Kakete dani omoi ya wa seshi yama fukaku iriai no kane ni ne o soemu to wa

English Translation

Did I ever once
so much as imagine it —
that deep in the hills
I should add a voice of my
own to the evening bell?

Meaning

Did I ever once so much as imagine it — that deep in the hills I should add a voice of my own to the evening bell?

Commentary

54 The Retreat at Narutaki

On the fourth of the sixth month, setting out before Kaneie's period of abstinence was over, she went to the temple at Narutaki in the western hills and shut herself up there. Kaneie came to fetch her and she would not go; letters passed, and life at the mountain temple went on. Her sister visited, Kaneie's messenger came, she hardened a sorrowful resolve, and another letter came from him. Letters of inquiry arrived one after another, and though she answered them the next day, the time went by while she turned over such thoughts as that she did not mean to stay shut up forever. She put that state of mind into a poem and sent it to one who had written. An answer came. Then, to the gentlewomen on night duty, someone who had once served in that office sent a poem, saying that they too must be attending their mistress with heavy hearts, and that there is a poem about how high and low alike have their risings and fallings. Hearing of it from the woman, the author told her to answer quickly, and she replied that seeing their mistress holding back her tears made them all wretched. Later a relative came to call, and the next day sent the things needed for a long stay away from home, adding that it must have been hard to come all that way to a mountain temple, with two poems. The author wrote back with great care and returned two poems of her own. Afterward letters passed with Tōshi, and a poem came also from an ascetic of the temple who had crossed the Ōmine range from Mitake to Kumano. In time Michitaka called, her father Tomoyasu came for her, and at last she came down from the mountain when Kaneie came to fetch her.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke and would rise to be regent and chancellor. Narutaki is a place in the western hills of the capital, where the temple stood. The one who sent the letter of inquiry, the former attendant on night duty, the gentlewoman, the relative and the ascetic are none of them named in the text.
It is the sixth month of the second year of Tenroku, some days into her retreat, and the place is the mountain temple.
Letters of inquiry kept coming and she answered them the next day; but the time went by while she turned over such thoughts as that she did not mean to remain shut up. She put that state of mind into this poem and sent it to one who had written.
The answer came: "Iu yori mo kiku zo kanashiki shikishima no yo ni furusato no hito ya mo ni nari."

The opening means so much as in thought, its particle marking the least case and preparing a strong denial. The second is rhetorical in force: did she think it? — she never did. The third names the depth of the hills where she now is, and at the same time runs on into the word for the bell of nightfall, whose first element also means entering. That bell, rung as the sun goes down, marks the divisions of a day at a mountain temple and is the plainest emblem of a life in retreat. The word in the close means the sound of the bell and also the sound of weeping, and the poem turns on it: by speaking of adding her own voice to the bell she says that she has become part of the temple's world of sound. As an answer to someone asking after her state of mind, it offers a single sound and nothing else, and its refusal to describe the life at all is the whole posture of the poem.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other