Tachiwakare Fuji no keburi o mite mo nao kokorobososa no ikani soikemu

English Translation

You parted from us
and set out; and even when
you saw Fuji's smoke,
how much loneliness was then
added to what you carried?

Meaning

You parted from us and went; and even at the sight of Fuji's smoke, how much more loneliness must have been added to your own.

Commentary

Section 22 Tamemori's Thirty Poems and the Reply to Them

From the young lord Tamemori, the Jiju's younger brother, thirty poems also arrived, with a request that she mark them and set down in detail whatever was poor. He is sixteen this year. Since he is only beginning to write, she finds his work touching, and then feels awkward, thinking again that this is a parent's blind love. He too, in his travel poems, seems to have written with her in mind: she had sent the journal of her journey down to these children, and he must have read it. To one of the poems she writes an answer.

Abutsu-ni was a consort of Fujiwara no Tameie and the mother of Tamesuke and Tamemori, living at Tsukikage-no-yatsu in Kamakura. Tamemori is the younger brother of the Jiju Tamesuke, the Taifu who in the section of parting poems set down in his writing practice "Harubaru to yukusaki tōku shitawarete ikani sonata no sora o nagamemu." The prose says he is sixteen this year, so he was fifteen when she left the capital in Koan 2. After his brother's fifty he sends thirty poems and asks her to mark them and note in detail whatever is poor. The prose also records that she had sent the journal of her journey down to these children, so that the record of the road had already been written out and had reached the capital.

After the second day of the eighth month of Koan 3 (1280), at Tsukikage-no-yatsu in Kamakura, over the thirty poems that had come from the capital.

One of the thirty poems Tamemori sent, on the topic of travel. The prose says he seems to have written it with her in mind after reading the journal of her journey.

She writes an answer to this one too: "Karisome ni tachiwakarete mo ko o omou omoi o Fuji no keburi to zo mishi," which changes where the smoke comes from.

The poem follows his mother's road from the day of the farewell as far as Fuji, and guesses at her loneliness. The first line means to part and set out, naming the day he saw her go; and since the verb also belongs with smoke, it draws in the smoke of Fuji below. The second line names the most celebrated sight of the road. The particle in the third line carries a concessive shade: even that famous view can have brought no comfort. The fourth line uses the very word for forlornness that the prose of this diary keeps using on the road, so that one who has read the journal is taking the word back out of it. The verb in the closing line means to be added, with a past conjecture answering the interrogative: how much must have been added. It should be noted that the record of the road says there was no smoke on Fuji at all, and that when she asked in what year it had ceased no one could answer; this poem nevertheless writes as though the smoke were seen, following the familiar convention. His mother's reply takes that discrepancy up and turns it by way of a pivot-word.

Author

Reizei Tamemori

Source

Izayoi Nikki

Other