Karakushite omoiwasururu koishisa o utate nakitsuru uguisu no koe

English Translation

The longing I had
with such trouble almost put
out of mind — and now
how wretchedly it calls, the
voice of the warbler, calling

Meaning

The longing I had, with such trouble, almost put out of mind — and now how wretchedly the warbler calls, and brings it back.

Commentary

105 The Mountain of Kurama

When the daughter of Taira no Nakaki was possessed by a spirit and the priest Jōzō performed rites for her, people began to talk, for what passed between them did not look like an ordinary matter. They went on meeting in secret, and the talk grew unpleasant; and thinking he could not stay in the world any longer, Jōzō left it. He shut himself away on Mount Kurama at severe austerities, but the woman remained dear to him, and he practised with his mind turning towards the capital. One day, lying prostrate in his grief, he saw a letter close beside him. Wondering how a letter came to be there, he picked it up and read it, and it was from the woman he was thinking of: "Sumizome no Kurama no yama ni iru hito wa tadoru tadoru mo kaeri kinanamu". It was a strange thing, and he could not think who had brought it, nor was there anyone who could have; and it was so unaccountable that he went off alone, distracted, to her. Later, having returned to the mountain, he sent her "Karakushite omoiwasururu koishisa o utate nakitsuru uguisu no koe", and her reply was "Sate mo kimi wasurekerishika uguisu no naku ori nomi ya omoiizubeki". On another occasion he composed "Waga tame ni tsuraki hito o ba okinagara nani no tsumi naki yo o ya uramimu". The woman had been brought up with the greatest care, and though noblemen had courted her, her parents had kept her from them, intending her for the emperor; but after this she was cast off. That is the whole of the section.
Jōzō was a Tendai priest who appears in the sixty-second section, exchanging poems with the Lady Nōsan. Taira no Nakaki served as Assistant Governor of Ōmi; the fifty-seventh section tells of his daughter's fallen circumstances. Mount Kurama, north of the capital, was known as a place of austerities.
The setting is Mount Kurama again, after his visit to her and his return. The warbler tells us it is spring.
What prompted the poem was hearing that bird. It was sent to her.
She answered with a poem of her own, and the section goes on to another poem of his.

The first phrase means with great difficulty, barely — the effort the forgetting cost him.
What follows is a longing in the act of being forgotten, not yet gone.
The adverb in the fourth line means wretchedly, in the sense of things taking a turn for the worse.
The poem ends on the bird's voice, named and left standing. What breaks his practice is attributed not to his own heart but to a warbler. It is also a way of telling her he had been trying to forget — and that is what her reply seizes on.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other