Yama fukaku irinishi hito mo tazunuredo nao amagumo no yoso ni koso nare

English Translation

Though I go seeking
him who went deep into the
mountains, still he is
as far off as the clouds of
heaven, and beyond my reach.

Meaning

Though I go seeking him who went deep into the mountains, he is still as far from me as the clouds of heaven, and beyond my reach.

Commentary

25 The Death of Emperor Murakami and Kaneie's Promotion

The fifth month came. Past the tenth there was the matter of the Emperor's illness, and before the outcry had well begun he died, some time after the twentieth. The Crown Prince acceded at once. The man who had been Assistant of the Crown Prince's household was now spoken of as Head Chamberlain, and there was such a noise about it that the grief was left to the world at large while in this house one heard of nothing but congratulation. Answering all that gave her some sense of being like other people, though her private mind was as it had always been, and everything about her was noisy in a way quite opposite to her feeling. Hearing talk of the tomb and the rest, she thought with sorrow of what those who had enjoyed the Emperor's favor must be feeling. When some days had passed she wrote to the lady of the Jōganden to ask how she did, and added a poem. The answer was very sorrowful. The forty-nine days ended and the seventh month came. A young Guards officer who had served the Emperor, still young and with no sign of any trouble on his mind, abandoned parents and wife alike, climbed up into the mountains and became a monk. While people were exclaiming at it and calling it pitiful, word came that his wife too had become a nun. Since the author had exchanged letters with her before, she wrote to condole, finding it very sad and astonishing; and an answer came back at once. That too was very sad.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The Emperor is Murakami, who died in the fifth month of the fourth year of Kōhō. The man who had been Assistant of the Crown Prince's household is Kaneie, third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke; the accession made him Head Chamberlain, and he would rise to be regent and chancellor. The lady of the Jōganden was Morosuke's daughter and a consort of the late Emperor, and Kaneie's sister; the text gives no name, and she is taken to be Fujiwara no Tōshi. Neither the Guards officer who became a monk nor his wife who became a nun is named. A marginal note in the base text identifies the acceding Crown Prince as Enyū, but the emperor who acceded in the fourth year of Kōhō was Reizei.
It is the seventh month of the fourth year of Kōhō, after the forty-nine days, and the place is the house of the woman who had become a nun.
It was returned at once, in answer to the author's condolences on her husband's entering the mountains and on her own taking of vows.
The narrative closes the section by remarking that this too was very sad. Afterward the lady of the Jōganden withdraws to the house next to the author's on the west, and the exchanges with her follow.

She takes back the deep mountains and the cloud of heaven. The first two lines name the man who has gone deep into the mountains, restating the other's phrase with the verb of entering added. The third is adversative — though she seeks him — and puts the failure of the search before anything else. The fourth receives the other's pivot unaltered: the cloud of heaven, which is also the word for a nun, and which therefore names her own condition as well. The close is bound by an emphatic particle: he has become as remote as that. Two senses work at once — that seeking him is like reaching for a cloud, and that she, having entered the cloud of the nun's habit herself, can no longer close the distance. Where the other had put her astonishment as a question, this does not answer it, but states quietly the single fact of the distance — a restrained manner proper to one who has left the world.

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other