Kokinshu #175

[lnhammer]

(Topic unknown.)

    River of Heaven,
is it because you're spanned by
    a bridge of colored leaves
that the Weaver Maid awaits
the arrival of autumn?

—14 November 2011

(Original author unknown.) And from a heavenly perspective we swoop down to earth. This poem is especially admired for its romantic tone, and I'm not really satisfied with how well I've conveyed that. Ama no kawa ("River of Heaven," now without its banks) is another key 5-syllable phrase often appearing without a case-marker; for this one, the only way I can make grammatical sense of it is as address, as the second-person subject of the transitive verb watasu ("to span," with the leaves as explicit direct object), even though that treats the verb as passive and so may be way off base. My justification for the interpretive "the arrival of" is how emphatically the autumn being waited for is marked. Note this first mention of autumn leaves -- here written with kanji meaning "crimson leaf," but the term encompassed all the colors of the season.


ama (no) kawa
momiji o hashi ni
wataseba ya
tanabatatsume no
aki o shimo matsu

---L.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Re the structure -- I always liked the way this one uses "momiji" as a direct object, it strikes me as very romantic. I think your analysis doesn't have to be passive: "River of Heaven, is it because you lay down a bridge of colored leaves that the weaver-maid... etc." Although, I'm not convinced that "River of Heaven" can't be treated as a sort of exclamation at the start: "The River of Heaven! Is it because (someone) lays down a bridge (on it)... etc."

Also, I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think that putting the "momiji o" up front implies that it is the part being questioned, so it would be: "Is it because the bridge you lay down is of AUTUMN leaves that the Weaver-Maid waits for autumn?" or maybe (a little more freely) "Is the reason that the Weaver-Maid waits for autumn the fact that the colored leaves (of autumn) become a bridge?" Although having typed that out, I'm much less sure that it actually means anything different. --Matt

[lnhammer]

So not so much passive as reflexive? *squints* Okay, I can see that.

I've not met that use of moving things up front. I can sort of see that. And that gives me a lead on how to make this one better. Thanks!

---L.