霖
The waka of this post is one of my favorites, and it really shows why japanese poetry (I would even say just poetry in general) can only be fully appreciated in its original language. It’s a complex one but luckily I found a lot of help in my books and also in this blog post. I also found more information about the poetess in this article : Ono no Komachi and The Standard of Japanese Female Beauty.
There is only one poem but here is a background video anyways.
古今集 113 - Ono no Komachi
花の色は移りにけりな徒らにわが身世にふるながめせしまに
How sad ! The flowers’
color has faded, while I dragged
my body in vain in
this world, watching the long rains,
lost in my anxious thoughts…
Summer Rain, Beppu Hotspring - Hirano Hakuhô, 1936.
Notes
There is so much to parse about this poem, I have two sheets of paper full of notes in a big notebook, I analysed every word with the help of course of my books and the article I’ve cited in the beginning.
花 : in the Kokinshû, this poem is placed in the second spring book, so it’s fair to assume that these flowers are actually cherry blossoms. They also symbolize the physical beauty of a woman.
移りにけりな < うつりにけりな ;
うつり : ren’yôkei of utsuru (to fade)
に : ren’yôkei of nu who indicates the completion of the action “to fade”.
けり : shûshikei of the auxiliary verb keri → I’ve read in the book of Helen McCullough that it can be used for expressing a feeling of wonder/surprise when the writer suddenly realises something for the first time.
な : an exclamatory final particle.
When I first translated it, I didn’t write the two firsts words but then I realised that the meaning brought by keri and na was not present, so I chose to write “how sad”.
Because of na and the shûshikei, it shows that the second line should actually be the closing line. The 2 first lines have been inverted with the 3, 4 and 5 : Haruo Shirane explains that this “grammatical inversion” (倒置法) is purely for an artistic reason, to give a “dramatic effect”.
徒らに < いたづらに : ren’yôkei of the nari adjectival verb itazura (“useless, fruitless, empty, in vain”) ; because it is in ren’yôkei form, it can modify a verb (like an adverb), and here is the interesting part : this line can basically be applied to the 2 first lines AND the 4th and 5th.
The choice is left to the translator. Helen McCullough for example chose to link the word with the 2 first lines about the cherry flowers.
In the third line of my translation, I could have written “myself in vain in” for 5 syllables, but I preferred “my body” instead.
わ : personal pronoun (I, me)
The most beautiful, amazing part of this waka resides in the two kakekotoba.
- ながめ
- 眺め : looking at, gazing off in the distance ; to be lost in sad, melancholic thoughts
- 長雨 / 霖 : long rain
- ふる
In his Reader, Haruo Shirane writes that ふる is the rentaikei of the verb 経 (ふ) and that it means “to pass through”. I guess it has the meaning “to pass through a place” ; here, the world, like we would pass through a forest or another physical location ? I looked up the verb (in the same book) and he gives 3 definitions : “to spend time, to pass by a place, to experience”.
In the article that I linked, furu is taken in the sense of “spending time” : the poetess has spent time (in the world).
I’m still not exactly sure about this, but I chose to keep the meaning “passing through the world”.
With that said, here is the incredible part about it. furu is a kakekotoba with a double, even triple meaning :
- 経る : to pass (through the world)
- 降る : to fall (for the rain)
- 旧る : to get old (for the poetess ; I don’t know why Mr. Shirane didn’t talk about this one in his book)
How amazing is that, seriously ? It fits perfectly with the nagame and the withered flowers. Just incredible. Personally I love the kanji 霖 for “long rain” because of the two little trees, when I see this kanji I instantly imagine a forest in my head with the appeasing sound of rain.
However, at the end, the part I don’t understand is the せ. Why the verb su (to do) is in its mizenkei form ? When I see the function of the mizenkei, I don’t understand why it’s conjugated like this. But I still get the meaning, with shi (rentaikei of ki for personal past) and ma (I guess the kanji for it is : 間) : “while I did…”. The final ni is a case particle who indicates the “time of action” I believe.
I also hesitated about closing the poem with “…” or just “.” ; it might sound like a silly detail but I feel like it actually changes the feeling carried by the end and the way we read it in our head 