Takasago no onoe watari ni sumau tomo shika samenu beki me to wa kikanu o

English Translation

Even were I to
dwell near Takasago's peak,
I have never heard
of an eye so startling that
it would wake one out of sleep.

Meaning

Even if one lived up by the peak at Takasago, I have never heard of meeting with an eye startling enough to wake a sleeper.

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.
It was composed in answer to Kaneie's complaint that, living in a village where no stag is heard, he had nonetheless met with an unlooked-for lot.
She added to this reply only that it was indeed a strange thing. After some interval Kaneie sent "Ōsaka no seki ya nani nari chikakeredo koewabinureba nagekite zo furu."

She takes his stag and his eye and hands them straight back. The peak named in the first two lines is a poetic place associated with pines and with deer, set against his village where the stag is not heard. The verb in the third line means to dwell, though some read in it a second sense of contending. The word in the fourth line carries the same double sense of stag and thus that his own poem had. An eye that would wake a sleeper is one startling enough to rouse a person, and she answers that even in a place famous for deer no such thing is heard of, turning aside the exaggeration of his lament. The final particle is adversative and leaves the sentence unfinished, holding the feeling in suspension. The wit lies in gathering up every word he used and returning it, and as an exchange poem it is finely made.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other