白雲のここのへに立つ峰なれば
大内山といふにぞありける
大内山といふにぞありける
- Roma-ji
-
Shirakumo no kokonoe ni tatsu mine nareba Ōuchiyama to iu ni zo arikeru
- English Translation
-
Since it is a peak
where the white clouds rise and stand
in nine folds on folds
it is for that, I see now
that they call it Ōuchi
- Meaning
- Since it is a peak where the white clouds rise in ninefold layers, that, I see, is why they call it Ōuchi — the Great Palace mountain.
- Commentary
-
35 Ōuchiyama
The Middle Counsellor of Tsutsumi went up to Ōuchiyama as a messenger from the palace, and finding the retired emperor in holy orders looking somewhat forlorn, was moved by it. The place being high, the clouds seemed to rise in great numbers from below, and he composed this poem. The prose says no more, and the section consists of this single poem.
The Middle Counsellor of Tsutsumi is Fujiwara no Kanesuke, who rose to that office and took his name from his residence near the embankment of the Kamo river. He was known as a poet and is counted among the thirty-six poetic immortals; he appears again in the thirty-sixth section, likewise as a messenger from the palace.
The setting is Ōuchiyama, where the retired emperor was living in orders and where Kanesuke went as a messenger. Being high up, the prose says, the place made the clouds seem to rise from below.
What prompted the poem was the sight of those rising clouds. His pity at finding the retired emperor forlorn comes just before it.
The section ends with the poem; no response is recorded. It was later included in the Shinchokusen-shū.
The first line names the white clouds and also leads into the word that follows.
That word means in many layers, but it also means the ninefold enclosure — that is, the imperial palace. The sight of clouds in layers and the idea of the palace lie one over the other.
The name of the mountain contains the word for the great inner palace. The poem takes the form of explaining how a place got its name, and reads the palace into it.
The closing is the tone of something understood at last, with an emphatic particle governing its verb: so that is why they call it so. To a retired emperor looking forlorn, the poem says that this place too deserves the name of a palace.
- Source
- Yamato Monogatari
- Other
-
- This body of ivy with no tree at whose foot it might lean and take hold stays green the whole year, and so the autumn is sorrowful
- Though you may not think its colour anything much still, this flower — I would have you look on it and remember, from time to time
- Hearing it is called the capital of many reigns, like bamboo joints I have no doubt at all that a thousand years are yours here
- There are flowers that have come into bloom like this and yet, for my part am I to call this season the same spring that they are in