Koto tayuru utsutsu ya nani zo nakanaka ni yume wa kayoiji ari to iu mono o

English Translation

And what, then, is this
waking world, where even words
run out between us?
They say that dreams, at least, have
a road along which one may pass.

Meaning

And what, then, is this waking world, where even words run out between us? They say that dreams, at least, have a road along which one may pass.

Commentary

26 Exchanges with the Lady of the Jōganden

Toward the end of the twelfth month the lady of the Jōganden withdrew to the house on the west. On the last day of the month there was a sudden earthquake, and from midday on it went on rumbling and rattling while she sat watching it alone; and so the year turned to the first of Anna. About midday on New Year's Day, since no men were about among the guest's household, all was quiet. Hearing that the lady was still next door, they laughed together over what one waits for on such a day; and while they were at it, someone idly fetched a little figure of a man made of millet, pressed it against the leg-end of the pheasant from before, wrote on it, and sent it in to the lady. She dried some seaweed, tore it into short pieces, tied them together, shifted the load to the end of the pole, carved a calf onto the leg that had been thin, and sent it back larger than it had come. When the day was well up the festival food was served; the same was done in this house, and the fifteenth also passed in the usual way. The third month came. A letter that seemed meant for the guest's household was misdelivered here. It read that he could not leave things as they were and thought of calling before long, but that there might be someone who would rather it were not he. Since the lady had long been used to seeing such things, the author supposed this was how it went; even so she did not let it pass, but wrote a few words very small, and sent it back saying that it should be taken to that lady. When the lady had read it a reply came at once. Since this lady attended the Crown Prince almost as a mother, she was bound to go to the palace. She said again and again that she could not stay as she was, and so the author called on her in the evening. Just then voices were heard on the other side; the lady kept saying so, so, but the author would not attend to it, and the lady seemed to be growing drowsy as one does in the early evening. Then someone came walking up and made an announcement, and the author went home without any ease of mind. The next evening the lady went to the palace. In the fifth month, when she withdrew to put off mourning for the Emperor, it had been arranged that she should come here as before; but saying she had seen something inauspicious in a dream, she withdrew to the other house. Since portents kept coming in dreams, and she wished there were some way of averting them, in the seventh month, on a night of very bright moon, she sent a poem. Four poems on dreams follow, and then an exchange on a river.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The lady of the Jōganden was a daughter of Fujiwara no Morosuke and a consort of the late Emperor Murakami, and Kaneie's sister; the text gives no name, and she is taken to be Fujiwara no Tōshi. At the end of the previous year she had withdrawn to the house immediately west of the author's, and the exchanges that follow depend upon that nearness. The writer of the misdelivered letter is Kaneie, third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke, who would rise to be regent and chancellor.
It is a night of very bright moon in the seventh month of the first year of Anna, and the place is the author's dwelling.
It answers the lady, who had written that in dreams at least they meet.
With this poem the four-poem exchange on dreams is brought to a close, and the account moves on to the exchange on a river.

Taking up the other's dream, she sets the waking world against it. The opening means that words run out, that is, that the days pass with no message. The second line asks what this waking world can be, implying that dreams at any rate allow passage. The third line means rather, all the more so — the very word the other had used, and it serves as the hinge between the two poems. The fourth line says that dreams have a road for going and coming, following the belief of the time. The final particle is adversative and left hanging, so that the words and yet the waking world is like this are never spoken. Accepting the consolation that they meet in dreams, she asks in return what is to be said of waking; and with only a fence between the two houses, the question quietly presses the fact that the lady still does not come. Placed at the close of four exchanges, it reopens the very frame of dream and waking on which they had all been built.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other