さもこそは浪の心はつらからめ
としさへ越ゆるまつもありけり
としさへ越ゆるまつもありけり
- Roma-ji
-
Samo koso wa nami no kokoro wa tsurakarame toshi sae koyuru matsu mo arikeri
- English Translation
-
No doubt the heart of
the wave is hard indeed; and yet
there has been a pine
that waited, and went on waiting,
even across the year's end.
- Meaning
- No doubt the heart of the wave is hard indeed; and yet there has been a pine that waited on, even across the year's end.
- Commentary
-
103 The Exchange on the White Waves Offshore
This time too no answer came. While he was wondering what it could mean, he heard that there were said to be a great many men courting her. That must be it, he thought, and sent a poem; and this time an answer came. When the year had turned he sent another, and that too was answered.
The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The Assistant Master is her son Fujiwara no Michitsuna. The woman is not named in the text. The old poem in which waves cross the pine-clad hill of Sue serves as the figure for what could never happen — a change of heart — and this whole exchange is built upon that turn of phrase.
It is about the first month of the third year of Tenen, and the place is the woman's house.
It answers her poem about not crossing and not not crossing, and was sent after the year had turned.
She replied with "Chitose furu matsu mo koso are hodo mo naku koete wa kaeru hodo ya tōkarazu."
He takes back her wave and her crossing. The opening concedes: no doubt it is so. The second allows that the wave's heart must be hard, the emphatic construction implying that this much, at least, he grants. The particle in the third is additive: not merely the question of crossing or not, but the year as well. The verb in the fourth means to cross, and it is turned from waves crossing a hill to crossing from one year into the next; that shift is the point of the poem. The word at the close is the pine and also the verb to wait, so that there has been a pine — a waiting — that carried across the year's end, stated as a discovery. Where she had said the years went by with the matter unsettled, he answers that he for his part will go on waiting across the year. That the poem was sent after the new year had begun gives the verb for crossing its immediate force.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Michitsuna
- Source
- Kagero Nikki
- Other
-
- If you are a pine that waits for someone not me, then do not say you wait — and do not break so hard across, white waves off the shore.
- Not crossing, and not not crossing either — the shore where the waves come in has gone on being broken over, year after year after year.
- There are pines, they say, that live a thousand years; and what is a crossing that goes over and comes back in no time — is that so far?
- At every gust of the wind that blows, I find myself full of thought — like the waves of the great sea, with no quiet left in me at all.