Kokinshu #656
Saturday, 2 April 2011 10:28![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lnhammer Topic unknown.
In the waking world
it would of course be that way,
but seeing one
avoid people's eyes even
inside our dreams? -- wretchedness.
utsutsu ni wa
sa mo koso arame
yume ni sae
hitome o moru to
miru ga wabishisa
---L.
In the waking world
it would of course be that way,
but seeing one
avoid people's eyes even
inside our dreams? -- wretchedness.
—9 January 2011
Original by Ono no Komachi. Textual issue: my base text has the nonsensical fourth line hitome o yoku to -- where yoku can be a noun or an adverb, and the grammar wants a transitive verb. Every other text, commentary, and translation I've checked has hitome o moru to, which is not only grammatical but makes sense ("avoid people's eyes"). Fidelity to a manuscript can sometimes be taken too far. Aside from that, there's still an interpretation issue: does the speaker see her lover or herself avoiding people in dreams? I've tried to maintain the ambiguity, though it really would read better as "someone" instead of "one". The question mark is not in the original, but there to make the grammatical fragment (ending with a noun instead of a final main verb) sound reasonable in English.utsutsu ni wa
sa mo koso arame
yume ni sae
hitome o moru to
miru ga wabishisa
---L.