Kokinshu #31

[lnhammer]

Written on wild geese returning home.

    The wild geese who
forsake our rising spring mists --
    is it that they are
accustomed to dwelling in
villages without flowers?

—19 October 2010

Original by Ise, daughter of Fujiwara no Tsugukage, who was a governor of Ise Province (modern Mie Prefecture), from which she gets her use-name. Her personal name is unknown and dates are uncertain, but she became a lady-in-waiting to Atsuko, empress of Emperor Uda, around 890 when she was in her teens, and was still in the service of Atsuko's daughter Kinshi in 930 -- having had, in the interim, affairs with Atsuko's brother, Uda himself, and Kinshi's husband. She was the leading woman poet of her generation, being especially noted for her love poems, and has 22 poems in the Kokinshu.

I should probably explain, btw, that I have not been using the traditional translations of kasumi as "haze" and kiri as "mist." Instead, following a hint from Cranston, I render either word as "mist" when it refers to something being seen and "haze" when it's something being seen through. (Or at least, that's the theory -- looking back, I see I've not been entirely consistent about this.) Where the use is ambiguous, I generally go for the more euphonious. Just by way of noting that different languages do not always slice semantic spaces the same.


harugasumi
tatsu o misutete
yuku kari wa
hana naki sato ni
sumi ya naraeru

---L.

Comments

[movingfinger]

Mist and haze occur under different weather conditions. The seasonal context of the poem and any other cues as to atmospheric conditions should help indicate which the poet might have been thinking of.

[lnhammer]

As best I can tell, while spring kasumi and autumnal kiri are more likely to be what English calls haze and mist respectively, it's a mix. It's especially hard to translate kasumi as "haze" when the poet describes it as trailing off of the mountains.

---L.