Will you not so much
as take my letter into
your hand any more?
Even if in your heart you
have cast the thought of me off
- Meaning
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Will you not even take my letter into your hand any more—even if in your heart you have cast me off entirely?
- Commentary
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Volume Six: Kogō
Kogō half thought of answering the poem thrown in through her blind. But feeling it disloyal to the emperor, she would not even take it into her hand; she gave it to a page and had it thrown out into the courtyard.
Takafusa, who had expected a reply, was crushed to see his own letter come back. Afraid of being seen, he picked it up with a careless air, put it inside his robe, and left—and then, since being treated so only made the feeling worse, he turned back once more and composed this.
After that he could think of nothing but that, since meeting her in this world was impossible, he would rather die than go on living with such thoughts.
In time Kiyomori heard of the affair. The empress was his daughter and the Reizei Lesser Captain his son-in-law; as long as Kogō remained, he said, it looked ill. Hearing this, Kogō slipped out of the palace and disappeared. The emperor was again sunk in tears, and late one night in the eighth month he told Nakakuni, on guard duty, that she was said to be somewhere near Saga, and asked him to go. Nakakuni would find her by following the sound of a zither.
Tamazusa is an elegant word for a letter. The letter he wrote and sent was thrown into a courtyard without being opened. The poem states only that.
Sa koso...tomo is a concessive: even granting that it is so to that degree. You have cast me from your heart, no doubt; I understand that. But will you not even take it into your hand?—the protest narrows to a single act. He does not reproach her heart, only her hand. What he raises is not the absence of a reply but the refusal even to receive; the fineness of the poem is there.
Where the first verse states his own condition, this one questions her action. Read together, the two make a monologue addressed to someone who will not answer, and that monologue ends in the wish to die. Having set out Takafusa's despair carefully, the tale moves on to Kogō's disappearance and to the famous scene of Nakakuni searching the fields of Saga by the sound of a zither.
tamazusa……an elegant term for a letter.
te ni dani……not even into the hand.
toraji to ya……do you mean not to take it?
sa koso……to such a degree.
omoisutsu……to cast a feeling aside.
jōdō……a page in the service of a noble.
tsubo……an enclosed courtyard.
tonoi……night duty at the palace.
Nakakuni……Minamoto no Nakakuni, known as a master of the flute.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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