Tsumedonao miminagusakoso awarenare amatashiareba kikumoarikeri

English Translation

For all our picking
the ear-less plant, even so
is a pitiful thing —
where there are so many, look
there was a chrysanthemum too

Meaning

For all our picking, the ear-less plant is a pitiful thing; among so many there was a chrysanthemum too — and hearing, too.

Commentary

131 The Young Herbs for the Seventh Day

The young herbs for the seventh of the first month were brought in on the sixth, and while people were making a commotion and scattering them about, a child came in carrying a plant no one recognised. Asked what it was called, the children did not answer at once, but looked at one another and said, wait a moment; then someone said it was called the ear-less plant, at which everyone laughed — no wonder it goes about looking as though it hears nothing. Just then another child brought in a chrysanthemum, freshly sprouted and very pretty, and this poem was made. Even this, the author adds, was unlikely to be taken in by them.

The only other people in the scene are the children who brought the plants, none of whom is named.

The time is the sixth day of the first month, in the middle of the preparations for the young herbs.

The immediate occasion is the arrival of the young chrysanthemum right after the laughter over the plant's name. With the two names side by side, a single run of wordplay became possible.

The author closes by saying she would have liked to speak the poem, but that this too would not have been taken in. The verse is never uttered, and the same joke lands twice over: neither the ear-less plant nor the children were going to hear it. Textual traditions differ here, and some manuscripts close the poem with a different final phrase.

The first line concedes the picking of the herbs, the seasonal business going on around her. In the second line an emphatic particle binds the perfective ending in a full grammatical figure. The plant's name contains the sense of having no ears, and stands for anything that cannot hear.

The fourth line gives the reason, strengthened by an emphatic particle: since there are so many. Everything turns on the close, where the name of the chrysanthemum is also the verb for hearing. On the surface: among all these plants there was a chrysanthemum. Underneath: with all these people about, there was someone who heard after all. The pairing of the ear-less plant with the chrysanthemum builds the whole opposition of not-hearing and hearing out of nothing but the plants on the floor.

The perfective adjective at the end of the third line means to be moved, and here carries pity for a thing without ears. Running an association out from a single name and landing the joke on another plant that happens to arrive is very much this book's habit; and the fact that the poem never reaches its audience answers the failed signal of "Kazukisuru amanosumikao sokotodani yumeiunatoya meokuwasekemu."

Author

Sei Shōnagon

Source

Makura no Soshi

Other