Gosenshu #779

[lnhammer]

When she saw a man was becoming less and less interested [in her].

    Of my own desire
I boarded that floating boat
    of sorrow -- since that day
there's been not a single day
my sleeves aren't soaked by the waves.

—29 June 2011

Original by Ono no Komachi. The Gosen(waka)shu ("later collection (of Japanese poetry)") was the second imperially commissioned anthology. It was compiled around 951, largely using poems discarded from the Kokinshu augmented by some written since 905 -- and as such, it's usually seen as a weaker collection. It includes 4 poems attributed to Komachi, which I'm translating. Because it's not clear whether these four are discards of the KSS editors (who were in living memory of her) or augments by the GSS editors (who lived two generations later), the attributions are generally considered likely but not as solid as those from the KKS. The GSS headnotes, on the other hand, are widely considered much less reliable, as they seem to have been largely (and often lengthily) written by the editors by way of constructing a possible circumstance for composition, on the model of Tales of Ise, rather than received with the poems.

As for the poem, while tone-wise this otherwise sounds a lot like Komachi, I'm a little concerned by the repetition of "day," which seems clumsy for a poet noted for doubling her meanings instead of her words. Speaking of which doublings, a pivot-word: ukitaru = "floating" / uki = "sorrow." "Sleeves" is one of those omitted-but-understood words, while "of my own desire" translates kokoro kara (literally "from heart," idiomatically "by (own) desire"), which sets the stage for reading the boat as symbolic of an affair -- in which context soaked sleeves would, as often, be understood as wet from weeping from over love.

Admin note: complete KKS book 2, with revisions, starts here, and is permalinked in this journal's sidebar.


kokoro kara
ukitaru fune ni
nori-somete
hitohi mo nami ni
nurenu hi zo naki

---L.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I'm a little concerned by the repetition of "day," which seems clumsy for a poet noted for doubling her meanings instead of her words

I had exactly the same reaction! I wonder if this is evidence of some interesting linguistic phenomenon here, like maybe that "hi" as a counter was somehow considered different from "hi" as a noun in some fundamental way allowing the use of both in a single poem without awkwardness.

[lnhammer]

That is a thought. Though I vaguely remember some poem that seemed to be playing with the repetition of a counter against a stand-alone noun -- who knows where on earth that was.

It still seems clumsy.

---L.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, I must admit that my proposal is probably rooted in a very 19th-century, "we know that Ono no Komachi wouldn't write a bad poem, so we must find a way for it not to be bad" sort of critical thinking. Probably easier just to declare it not hers, or one of her duds (and therefore not worthy of the KKS itself.)

[lnhammer]

Aside from the repetition, it reads a lot like Komachi -- same tone, same topic, same twisty head-bending required to unpack it. I'm inclined to provisionally consider it as her not at her best and dropped from the KKS because of the repetition.

Though of course, as you know Bob, the editors were perfectly willing to include poems with the same verb three times in a row, in different conjugations.

---L.