秋もこず露もおかねど言の葉は
我がためにこそ色かはりけれ
我がためにこそ色かはりけれ
- Roma-ji
-
Aki mo kozu tsuyu mo okanedo koto no ha wa waga tame ni koso iro kawarikere
- English Translation
-
No autumn has come
no dew has settled — and yet
those leaves, those words of
yours, have changed their colour, changed
for me, and only for me
- Meaning
- No autumn has come and no dew has settled; and yet those words of yours have changed colour — for me, and for me only.
- Commentary
-
115 Dew on the Leaves of Words
When the Minister of the Right was Head Chamberlain, he sent "Aki no yo o mate to tanomeshi koto no ha ni ima mo kakareru tsuyu no hakanasa" to a woman known as the Nurse of Shōni, and her reply was "Aki mo kozu tsuyu mo okanedo koto no ha wa waga tame ni koso iro kawarikere". That is the whole of the section.
The Minister of the Right rose to that office; here the events belong to his time as Head Chamberlain, the officer at the head of those serving closest to the emperor. Of the Nurse of Shōni the prose tells us only the title her name comes from.
The setting is the same autumn, when his poem reached her.
What prompted it is his, "Aki no yo o mate to tanomeshi koto no ha ni ima mo kakareru tsuyu no hakanasa", with its dew hanging on the leaves of words.
This reply closes the hundred and fifteenth section. The prose passes no judgement; the section consists of the exchange alone.
The opening denies both the autumn and the dew he had brought in. The word for autumn is also the word for growing tired of someone, so that it can be heard as denying that too.
The concessive turns on it: and yet.
What follows is that his words have changed colour for her, with an emphatic construction governing the verb.
Leaves turn when autumn comes and dew falls, and neither has happened; and still they have turned. A promise gone stale is stated as a leaf changing colour. She takes over the scene of leaf and dew he set up and denies only its conditions. The poem is known as one on which readings differ.
- Source
- Yamato Monogatari
- Other
-
- It was not that I lent out my sleeves to anyone and yet at that part- ing, the unsated parting of Tanabata, they were soaked
- On the leaves of those words that bade me wait until the autumn nights came there hangs, even now, the dew — and how frail a thing it is
- How long I trusted it, this world — how long I went on trusting, and with a body such as this, one the tears kept falling upon
- The dew lies so thick that I pillow my head on sleeves grown grass-like — and like the pine cricket that waits for you, I do nothing but cry