Namikage no miyari ni tateru komatsubara kokoro o yosuru koto zo aru beshi

English Translation

The little pine grove
standing where the waves can be
seen from a distance —
surely there is something there
that leans, that gives its heart.

Meaning

The little pine grove standing where the waves can be seen from afar — surely there is something in it that leans, that gives its heart.

Commentary

39 Screen Poems for the Celebration of the Minister of the Left of Koichijō

The eighth month came. About that time the world was in an uproar over the celebration for the Minister of the Left of Koichijō. The Captain of the Left Gate Guards was to have the screens made, and by way of a connection that had no business asking for poems, the author was pressed to write. What one is given is a written list of the scenes painted on the screens. She sent it back again and again, saying the thing was hollow; but they insisted beyond all reason, and so in the evenings, in the intervals of moon-gazing, she thought out one or two at a time. What follows are the poems made for each of the painted scenes. Thus she was forced into a tiresome business, and into a great number of pieces besides; and of these, she hears, the one on the fishing fires and the one on the flock of plovers were the ones chosen.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Neither the Minister of the Left of Koichijō nor the Captain of the Left Gate Guards who arranged the celebration is named in the text, which gives only office and residence; marginal notes in the base text identify them as Fujiwara no Morotada and Fujiwara no Naritoki. A screen poem is written to accompany a scene painted on a screen, the poet being given a written description of the picture beforehand.
It is the eighth month of the second year of Anna, and the place is the author's dwelling.
It was written for a painting of a pine grove on the shore before a countryman's house, with cranes at play; two poems were required for this scene, and this is the first.
The second is "Matsu no kage masago no naka to tazunuru wa nani no akanu zo tazu no muratori." The narrative says that of these poems the one on the fishing fires and the one on the flock of plovers were chosen.

The opening names the place where the waves show, that is, the shore of the painting. The second means standing where it can be seen at a distance, describing the grove set in the background. The third names a grove of young pines; since the pine is the tree of long life, it belongs in a picture made for a celebration. The verb in the fourth means both that waves come in and that a heart inclines toward something, and the poem turns on it: a pine standing where the waves come in must itself, the argument runs, have something that leans. The close is bound by an emphatic particle and states it as a conjecture. Since a second poem was required for the same scene, this one keeps to the pines and leaves the cranes alone. Finding the movement of a heart between two objects, wave and pine, the poem is built without importing anything the picture does not contain.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other