Sashiidetaru futakura o mireba mi o sutete konomu wa tama no konu to sadametsu

English Translation

Looking at the lid
you have held out to me, I
have settled it: though
one throw oneself away in
wanting, no jewel will come.

Meaning

Looking at the lid you held out to me, I have settled it: though one throw oneself away in wanting, no jewel will come.

Commentary

61 The Exchange between the Retainer and the Gentlewoman

The year turned to the third of Tenroku. While she was settling her resolutions for the new year, Kaneie came on the eighth of the first month. The next day, as he was leaving, one of his retainers sent a poem to a gentlewoman of the author's household. She answered it, putting wine and something to eat in the lid of a bucket and sending it back to him.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke and became Major Counselor in this year; he would rise to be regent and chancellor. The retainer was one of Kaneie's men and the gentlewoman one of the author's; the text names neither.
It is the ninth of the first month of the third year of Tenroku, and the place is the author's dwelling.
It answers the retainer, who had likened a bucket lid to a mirror; she put wine and food in that same lid and sent it back with this poem.
With this exchange the section closes. The account moves on to the exchange with Kaneie about the remaking of a court robe on the fourteenth of the first month.

She takes back his bucket lid unchanged. The opening means the thing that was held out, pointing to the lid itself. The second passes to what she found on looking at it. The third means without regard for oneself. The word in the fourth is a jewel, the standard figure for what one desires. Where he had made the lid a mirror, she fills the same lid with wine and food and sends it back, so that the act of turning a vessel that shows no reflection into a vessel with something in it is itself the answer. The close declares it settled that no jewel will come, making a show of giving up what cannot be had. The whole is built on passing a single object back and forth and changing the use made of it, so that the wit lies rather in the thing than in the words — which is what gives this exchange its interest. The base text is disturbed, and the reading of the second half is not settled.

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other