Shika no ne mo kikoenu sato ni suminagara ayashiku awanu me o mo miru kana

English Translation

Though I live in a
village where no stag's voice comes,
how strange it is that
I should meet with such an eye —
the eye of never meeting.

Meaning

I live in a village where no stag is ever heard, and yet, strangely enough, I find myself meeting with the hard lot of never meeting you.

Commentary

3 The Marriage to Kaneie Is Settled

Letters came from Kaneie again and again, and still the author did not answer. Her father Tomoyasu said it was a presumption to leave him waiting and that a proper reply ought to be sent, so he had a suitable person write one on her behalf. Kaneie took this in earnest and was delighted, and letters passed frequently between the houses; but he complained that the hand was not hers and asked repeatedly for an answer written by the lady herself. Each time, the household put him off with another substitute's hand, and the months went by in nothing but formal correspondence. Autumn came, and through the exchange of poems the two were drawn on toward marriage.
Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke and at this time Assistant Commander of the Right Guards; he would rise to be regent and chancellor. The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu, a man of the provincial governor class who would go down to Mutsu as its governor at the end of this year.
It is autumn in the eighth year of Tenryaku, and the place is the residence of the author's father Tomoyasu.
A poem enclosed in one of the letters had struck him as clever and self-possessed, and though he had borne it patiently, he sent this poem prefaced by the remark that he could not think what had come over him.
To this the author replied with "Takasago no onoe watari ni sumau tomo shika samenu beki me to wa kikanu o," adding only that it was indeed a strange thing.

The first word means a stag and at the same time carries the sense of thus or in that way, which lays the ground for the phrase she will return in her answer. The second line, a village where the stag is not heard, means a city dwelling rather than a mountain village. The particle in the third line is adversative: and yet, for all that. The fourth line means unaccountable, not to be understood. The phrase for meeting with an eye is idiomatic, used of undergoing some unlooked-for experience, and some read into the word for eye the word for a bud, keeping the association with the stag. The final particle of exclamation closes on the helplessness of not being able to meet. His irritation at what he took for cleverness in her reply is put forward here in a half-joking manner.

Author

Fujiwara no Kaneie

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other