Kokinshu #38
Friday, 17 December 2010 07:07 Written on plum flowers plucked and sent to someone.
Yet if not to you,
then to whom might I show it?
The flowering plum!
Only the knowing can know
both its color and its scent.
kimi narade
tare ni ka misemu
ume no hana
iro o mo ka o mo
shiru hito zo shiru
---L.
Yet if not to you,
then to whom might I show it?
The flowering plum!
Only the knowing can know
both its color and its scent.
—23 October 2010
Original by Ki no Tomonori. A frequently anthologized poem, not to mention quoted in The Tale of Genji. In Japanese esthetics, "knowing" something's color is to apprehend its surface beauty, while "knowing" its scent implies a deeper insight into its true nature. (This seems to lie behind the idiom of color-and-scent meaning loveliness mentioned in #37.) I'd translate shiru hito ("person who knows") less literally as something like "the cognoscente" if the repetition of shiru ("know") didn't seem important. Again, an unmarked-and-ambiguous flower, though in this case someone else is being explicitly addressed, so here can be only exclamation or possibly a genitive possessing the color and scent.kimi narade
tare ni ka misemu
ume no hana
iro o mo ka o mo
shiru hito zo shiru
---L.