Omoiizuru toki zo kanashiki okuyama no ko no shita tsuyu no itodo shigeki ni

English Translation

It is remembering
that is the grief — here where the
dew beneath the trees
of the deep hills falls and falls,
thicker and ever thicker.

Meaning

It is the remembering that grieves us, here where the dew beneath the trees of the deep hills falls thicker and ever thicker.

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, and the place is the mountain temple at Narutaki.
When the author heard of the poem sent by the former attendant, she told the gentlewoman to answer quickly; and the woman replied with this, adding that seeing their mistress holding back her tears made them all wretched. The poet is not the author but the gentlewoman in her service.
After this exchange a relative comes to call, and the account moves on to "Yo no naka no yo no naka naraba natsukusa no shigeki yamabe mo tazunezaramashi" and what follows.

She restates the other's mountain road as the deep hills. The opening means remembering what was in the capital, and the second, bound by an emphatic particle, states the grief of it outright. Where the other wrote of a journey out, this answers from within the mountains, looking back. The third and fourth name the dew beneath the trees in the depth of the hills; dew is the standing figure for tears, and dew from the branches, which falls without ceasing from above, suits exactly the tears that cannot be held back. The close means all the thicker for it, the word for thickness serving at once for the quantity of dew and the quantity of weeping. Given the remark she added — that seeing their mistress hold back her tears made them wretched — the dew is both the mistress's weeping and the gentlewoman's own. It is a poem in which a servant takes her mistress's grief upon herself, and it shows well how this section records its exchanges without regard to rank.

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other