Kokinshu #84

[lnhammer]

Written on cherry blossoms falling.

    From the wide heavens
gentle light is shining down,
    so on this spring day
why do the cherry blossoms
scatter with such restless hearts?

—8 November 2009, rev 20 March 2010, 10 March 2011.

Original by Ki no Tomonori. Previously posted (though since revised) as Hyakunin Isshu #33. Hisakata no is a untranslatable stock epithet applied to things in or descending from the sky, possibly related to hisoi ("broad/wide"). The original poem has just "flowers," but it's "cherry blossoms" in the headnote -- and at this point could hardly be anything else. The original, as usual for Tomonori, is lovely -- with its repeated h and k sounds. Shaping the progression of English vowels produces only a pale imitation of the effect.


hisakata no
hikari nodokeki
haru no hi ni
shizugokoro naku
hana no chiruramu

---L.

Comments

Hisakata no

[(Anonymous)]

Hisakata no is a untranslatable stock epithet applied to things in or descending from the sky, possibly related to hisoi ("broad/wide").

Challenge accepted. (http://www.gorzas.es/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/challenge-accepted.png)

Okay, I will grant that it is untranslatable. Damn. Some interesting work has been done on the etymology though. Here's a page looking at how it's written in the MYS (http://www1.kcn.ne.jp/~uehiro08/contents/parts/105_05.htm). The summary is that when it's written in characters that aren't obviously phonetic only, it's 久方 or 久堅, which might mean "lengthy/eternal + direction" or "lengthy/eternal + hard (fixed)". On the other hand, those might just be folk etymologies current at the time the MYS was written down. One other theory is that it comes from something like 日射す方, "sun-shining direction," but I've never seen this one rigorously backed up with analogous examples or anything, just proposed out of whole cloth (as it were). And I first encountered it in something by Lafcadio Hearn, so it does date from the Age of Completely Spurious Etymology Proposals...

Re: Hisakata no

[lnhammer]

"Age of Completely Spurious Etymology Proposals" Heh. As opposed to the usual historical baseline of largely spurious, I suppose.

That's pretty damn cool, that etymology work. Not to mention way past my pitiful scratchings at commentaries by way of research. Long/eternal instead of wide makes a lot of sense, or at least fits all the contexts I've seen it in. And it especially fits this context, contrasting with ephemerality. It's a quick fix, too:

Gentle light shines down
from the eternal heavens,

Thanks, Matt.

---L.

Re: Hisakata no

[lnhammer]

After all, Tomonori was, like Tsurayuki, a good enough a poet to use a pillow-word in its original meaning instead of the merely decorative.

---L.