Sunday, 27 March 2011

Kokinshu #938

Sunday, 27 March 2011 08:35
lnhammer: the Chinese character for poetry, red on white background (Default)
Written in reply when Fun'ya no Yasuhide was appointed Secretary of Three-Rivers Province, and sent to her, "Won't you come tour the provinces?"

    Lonely and, thus, sad
I feel like a duckweed plant
    that would break its roots
and float away downstream --
were there waters that enticed me.

—14 January 2011

Original by Ono no Komachi. For Yasuhide, see #8. Three-Rivers (which I wouldn't normally translate, but Komachi plays off the name) is the literal meaning of Mikawa Province, the eastern half of modern Aichi Prefecture, and Secretary was the third-ranking provincial official. Duckweed (ukikusa, lit. "floating grass," and which is indeed lightly rooted) was used in Chinese poetry as a metaphor for travel, here also repurposed via a pivot-word on uki="sadness" as a symbol for emotional detachment. "Like" is not explicit in the original but the effect of the pivot is a direct comparison. Yasuhide's playful invitation, as it is usually interpreted, provoked a playful response that's also melancholy -- a startling trick, making this poem difficult to translate with anything resembling adequacy.


wabinureba
mi o ukikusa no
ne o taete
sasou mizu araba
inamu to zo omou


---L.

About

Warning: contents contain line-breaks.

As language practice, I like to translate poetry. My current project is Chinese, with practice focused on Tang Dynasty poetry. Previously this was classical Japanese, most recently working through the Kokinshu anthology (archived here). Suggestions, corrections, and questions always welcome.

There's also original pomes in the journal archives.

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