Yūsare no neya no tsumazuma nagamureba tezukara nomi zo kumo mo kakinuru

English Translation

Gazing at evening
at the corners of my bedroom,
I see that even
the spider draws its thread — writes
it — with its own hand only.

Meaning

Gazing at evening at the corners of my bedroom, I see that even the spider draws its thread, and writes it, with its own hand only.

Commentary

72 Grief at the Bon Festival; The Yamato-Seeming Woman: The Exchange on White Paper

There was grief about the time of the Bon festival, and then a warning of death, after which she kept silence for a time. When the eighth month too had passed, Michitsuna, unable to believe that any of the woman's answers were in her own hand, sent her a poem in reproach. She answered on white paper, and he wrote again. From then on, whenever no answer came, he sent another poem.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. Michitsuna was her son. The woman is the one the text calls the Yamato-seeming person, and she is unnamed. At that period a woman's replies were often written for her by an attendant, so that whether a letter was in her own hand served as a measure of what she felt.
It is after the eighth month of the third year of Tenroku had passed, and the place is the woman's house at the foot of Mount Miwa.
Unable to believe that any of the woman's answers were in her own hand, Michitsuna sent this poem in reproach.
She answered on white paper with "Kumo no kaku ito zo ayashiki kaze fukeba sora ni midaruru mono to shirushiru," and he wrote again.

The opening fixes the hour at dusk. The second names the corners of the bedchamber, the sort of angle where a spider spins. The third means to gaze while sunk in thought. The fourth means with its own hand alone, its emphatic particle governing the close, where the verb means both to string a thread and to write with a brush; on it the poem turns. Even a spider, it says, lays its thread with its own hand — whereas her answers are not in her own. At that period a woman's replies were often written for her by an attendant, so that a hand of writing served as a measure of her feeling. In the first book Kaneie, receiving replies in a substitute's hand, complains in "Hamachidori ato mo nagisa ni fumi mireba ware o kosu nami uchi yaketsuramu"; the same grievance about a borrowed hand thus passes from father to son. The spider, too, is a word that recurs throughout this diary from the first book onward, always as the figure for a slender and precarious line of communication.

Author

Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other