猿沢の池もつらしなわぎもこが
玉藻かづかば水ぞひなまし
玉藻かづかば水ぞひなまし
- Roma-ji
-
Sarusawa no ike mo tsurashi na wagimoko ga tamamo kazukaba mizu zo hinamashi
- English Translation
-
The Sarusawa
pond is unfeeling too — if
she went down and took
the jewelled weed upon her
the water should have dried up
- Meaning
- The Sarusawa pond is unfeeling too. If she went down and took the jewelled weed upon her, the water should have dried away.
- Commentary
-
150 The Sarusawa Pond
Long ago there was a palace serving woman in the household of the emperor at Nara. She was beautiful in face and figure, and though men courted her, and nobles courted her, she would have none of them; for she held the emperor dear beyond measure. Once the emperor summoned her; but he did not summon her again, and she was overcome with grief. Day and night she could not put it out of her mind, and was worn down with longing and misery. To the emperor the summons had seemed nothing out of the way. Since she could not avoid seeing his face daily, she felt she could not go on living, and one night she slipped out and threw herself into the Sarusawa pond. Even after this the emperor knew nothing of it, until someone mentioned it in the course of conversation and he heard. Much moved, he made a progress to the bank of the Sarusawa pond and had the company compose poems there. Kakinomoto no Hitomaro composed "Wagimoko ga nekutare kami o Sarusawa no ike no tamamo to miru zo kanashiki", and the emperor composed "Sarusawa no ike mo tsurashi na wagimoko ga tamamo kazukaba mizu zo hinamashi"; and he had a grave made and returned. That is the whole of the section.
The emperor at Nara is the emperor of the Nara capital. A palace serving woman was one brought from the provinces to attend at the imperial table. The Sarusawa pond lies beside the Kōfukuji temple at Nara. Kakinomoto no Hitomaro is the great poet of the Man'yō-shū. The fourteenth section gives a poem drawing on the weeds of this same pond.
The setting is the same bank of the Sarusawa pond.
What prompted the poem is Hitomaro's, "Wagimoko ga nekutare kami o Sarusawa no ike no tamamo to miru zo kanashiki". The emperor answers it.
Having composed it he had a grave made and returned. The section closes on that sentence.
The opening calls the pond unfeeling, with a particle of exclamation. The water is treated as a person and charged with coldness.
What follows is a condition: if she went down and took the weed on her. The verb means to dive or to be covered over. He takes Hitomaro's endearment and his jewelled weed over unchanged.
The closing says the water should have dried away, with an emphatic particle governing the verb of unreal supposition. On the surface: had she gone in, the pond should have dried and saved her. Underneath: it should have wept itself dry for grief, and instead it lies there brimming.
He reproaches the pond; and the pond is also himself, who never knew what she felt and did not learn of her death until someone happened to mention it. That the reproach can be read as self-reproach is what gives the poem its depth.
- Source
- Yamato Monogatari
- Other
-
- When the wind blows, white breakers rise far out to sea — and rising, Tatsuta: is it that mountain you are crossing alone at midnight
- That the sleep-tangled hair of the girl I loved should be what I see now as the jewelled weed of the pond at Sarusawa: the grief
- Down the Tatsuta the autumn leaves are floating — then on the sacred hill of Mimuro, it seems the cold rains must be falling
- Down the Tatsuta the autumn leaves come scattered and tangled, it seems — and were I to cross, that brocade would surely part in the middle