きみがつらさを今日こそは見れ
- Roma-ji
-
Kimi ga tsurasa o kyō koso wa mire
- English Translation
-
Your unkindness — that is what,
today of all days, I see plainly.
- Meaning
- Your unkindness is what, today of all days, I see plainly.
- Commentary
-
21 The Kamo Festival and the Fifth-Month Banquet
About that time she went out to see the festival of the fourth month, and that other party had come out too. Judging that it must be so, she drew up to meet them. The waiting being tedious, she took some orange fruit that was at hand, hung hollyhock on it, and sent over an opening verse. After a good while the closing verse came back. Some said that after so many years as a person she had every reason to dislike, she would say only that it was impertinent. When she came home and told Kaneie how it had gone, he said: did you not tell her you felt you could eat her up? — and was much amused. That year the Emperor was to attend the fifth-month banquet, and there was a great commotion about it. When Kaneie said that he would like to see it somehow but had no place to view it from, and that if she wished to see it — she caught him up and proposed a game of backgammon; very well, he said, the stake to be a place at the viewing, and they played. Delighted, she went about her preparations, and in the quiet of the evening she drew the inkstone to her, wrote a poem as though idly practicing, and pushed it over to him. He laughed and gave her a verse in return; and since he meant her to see it after all, he had one of the two rooms adjoining the Prince's viewing stand partitioned off, splendidly furnished, and let her see.
Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke, and would rise to be regent and chancellor. The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The one called that other party is named in the text only by a word for a place; no name is given. The Prince's viewing stand is a stand set up for watching the festival.
It is the day of the Kamo festival, the fourth month of the third year of Kōhō, and the place is a carriage at the viewing.
It is the closing verse, returned after a good while, to the opening verse the author had sent with hollyhock hung on orange fruit.
The narrative notes that some said she would call it nothing but impertinence, after so many years as a person the author had reason to dislike. When the author told Kaneie of it at home, he asked whether she had not said she felt she could eat the woman up, and was much amused.
As the closing verse of a linked pair, it takes up the scene the other had set. The person addressed is the author, who sent the opening. The word for unkindness names a want of feeling, and answers the pairing of a day of meeting that is only a name with an orange standing apart: it is the one who made that distance, the verse implies, who is unkind. The close is bound by an emphatic particle: today of all days it has been seen. It also carries the quiet counter-question of which of them is the one standing apart. The narrative's note that the verse took a good while to come shows how hard it was to make; and what was made repeats not a single word of the opening, answering on sense alone — a solid piece of linking. This exchange is one of the very few occasions on which the two women who stood on either side of Kaneie spoke to one another directly.
- Source
- Kagero Nikki
- Other
-
- I too felt it so. It was no quiet Bay of Toko, no calm bed; and the wave-road you took home was a thing to trouble me.
- Hollyhock, they say — the day of meeting, they say; and yet, standing off at a distance, that orange tree —
- Counting up the years the sweet flag has grown, I draw — and how I long for, how keenly I await the banquet of the fifth month now.
- Who could ever count how many grow in the hidden marsh? Not knowing one thing from another, still you wait — and keenly, so it seems.