lnhammer: the Chinese character for poetry, red on white background (Default)
lnhammer ([personal profile] lnhammer) wrote2010-01-25 07:24 am

Kokinshu #747

    Isn't this that moon?
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.

[personal profile] ex_asakiyume313 2010-01-25 04:17 pm (UTC)(link)
Wow! I knew there had been a lot of translations, but wow! That page you link to is impressive.

I love this poem.

[personal profile] ex_asakiyume313 2010-01-25 08:05 pm (UTC)(link)
It was many and many a year ago since I read any commentary on this poem--tell me what Tsuriyuki's criticism was?

It's a strange poem (not your translation, which actually I like as much as many of them) because it reverses expectations. You expect the moon and the season to be the same, timeless, and a person only to change--but he's saying only he's unchanged, and they have. Alas, all the world is inconstant; only I am left with unchanging feeling!!