Omou chō kokoro wa koto ni arikeru o mukashi no hito ni nani o iikemu

English Translation

This heart that is called
loving — it was quite other
than I had believed
then what was it I was say-
ing to those I knew before

Meaning

This thing called loving turns out to be quite another matter than I supposed. Then what was it I used to say to those I knew before?

Commentary

62 What Did I Say to Them

A woman known as the Lady Nōsan and the priest Jōzō loved one another beyond all comparison. They had made their promises and could say everything they felt to each other, and she sent him "Omou chō kokoro wa koto ni arikeru o mukashi no hito ni nani o iikemu". The holy man Jōzō's reply was "Yukusue no sukuse o shiranu kokoro ni wa kimi ni kagiri no mi to zo iikeru". That is the whole of the section.
Jōzō was a Tendai priest, a son of Miyoshi no Kiyoyuki, known for accounts of his rites of healing. Of the Lady Nōsan the prose gives nothing beyond the name.
Neither time nor place is given. The setting is the period when their attachment was at its closest.
The prose records nothing of what prompted the poem. What stands before it is the statement that they had made their promises and could say anything to each other.
Jōzō answered with a poem of his own, and the exchange closes the section.

What she calls the heart that loves is the feeling itself, named as a thing people speak of.
The second line says it was other — a different matter altogether from what she had known before.
The closing wonders, in the past tense, what she used to say to the people she knew then. The words she once used have become unintelligible to her.
She brings up an old love only to measure the present one by it. It is neither reproach nor confession but a way of saying that this time is the real one — and it leaves room for the same question to be turned back on him, which is what his reply does.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

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