久しとはおぼつかなしやからごろも
うち着てなれむさて贈らせよ
うち着てなれむさて贈らせよ
- Roma-ji
-
Hisashi to wa obotsukanashi ya karagoromo uchikite naremu sate okurase yo
- English Translation
-
That it should take so
long makes me uneasy. Let
me put the robe on
and wear it into softness —
come, have it sent to me now.
- Meaning
- That it should take so long makes me uneasy. Let me put the robe on and wear it soft — come, have it sent to me now.
- Commentary
-
62 The Remaking of the Robe
On the fourteenth of the first month Kaneie sent word that he would like an old court robe made over. She let it lie; and the next morning he sent a messenger to press her, with a poem. When she sent back only the remade robe, with no letter, he complained that to send the thing alone and no word was not very gracious. To that the author made a poem.
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. The robe is the outer garment of court dress, its color fixed by rank. In the first book too there is a scene in which Kaneie sends clothes to be made up and the household sends them back untouched.
It is the morning of the fifteenth of the first month of the third year of Tenroku, and the places are the author's dwelling and Kaneie's residence.
He had asked the day before to have an old court robe made over, and she had let it lie. The next morning he sent a messenger to press her, with this poem.
When she sent back the remade robe with no letter, he complained that the thing alone and no word was not very gracious; and she answered with "Wabite mata toku to sawagedo kai nakute hodo furu mono wa kaku koso arikere."
The opening means that it is taking a long time, referring to the sewing he had asked for. The second means uneasy, impatient — the right key for a note carried by a messenger sent to press her. The third names the robe, which is both the garment in question and the word that introduces the fourth line. The verb there means both that a garment grows soft with wearing and that people grow familiar with one another, and on it the poem turns: wearing a robe into softness carries the sense of two people growing close. The close is an order — have it sent at once — so that a poem is at the same time the business of the message. In the first book too Kaneie sent clothes to be made up and was refused, and the same shape of request recurs here after more than ten years; the difference is that then the clothes were sent back, and now they are made and returned.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Kaneie
- Source
- Kagero Nikki
- Other
-
- Shimotsuke, and its Futara — this bucket lid I look at instead, and find it a bitter mirror in which no face appears.
- 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.
- At my wits' end, I hurried and unpicked and hurried, and it came to nothing: whatever the years pass over turns out to be like this.
- Crossing the barrier, I came to a night's lodging on a pillow of grass — and yet it does not seem to me a thing of one night only.