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Hyakunin Isshu #37
Monday, 8 February 2010 07:33 In the autumn fields
blown by the gusty winds,
the white drops of dew
scatter everywhere like pearls
from a broken necklace.
shiratsuyu ni
kaze no fukishiku
aki no no wa
tsuranuki tomenu
tama zo chirikeru
---L.
blown by the gusty winds,
the white drops of dew
scatter everywhere like pearls
from a broken necklace.
—5 February 2010
Original by Fun'ya no Asayasu. Here's a good exercise in how a topic and unstated subject can interact -- if you take the topic headword, field (no), to be subject of the main verb, scatter (chiru), you get nonsense. The implied grammatical subject is instead the white dew (shiratsuyu) from the relative clause modifying no. Not a construction that English can readily reproduce without either ugly repetition or promoting the subject out of the relative clause. Note that it's not that the dewdrops/jewels "are scattered" but rather they "scatter" -- active verb here, in contrast to the passive fukishiku -- and that the winds blow in a frequentive inflection. Neep, neep.shiratsuyu ni
kaze no fukishiku
aki no no wa
tsuranuki tomenu
tama zo chirikeru
---L.