Even now I live,
if living is what this is—
and here in a dream
I find that I am dreaming
yet another dream again
- Meaning
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I am alive to this day, if this can be called being alive—and here inside a dream I find I am dreaming yet another dream.
- Commentary
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Volume Nine: The Muster at Mikusa
On the twenty-ninth of the first month of the third year of Juei, Noriyori and Yoshitsune went to the cloistered emperor's palace and announced that they would set out west to destroy the Taira. He charged them to bring back safely the three sacred regalia handed down from the age of the gods.
On the fourth of the second month the Taira held rites at Fukuhara for the anniversary of Kiyomori's death. In days spent wholly in war they had lost count of the months, and the year had turned and spring come. In another age they could have held the memorial at any temple or pagoda they liked; now the young nobles of the house simply gathered and grieved.
With those rites the Taira also made appointments, granting rank to everyone, cleric and layman alike. When Munemori announced that Norimori, a Middle Counselor, was to be made a Major Counselor of the senior second rank, Norimori answered with this poem and declined the office.
The emperor had left the capital, but he held the throne with the regalia in his keeping, so there was nothing irregular in conferring rank and office. Meanwhile many in the capital, hearing that the Taira had come up as far as Fukuhara, took heart.
Areba aru ka no means: even if one exists, one hardly counts as existing. He is alive without being alive.
"Dreaming another dream inside a dream" names what it is to receive an office in such a condition. Reality has already gone dreamlike; onto that is laid the further dream of promotion. He sets it aside as twice unreal.
As a refusal nothing could be better. He gives no reason; he states his condition, and the impossibility of accepting follows. Norimori is the man who, in Volume Seven's flight from the capital, began a poem with "how frail it all is." He begins here from the same place.
The conferring of rank at Fukuhara was an attempt by men driven from the capital to keep up the form of their own court. Norimori's poem identifies, from the inside, that the form is already empty.
areba aru ka no……though one exists, hardly to be called existing.
waga mi ka wa……is this my own self? surely not.
yume no naka ni mo yume wo miru……to dream a further dream within a dream.
Norimori……Taira no Norimori, younger brother of Kiyomori.
shōnii……the senior second rank.
sanshu no jingi……the mirror, the jewel, and the sword.
joi ninkan……the granting of rank and office.
kindachi……the young men of a noble house.
Nyūdō Shōkoku……Taira no Kiyomori.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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