Akurumatsu kanenokoenimo yumesamete akinomomoyono kokochiseshikana

English Translation

Waiting for the dawn,
I woke at the temple bell
out of a thin dream
and it felt as though I lay
through a hundred autumn nights

Meaning

Waiting for the day to break, I was woken even by the sound of the bell, and it felt as though a hundred long autumn nights had passed.

Commentary

Section 15: The Father Passed Over at the Appointments; the Beauty of the Eastern Hills

At the appointments in the first month of the new year the author's father should have received a post, but the hope came to nothing. On that fruitless morning a poem arrived from someone who must have felt the same, with a note about the restlessness of lying awake for daybreak, telling himself that surely this time it would come; and the author replied.
Toward the end of the fourth month, for reasons that had to be met, the household moved to a place in the Eastern Hills. Along the road the seedbeds with water let into them and the fields already planted stretched away, greening faintly and pleasant to look at. In the evening, with the shadow of the hills falling dark and close before the house, forlorn and full of feeling, a water rail called and called, and she made a poem.
Ryōzen being close by, she went to worship there; finding it hard going, she stopped at a stone-ringed spring at the mountain temple and drank from her cupped hands. Someone said one could never drink enough of that water, and the author made a poem, to which he replied. On their return, with the evening sun striking clear and the whole of the capital visible in the distance, this man, saying he must go back to the city, felt the parting keenly, and sent another poem the next morning.
When the sound of a monk at his dawn devotions came to her, solemn to hear, she pushed open the door: the ridgeline was paling into light, mist lay over the dark treetops, and the sky closed in by all that foliage, cloudy and lovely, pleased her more than blossom or maples at their height. A cuckoo, too, called over and over from a bough close at hand, and she made a poem of that daybreak and that voice.
Near the end of the month a cuckoo cried noisily from a tree down toward the valley, and she composed again. As she sat gazing, the woman who was with her said: is there anyone in the city hearing this voice now, anyone who spares a thought for us sunk in reverie here? and made a poem, which the author answered.
Near what she took for daybreak, a sound came from the hills as of many people approaching. Startled, she looked out and saw a deer that had come as far as the veranda and was belling there—a voice with no charm in it heard from close by. She made a poem on that, and another on hearing that an acquaintance had come near the house and turned back.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. Her father is Sugawara no Takasue, who hoped for a post at these appointments and was passed over. Of "the person of the same mind," "the man who drank the water," and "the woman who was with her," the text gives neither name nor station. Ryōzen is one of the peaks of the Eastern Hills, where a mountain temple stood.

The morning after the appointments were announced, in the first month of Manju 2 (1025); delivered to the house in the capital.

On the morning when the father's hopes had come to nothing, it arrived from someone who must have felt the same, with a note about the restlessness of waiting for daybreak while telling himself that surely this time it would come.

The author answered with "Akatsukio naninimachikemu omoukoto narutomokikanu kanenootoyue." After this disappointment the household moved to the Eastern Hills at the end of the fourth month.

Akuru matsu, "waiting for the day to break," modifies the bell of the second line, and speaks of a night passed sleepless in expectation of news. The particle mo in the second line adds the sense of "even by that bell." Yume samete is waking from a shallow sleep. Aki no momoyo no exaggerates: a hundred of the long nights of autumn, and though the season is the first month, autumn is brought in as the type of the long night. In the close shi is the attributive of the past auxiliary ki and kana is exclamatory: such was the feeling. Not a word touches the failure itself; only the length of the waiting is described, and the depth of the disappointment is shown from behind.

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other