![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Kokinshu #747
Monday, 25 January 2010 07:24 Isn't this that moon?
and isn't this spring the spring
of former days?
No, only myself alone
remaining as I was ...
tsuki ya aranu
haru ya mukashi no
haru naranu
waga mi hitotsu wa
moto no mi ni shite
---L.
and isn't this spring the spring
of former days?
No, only myself alone
remaining as I was ...
—17 January 2010
Original by Ariwara no Narihira, writing yet another famous, frequently translated poem, in this case on the anniversary of an affair being broken off by circumstances. Now this one has too much feeling in too few words. The first lines have two different forms of "to be" -- aranu is the negative verb of existence, modern nai ("moon is not"), while naranu is the negative cupola, modern de (wa) nai ("spring is not spring of old"). The moon and spring are examples of a larger group rather than an exhaustive list, a construction I couldn't render with anything resembling what's known as "poetry". Also not easily rendered is the final sentence fragment with a non-terminal verb form. "No" is not stated, but implied by answering the rhetorical questions with a contradiction. Original:tsuki ya aranu
haru ya mukashi no
haru naranu
waga mi hitotsu wa
moto no mi ni shite
---L.