Kuzureyoru imosenoyamano nakanareba saraniyoshinono kawatodanimiji

English Translation

Crumbling to each other
Imo and Se, those two hills —
such is what we are
and the river Yoshino
I will not so much as see

Meaning

Since what lies between us is like the crumbling slopes of Imo and Se, I will not so much as look on it as the Yoshino river again.

Commentary

84 When I Had Withdrawn to My Home

While the author is staying at her own house, people gossip about the courtiers who come calling. She reflects that since she has no reputation for strict seclusion the talk is only to be expected, and she will not have visitors turned away with word that she is out, whether they come by day or by night. Still, since it grows tiresome, she does not let her present address be generally known; only the Middle Captain of the Left, Tsunefusa, and Tadamasa know it. Then Norimitsu, Lieutenant of the Left Gate Guards, comes and tells her that the day before the Consultant Captain had pressed him hard — surely you know where your sister is, tell me — and that though he denied all knowledge he was badgered until he nearly burst out laughing, and in desperation seized some seaweed from the tray and stuffed it into his mouth, which was how he got through without giving her away. She makes him promise to say nothing.

Norimitsu is Tachibana no Norimitsu, whom the court spoke of as her brother; the Consultant Captain is Fujiwara no Tadanobu, and the Middle Captain of the Left is Minamoto no Tsunefusa.

The time runs from her stay at home into the days that followed.

They went on in this way, looking after one another, until for no particular reason they grew a little distant, and Norimitsu sent a letter: whatever awkwardness there may be, do not forget what we promised, and to outward appearance at least think of me as your brother. He was in the habit of saying that anyone who cared for him would spare him poems, that he considered all poetry an enemy, and that verses were for the moment one meant to break off for good. This poem was her answer to that letter.

No reply came from him. Perhaps, she writes, he truly did not look at it. Afterwards he was raised in rank and became Vice-Governor of Tōtōmi, and the connection ended with ill feeling on both sides.

The first line, of slopes crumbling toward one another, attaches directly to the two hills of the second: Imo and Se face each other across the Yoshino river and have long stood for a man and a woman, or for any close pair. Here they are laid over the two who were called brother and sister at court. If the hills on either side crumble inward, the river between them is choked and ceases to run. The word for what lies between means both the space between the hills and the relations between two people, and this double sense sits at the centre of the poem.

In the fourth line an adverb pairs with the negative that follows to make the denial absolute. The closing line uses a particle of minimum degree with an auxiliary of negative intention: I will not even see it as the Yoshino river. Following the chain of associated words that runs from the two hills to the river between them, the line says that she will no longer so much as look on him as a brother.

Since Norimitsu had always insisted that a poem was what one sent at the moment of breaking off, this is simply his own rule carried out. Where "Kazukisuru amanosumikao sokotodani yumeiunatoya meokuwasekemu" mocked a man who missed a signal, this one takes his own declaration and turns it against him, so that within a single section the contrast between a man who hates poems and a woman who answers in them is played out twice.

Author

Sei Shōnagon

Source

Makura no Soshi

Other