romances (monogatari), two of which are extant. Yet her diary makes no mention of these works, showing that the careful reader must pay as much attention to what Takasue no Musume does not say as to what she does. This translation presents a Sarashina unlike that of any previous English translation and is supported by an extensive introduction that thoroughly contextualizes the author and her work. (Joshua Mostow, University of British Columbia) A well-conceived edition of a poignant text that remains of both literary and historical appeal, with very good presentation of useful supporting material to go with the solid translation. (Complete Review) We can be grateful for this new translation... through long, thoughtful immersion, the translators have brought to life a world otherwise unavailable to the modern, non-specialist reader. (Times Literary Supplement) At last Sonja Artnzen, one of our most conscientious translators, has given us a new and weighty version of this beautiful and useful short classic the lover of Heian letters or of Japanese history, of womens writing from any place or time, of dreams will find this book exciting. (H-Asia) With its extensive and insightful analysis, this excellent translation supplants the 1971 translation by Ivan Morris. (CHOICE) Sonja Arntzen and Ito Moriyuki have produced a fluid and engaging translation of Sugawara no Takasue no Musumes eleventh-century diary, one worthy in our own time of comfy reading nook and carrel. (Gusts) Arntzen and Ito have provided a useful and provocative book. (Fay Beauchamp Education About Asia) About the AuthorSonja Arntzen is professor emerita of literature at the University of Toronto and the University of Alberta. She is the author of Ikkyu and the Crazy Cloud Anthology A Zen Poet of Medieval Japan and The Kagero Diary A Womans Autobiographical Text from Tenth-Century Japan. Ito Moriyuki is professor of Japanese literature at Gakushuin Womens College in Tokyo. His book Sarashina nikki kenkyu (Research on the Sarashina Diary) is recognized as a definitive work on the subject, and he has just published Sarashina nikki no enkinho (Perspective in the Sarashina Diary).

Author: Harry Edwin Eiss File Type: pdf No one heard the shot. No one ever found the gun. It was Sunday, July 27, 1890. Vincent had recently finished Wheatfield with Crows, thought to be his final painting, one that he described as representing vast fields of wheat beneath troubled skies, one where he said in a letter he meant to send to Theo I did not need to go out of my way to try to express cheerlessness and extreme loneliness. The letter never got sent, but was found stuffed in his smock. That morning, as usual, he walked out into the wheat fields with his easel, brushes, tubes of color and folding stool, perhaps hoping to reach his destination before the gang of local boys and girls were up and able to tease him and throw tomatoes. Le Crau, a wide plain of ripe grain, fields of citron, yellow, tan, and ochre, spread out beneath the bright Provencal sun. Its safe to assume he heard the cicadas singing loudly, the swiping swishes of the farmers scythes already cutting through the rich wheat stalks, the gusts of wind whispering through the olive branches. Driven and filled with energy for months, he had been quickly, with an assurance that overcame and perhaps even came from his doubts and struggles, putting his own dramatic visions on canvas after canvas. But today he did not go into the fields to paint, or, perhaps, in the beginning he did, perhaps in the morning that was his intention. No one will ever know. He said he brought the revolver to frighten off the crows. Possibly that was his original intention when he included it with his lunch of bread and milk. In the end its probably not relevant, except for the endless attempts to analyze him, to dig into his complex psyche, at once brilliant and yet impelled to self-destruction. The Ravoux family were sitting on the terrace of their cafe when he returned, a bit concerned because he was late, but not overly so. When he finally appeared, his walk was more uneven than usual, and he held his hand over his stomach. Monsieur Vincent, Mrs. Ravoux said, we were worried, we are glad to see you come. Has anything bad happened? No, but I . . . he left his reply unfinished as he passed inside. Mr. Ravoux followed him upstairs, where he found him sitting on his bed, facing the wall. I wanted to kill myself. This book is a critical examination of Vincent van Gogh that offers insights into his life, his religious beliefs, his relationships with women, and, of course, his paintings. It includes discussions of his letters, and responds to many of the previous works about him, dispelling some of the myths that have no foundation and pointing out how many of the claims made about him and many of the popular beliefs that have grown up around him are at best guesswork. It explores psychological, neurological, theological, philosophical, aesthetic, and historical paradigms for comprehending his enigmatic and enticing personality.