Motosukega nochitoiwaruru kimishimoya koyoinoutani hazuretewaoru

English Translation

You who are spoken
of as Motosuke's own child
you, of all, tonight
hold yourself apart, and stand
outside the poems we make

Meaning

You, of all people, called the child of Motosuke — and tonight you sit apart from the poems.

Commentary

99 The Season of the Fifth-Month Abstinence

Out of the talk about the outing to Kamo to hear the cuckoo, the Empress wrote the closing lines of a poem and the author supplied the opening, producing "Hototogisu tazunetekikishi koeyorimo shitawarabikoso koishikarikere." When the Empress laughed and asked why the cuckoo had to come into it, the author said she had resolved not to compose poems at all, and that if she were told to produce one whenever others were composing she felt she could not stay in service. Her reason was that she did not wish to shame her father's name, and the Empress laughed and called it a neat excuse.

The Empress is Teishi, consort of Emperor Ichijō. Motosuke, named in the poem, is the author's father Kiyohara no Motosuke, one of the five scholars of the Pear Chamber who compiled the Gosen Wakashū and a leading poet of his day. The Palace Minister is Fujiwara no Korechika, the Empress's elder brother by the same mother.

The time is the fifth month, late at night; the place is the Office of the Empress's Household.

The Empress had set a topic and had her ladies composing, but the author alone would not, and sat beside her talking of anything but poetry. The Palace Minister, seeing this, set her a topic himself and pressed her, and she answered that she had made it a rule not to compose. When everyone else had finished and it came time to judge the verses, the Empress wrote this poem on a sheet of paper and tossed it across to her.

The author laughed aloud, sent back "Sonohitono nochitoiwarenu minariseba koyoinoutao mazuzoyomamashi," and added that if only there were nothing to hold her back, a thousand poems would come of themselves.

The poem opens by planting the father's name outright. The second line calls the author his descendant and puts the verb in the passive attributive, so that what is invoked is the weight of common report — this is what people say of you. In the third line three particles pile up, emphatic upon emphatic upon exclamatory, to drive the subject to a single point: you, of all people. That accumulation is the heart of the poem.

The fourth line narrows the frame to tonight's verses, and the close means simply: and you sit outside them. The verb chosen is one of sitting, of staying put, so that it suggests less being somewhere than remaining planted there. The picture of one person outside the circle of composition is held perfectly still and left at that.

It is a poem that presses on the contradiction of a famous poet's child who will not compose, and though it reproaches, the ground of reproach is her father's fame, which makes the reproach affectionate. It also takes the author's own plea — that she does not wish to shame that name — and turns it back on her; and the poem that follows folds the same logic round once more.

Author

Empress Teishi

Source

Makura no Soshi

Other