Kokinshu #381

[lnhammer]

Written when parting from someone.

    This thing called "parting"
doesn't even have color,
    so how can it be
it penetrates the heart
and dyes it sorrowful?

—7 April 2013

(Original by Ki no Tsurayuki.) A deceptively simple poem from Tsurayuki. "Penetrate" and "dye" double-translates shimu, done largely to bring out the point of the color. (Or so my notes from the time said -- to be honest, I haven't looked at this since. But it's time to get back into the swing of things.)


wakare chô
koto wa iro ni mo
aranaku ni
kokoro ni shimite
wabishikaruramu

---L.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I'm interested in the change in translation from "parting isn't a color" to "parting doesn't have a color." Was this some tricksy levels-of-directness thing, or more about syllable counts? --Matt

[lnhammer]

Two things behind it: a) I was thinking of the modern sense of aru that translates as "have" as in kane ga aru (though, heh, looking it up I see that sense didn't evolve until the middle ages) plus b) in English a dye is consider to have a color rather than to be a color, making "have" more clear and natural. Syllable count's the same either way: "isn't even a color." I suppose you could count b) as a levels-of-directness thing, though I was thinking of it as making it idiomatic.

---L.