Oginohano kotaurumademo fukiyorade tadanisuginuru fuenonezouki

English Translation

Until the reeds spoke,
until they had made reply,
not blowing so near,
but passing straight on unheard—
that flute, how it grieves me now

Meaning

He would not blow his way near enough for the reeds to answer, but simply passed on—it is that flute's going that I find hard to bear.

Commentary

Section 13: The Song of Everlasting Sorrow, the Sister's Ill-Omened Words, the Fire

Hearing that somewhere there was a household that owned the Chinese poem known as the Song of Everlasting Sorrow written out in the manner of a tale, the author longed to read it, but could not bring herself to ask directly. Finding a suitable intermediary, she sent a poem on the seventh day of the seventh month to request the loan. A reply came saying that although the book was one the owner ordinarily refused to lend as ill-omened, today it would be sent.
On the thirteenth night of the same month, when the moon was flawlessly bright and the whole household had gone to sleep, the author and her sister sat out on the veranda. Gazing steadily at the sky, her sister asked what she would think if, at that very moment, she were to vanish without a trace. Seeing that the question had frightened her, the sister turned the talk to other things and laughed it off; and as they listened, a carriage with outriders clearing the way stopped before the house next door, and someone was sent to call for a woman named Ogi no Ha, but no answer came. Weary of calling, the owner of the carriage played a flute with great beauty and passed on. The two sisters exchanged poems on this, and sat gazing until the sky grew light.
In the fourth month of the following year there was a fire in the middle of the night, and the cat they had cherished as the daughter of the Dainagon burned with the house. When they had called it by that name it would mew as though it understood and come walking to them, so that their father had been saying it was a strange and moving thing and that he would report it to the Dainagon; and coming just then, the loss struck the author as bitter and sad. The house they moved to could not be compared with the old one, which had been wide and deep as a mountain: it was cramped, with no garden to speak of and no trees. When white and red plum bloomed in profusion at the house opposite and the scent came to her on the wind, the old home she had lived in came back to her without end, and she composed another poem.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. The elder sister is the one with whom she read tales in the same house. "The daughter of the Dainagon" refers to the daughter of the Jijū no Dainagon, Fujiwara no Yukinari; the sisters gave that name to the cat which the sister's dream had identified as her rebirth. Their father is Sugawara no Takasue. The Song of Everlasting Sorrow is the long poem by Bai Juyi on the doomed love of Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Guifei.

The night of the thirteenth of the seventh month, near midnight under a flawless moon, on the veranda of the house in the capital.

It is the reply to her younger sister's "Fuenoneno tadaakikazeto kikoyuruni nadooginohano soyotokotaenu," offered with the remark that it was indeed just so.

After the exchange the sisters sat gazing until dawn, and only then did the household sleep. The sister's ill-omened question that night—what would you think if I vanished now—takes on its full weight two years later, when she dies.

The opening line takes up her sister's words unchanged. Kotauru made mo means "right up until they answered," that is, playing on until a reply came. In the third line fukiyoru is to draw near while playing, with the sense of a wind blowing close laid over it, and de is a negative conjunctive particle. Tada ni suginuru is passing straight on without doing anything. The close binds the emphatic zo to the attributive uki, making the sound of the flute itself the subject. Where the younger sister's poem gently blamed the reeds for not answering, the elder blames the man for not playing until an answer came, reversing the direction of reproach while using the same words, ogi no ha and fue no ne. It is a scene in which the wit of two sisters raised on tales is set down exactly as it passed between them.

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other