Kokinshu #322

[lnhammer]

(Topic unknown.)

    At my house the snow
blankets everything -- there is
    not even a track
-- for there isn't anyone
pushing through the drifts to visit.

—28 September & 24 October 2012

(Original author unknown.) More on the loneliness of winter. Compare #287, though here instead of separate statements we get an inverted sentence structure -- and a better excuse for not visiting. "Drifts" is interpretive, implied by the verb for pushing through them.


waga yado wa
yuki furishikite
michi mo nashi
fumiwakete tou
hito shi nakereba

---L.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

Is it known what sort of geographical range the poets represent? Like, how far south is within the pale?

[lnhammer]

For the anonymous ones, we don't know, but in this section of the anthology* the poems have been transmitted using the same dialect used by named aristocrats from the capital. The majority are, I would guess, from the Kansai region (and most of the geographic references, aside from the travel poetry, are to there), which roughly corresponds to the "home" provinces, but I don't know enough about regional differences at that time** to say anything more.

* Book XX has poems from the Kanto/Tohoko areas, which (attempt to) deliberately use the dialect of the Eastern Lands, plus some ritual songs using archaic forms.

** From the Manyo'shu time, there's records from outside the "home" provinces that show dialect differences, but I don't know of any from the Kokinshu times.

---L.

[thistleingrey]

Neat. Not so much re: Kyūshū, then. I was pondering writer/reader expectation.

[lnhammer]

Aside from mikado officials posted to Kyūshū offices (such as Sugewara no Michizane after his demotion), which was the least prestigious circuit of them all, nothing that I know of.

---L.