思ふらむ心のうちは知らねども
泣くを見るこそ悲しかりけれ
泣くを見るこそ悲しかりけれ
- Roma-ji
-
Omouramu kokoro no uchi wa shiranedomo naku o miru koso kanashikarikere
- English Translation
-
What is in her heart
that she should feel so, I do
not know — and yet just
to see her weeping like that
is a sorrowful thing, surely
- Meaning
- What is in her heart I do not know; and yet just to see her weeping is a sorrowful thing.
- Commentary
-
133 To See Her Weeping
Again in Emperor Daigo's reign, the emperor was walking quietly one moonlit night in the quarter where his consorts lived, with Minamoto no Kintada in attendance. From one of the rooms came a woman in a deep scarlet robe, very beautiful, who began to weep bitterly. The emperor sent Kintada close to see how matters stood, and found her with her hair in disorder, weeping hard. Asked why she wept, she gave no answer, and the emperor was much struck by it. Kintada then composed this poem, and the emperor, we are told, praised it warmly.
Minamoto no Kintada composes the poem about the warbler in the hundred and thirty-first section and is counted among the thirty-six poetic immortals. Emperor Daigo appears through the hundred and thirty-first to hundred and thirty-fourth sections.
The setting is the women's quarters on a moonlit night, with a woman weeping outside her room.
What prompted the poem was that, asked her reason, she gave none and went on weeping.
The emperor praised it warmly. The section closes on that sentence.
The opening supposes a heart he cannot see into, in the grammar used for guessing at what one cannot know.
The concessive turns on it, and the whole scene — a question asked and unanswered — is held in that one word.
The fourth line, with an emphatic particle, sets seeing her weep against not knowing why, and governs the verb that ends the poem.
The closing marks the recognition: it is a sorrowful thing. The cause may be unknown, and the sight is grief enough. In a scene where nothing could be got out of her, he lets the reason go — which is presumably what the emperor praised.
- Source
- Yamato Monogatari
- Other
-
- That we call the bright moon a drawn bow is because it takes aim at the rim of the mountains, and then looses itself, and goes in
- That the white cloud has come down and settled here, on this side, on this shoulder must be because a wind out of heaven has blown it to me
- It must be because I go on never having enough of you — for on nights we meet and nights we do not, you are dear to me
- There was in me a smouldering, like incense, and a regret with it and yet, alone, I could not sleep at all, could not sleep