Shirayamano yukinoshitanaru sazareishino nakanoomoiwa kiemumonokawa

English Translation

Under the white peak
snow there are small stones, and the
fire within those stones—
is that a fire that could go
out, do you suppose? Never

Meaning

The fire inside the little stones that lie beneath the snow of Shirayama—is that a thing that could ever go out?

Commentary

Section 31: Those of the Same Mind

With nothing much going against her, and with even long pilgrimages of this kind giving her something to find lovely or hard along the road and so easing her mind, and with the future looking hopeful and nothing immediately to grieve over, her whole wish was to see her small children brought up as she would have them; and thinking so she found the years slow in passing, and lived on the single hope that her husband might come in for a post like anyone else, which was a sustaining sort of hope.
A woman with whom she had once talked intimately and exchanged poems night and day, and with whom, though it was no longer as it had been, she had gone on corresponding without a break, went down as the wife of the governor of Echizen and then fell entirely silent. The author at last found someone to carry a letter, sent a poem, and received a reply.
Early in the third month she went to a place deep in the Western Hills. Not a soul was to be seen, the haze lay peacefully over everything, and in that forlorn stillness the cherry alone was in full bloom. She made a poem.
At a time when things between her and her husband were troublesome, she was in retreat at Uzumasa when a letter came from a lady she was close to at the princess's household; and as she was writing her reply a bell sounded, and she added a poem before sending it.
On a mild, quiet day at the princess's, three of them of the same mind had sat talking; and the next day, at a loose end and remembering it with longing, she sent a poem to the other two, and each of them replied.
A woman with whom she was of one mind, who had exchanged letters with her in this way and shared with her everything hard and painful and pleasant in the world, went down to Chikuzen; and on a night when the moon was very bright, thinking how on such a night she would have gone to the princess's and, meeting her, sat gazing till morning without a moment's sleep, the author fell asleep still longing for her. She dreamed they were together at the princess's exactly as they used to be, and woke with a start to find it a dream. The moon had come down close to the ridge. Wishing she had not woken, she gazed all the harder, and made a poem.

The author is known only as the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. "The one she depended on" is her husband, Tachibana no Toshimichi; the small children are her own. Of the woman who went down as the wife of the governor of Echizen, the lady at the princess's household, the three of one mind, and the woman who went down to Chikuzen, the text gives neither names nor stations. Echizen is a province on the Japan Sea coast, Shirayama a mountain on the border of Kaga and Echizen, Uzumasa the Kōryūji in the capital, and Chikuzen a province in Kyushu.

Sent back from the province of Echizen to the author in the capital.

It answers the author, who had written "Taezarishi omoimoimawa taenikeri koshinowatarino yukinofukasani."

The exchange closes the episode of the old friend, and the text moves on to the visit to the depths of the Western Hills.

Shirayama, on the border of Kaga and Echizen, is famous for its snow, and takes up the other poem's "snow of the Koshi country" as a definite place. Yuki no shita naru points to what the snow has covered from sight. Sazareishi, small stones, suggests flint and leads to the hi, fire, in omoi below. Naka no omoi wa is the fire shut inside those stones. The closing kawa is the particle of rhetorical question: could it go out? it could not. Yuki, kiyu and omoi run together as associated words, and the reply answers the claim that feeling has been buried and quenched by snow with the counter-claim that fire inside stone does not go out under snow. The exchange turns on the single point that what cannot be seen has not ceased to be, and it doubles as an explanation for the silence.

Source

Sarashina Nikki

Other