おしなべて物を思はぬ人にさへ
心をつくる秋の初風
心をつくる秋の初風
- Roma-ji
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Oshinabete mono o omowanu hito ni sae kokoro o tsukuru aki no hatsukaze
- English Translation
-
Even to a man
who thinks of nothing at all
and lets the world be
it teaches the heart to feel
the first wind of the autumn
- Meaning
- Even in one who broods over nothing at all it makes a heart: the first wind of autumn.
- Commentary
-
Book Four Autumn Poems I 299
Headnote: topic unknown.
The autumn wind is said to raise brooding in anyone. The headnote gives no topic and nothing is known of the circumstances.
The Monk Saigyo, whose lay name was Sato no Norikiyo, served Retired Emperor Toba as a guard of the northern quarters and took orders at twenty-three. He appears in Book One from the seventh poem, in Book Two at the hundred and twenty-sixth, and in Book Three from the two hundred and seventeenth.
The time is early autumn; no place is given.
The occasion of composition is not recorded.
The poem is among Saigyo's best known.
The first line means generally, without exception, the word used in Sanesada's thirty-fifth poem in Book One.
The second line means one who does not brood: one might say, a person not easily moved.
The particle in the third line marks addition: even to such a one. Those who do brood need no mention.
The verb in the fourth line means to make, to bring into being. To say that the wind makes a heart is to claim that it gives feeling even to those without the capacity for it.
The poem closes on the same noun as the two hundred and ninety-second, ninety-fifth and ninety-sixth, its fourth appearance in this book. No feature of the landscape is described at all; only the working of the wind is stated, and its power over the human heart is the subject.
- Author
- The Monk Saigyo
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
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Kinō made yoso ni shinobishi shitaogi no sueha no tsuyu ni akikaze zo fuku
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Aware ika ni kusaba no tsuyu no kooruramu akikaze tachinu Miyagino no hara