Books: Calligraphy

THE PILLOW-BOOK OF SEI SHONAGON— Translated by Arthur Waley—Houghton Mifflin ($2.50). The Tale of Genji, recently done into English, revealed a highly sophisticated civilization in loth Century Japan. Lady Murasaki’s novel is fiction glossed with decadent romance, but her accuracy of atmosphere and circumstance is corroborated by this loth Century Japanese diary. Sei Shonagon was in the service of Empress Sadako at the elaborate court of Heian. Not the least of her qualifications for the post was her handwriting—the cult of calligraphy amounting almost to a religion at court. Love affairs often began by some chance view of a lady’s writing. On scented rice-paper Shonagon traced her delicate characters, decorating her “poems” with puns and symbols, word play and subtle metaphors. Her diary is less fancy and more amusing than her verse. She divided experience into “Disagreeable Things,” “Very Tiresome Things,” “Deceptive Things.” Under “Annoying Things” she lists: “When one sends a poem or a kayeshi [return poem] to someone, and after it has gone, thinks of some small alteration —perhaps only a couple of letters—that would have improved it.”