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Kokinshu #36
Written on breaking off [a branch of] plum flowers.
They say the warbler
embroiders its sunhat with these
plum flowers I pick --
perhaps I'll adorn myself
with them to hide my old age.
uguisu no
kasa ni nuu chô
ume no hana
orite kazasamu
oi kakuru ya to
---L.
They say the warbler
embroiders its sunhat with these
plum flowers I pick --
perhaps I'll adorn myself
with them to hide my old age.
—24 October 2010
Original by Minamoto no Tokiwa (c.812-854), a son of Emperor Saga. This is his only poem in the Kokinshu. This charming bit of folklore is elaborated on in #1081, a folksong about a warbler weaving a sun-hat from willow-branch threads and decorating it with plum flowers. Whether Tokiwa directly refers to that song or they both to some common lore is unclear. Another unmarked flower, though the direct object of "pick" is the only sensible reading (with the direct object of "stitch" being a zero pronoun pointing forward to it).uguisu no
kasa ni nuu chô
ume no hana
orite kazasamu
oi kakuru ya to
---L.
no subject
By the way, how did you happen to wind up learning Heian Japanese?
no subject
As to how, I got into it slightly sideways: I happened to be reading up on Japanese poetry at the same time as I was starting to learn modern Japanese in earnest, so I started trying to pick apart the poems, first doing versions based on paraphrases, then translations based on modern Japanese commentaries, and now more or less on my own with consultation of commentaries (because I still miss a lot without them). So, yes, I'm learning two languages at once -- the verbal forms in classical Japanese being sufficiently different to merit the category, despite the large overlap otherwise in syntax and lexemes. The comparison I make is modern Japanese:classical Japanese::modern English::Shakespeare only with Old English verbs.
---L.
no subject