Kokinshu #10

[lnhammer]

Written in the beginning of spring.

    Has Spring come early
or are the flowers late?
    I would like to ask
but there's no answering call,
not even from the warbler.

—21 September 2010

Original by Fujiwara no Kotonao. He seems to have flourished at the end of the 9th century and has this single poem in the Kokinshu. This is the general sense, but to be honest, I'm guessing at how to understand those inflections of kiku, not to mention what looks to me like one mo too many. Assistance appreciated even more than usual.


haru ya toki
hana ya osoki to
kikiwakamu
uguisu dani mo
nakazu mo aru kana


ETA revision revised (see comments):

    "Has Spring come early
or are flowers late?" I ask,
    yet who might I hear?
-- there isn't a single call,
not even from the warbler.

---L.

Comments

[starlady]

With the caveat that you know way more about this than me, it reads like nakazu or kikiwakamu should be a pivot or have other words hidden inside them.

[lnhammer]

A thought. None of the commentaries I've been reading mention any pivots, but while they're usually pretty good about explaining those, that's hardly conclusive. More of an issue is I can't recall seeing any pivoting on inflections/auxiliary verbs, rather than the main verb, but given my narrow experience and sievish memory that's even less conclusive.

Let's see -- thinking out loud here. I'm pretty sure nakazu offers the only reading of "not call" -- zumo is not promising, nor are other permutations. But kiku has possibilities -- for example, read it as kiki=ask (-masu stem) with the question stated (with quotative to, even!) and kikiwakamu=hear+stuff with the call of the warbler. Which clears up my question of which way to take the main verb -- both ways.

But still leaves the axillary pile-up, darn it. The only part of it I really make sense of is the -mu, which is conjectural/presumptive (similar to modern darou).

Hmm. *goes off to ponder*

---L.

[lnhammer]

And -- ha! -- pivoting like that can help with what otherwise seems like an extra mo. A prose paraphrase of this interpretation:

"Has Spring come early or are the flowers late?" I ask (aloud), yet would I hear (an answer)? There aren't even (bird)calls, not even from the bush warbler.

---L.

[lnhammer]

Okay, found the solution: kikiwakamu is not a pileup of inflections, but one inflection on the compound verb kiki-waku (聞き分く), roughly, "to distinguish by hearing." With that, I've revised again, and am happier with the result.

---L.

[starlady]

Oh! Yeah, that is much nicer.

What commentaries are you using, by the way, out of curiosity?

[lnhammer]

My base text is the Japanese Text Initiative edition. In Japanese, I'm leaning the most on this online commentary and the grammatical notes in this database. (I know, I ought to have a broader range.) In English, where they cover a poem, the comments by McCullough in Brocade by Night, Cranston in A Waka Anthology, or Mostow in Pictures of the Heart are particularly helpful. The comments in the complete Kokinshu translations by McCullough and Rodd & Henkenius are less useful than one might hope.

(Repost to debork the html)
---L.