Kokinshu #300

[lnhammer]

Written on floating autumn leaves when he crossed the Tatsuta River as he passed the mountain in Kannabi.

    Because it's autumn
who travels past the mountain
    in Kannabi, it's
to the Tatsuta River
she offers her prayer strips.

—6 September 2012

Original by Kiyohara no Fukayabu. Here kannabi is understood as the specific place, making the "mountain in/of Kannabi" Mt. Mimuro, which the Tatsuta does indeed flow past. I'm unclear on whether the offerings are made "in" or "to" the river -- ni can indicate either a location or an indirect object. I use "she" for the season to identify it, as in #298, with the goddess Tatsutahime.


kannabi no
yama o sugiyuku
aki nareba
tatsutagawa ni zo
nusa wa tamukuru

---L.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Written on floating autumn leaves

Requiring the most exquisitely timed and delicate brushwork!

I think "to" is right and "in" would be wrong here, because of "tamukuru"'s relation to (contemporary) "mukeru", "point (s.t.) towards". Maybe "into" would be acceptable but I think your "to" is closer to the original, and poetically superior too (less leaden literality).

What did surprise me me was "Because it's autumn who travels..." rather than "Because autumn is traveling...". Was this just a metrical thing or do we disagree on interpretation of meaning? --Matt

[lnhammer]

Ah -- hadn't noticed the mukeru connection. Yeah, that makes me more secure on the "to" interpretation, which I had provisionally landed on as poetically more apt.

We may be disagreeing on the interpretation of yuku aki nareba -- there are ways of saying "because autumn goes" that don't put as much emphasis on the identity of autumn doing it, some of which I'm sure could have filled out the line, and Fukayabu could have used one those if that's what he'd meant. Admittedly it does look like I'm render, say, aki zo yukeba, which is something of a problem. But the array of emphatic structures in classical Japanese is always a challenge.

---L.