Omoidani kakaranuyamano sasemogusa tarekaibukino satowatsugeshizo

English Translation

Not even in thought
did it hang upon that hill —
that mugwort of theirs
who was it, then, who told you
of the village of Ibuki

Meaning

The mugwort of a mountain I never even thought of — who was it, then, that spoke of Ibuki to you?

Commentary

318 Is It True That You Are Soon Going Down

This poem was composed in answer to someone who asked whether it was true that she would soon be going down to the provinces.

The person who asked is neither named nor described.

Neither time nor place is specified.

The immediate occasion is the attempt to confirm a rumour of her departure.

The text gives the poem alone and records no reply. In the three-book line of transmission, the closing section about the finished notebook follows immediately after.

The first line uses a particle of minimum degree to build the smallest possible denial: not even in thought. At the same time the word for thought contains the sound of fire, which ties it to the mugwort of the next line — the plant burned in moxa treatment — so that the whole group is bound by the associations of burning.

The second line uses a verb that means both for a thought to settle on something and for mist or cloud to hang upon a mountain. The third names mugwort by its old name, known as a product of Mount Ibuki and the material of moxa. Together these assemble a picture in the negative: the mugwort of a mountain never once thought of.

The fourth line is the hinge, where the name of Ibuki sounds the verb to say, burying the question of who spoke inside the place name itself. An interrogative pronoun with an emphatic particle draws the final verb into its attributive form, and the close asks who it was that told of the village, ending on a particle of emphasis and feeling.

The poem takes as its model Fujiwara no Sanekata's verse in which a burning love that cannot be spoken is entrusted to the mugwort of Ibuki. Borrowing that chain of words entire, this one declares that there was never any burning thought to begin with, and turns the whole thing into a demand to know where the rumour came from.

Asked about her departure, she neither confirms nor denies, and answers only by asking who has been talking. Drawing the heat of love out of the model poem and using the same words to express irritation at gossip is the trick of it.

Author

Sei Shōnagon

Source

Makura no Soshi

Other