来し方をさながら夢になしつれば
覚むるうつつのなきぞ悲しき
覚むるうつつのなきぞ悲しき
- Roma-ji
-
Koshikata o sanagara yume ni nashitsureba samuru utsutsu no naki zo kanashiki
- English Translation
-
When I count the past
as nothing but a dream,
whole and just as it was,
how sad that there is no real
world to wake up into.
- Meaning
- When I take all my past days to have been nothing but a dream, how sad it is that there is no reality to wake into.
- Commentary
-
Book Eighteen Miscellaneous Poems III 1790
Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Topic unknown."
This is the fourth of the poems on impermanence. If all the days gone by are taken as a dream, it is sad that there is no reality to wake into. It voices a sense of impermanence in which, if life itself is a dream, there is no sure reality anywhere.
The author, "Provisional Middle Counselor Sukezane," is Fujiwara no Sukezane. A son of Fujiwara no Kanemitsu, he rose to Provisional Middle Counselor.
The first line, "koshikata o," means "the days gone by."
The second line, "sanagara yume ni," means "just as they were, as a dream."
The third line, "nashitsureba," means "when I take them so." "Tsure" is the realis of the perfective "tsu," forming a condition with "ba."
The fourth line, "samuru utsutsu no," means "of the reality to which one wakes from a dream."
The last line, "naki zo kanashiki," closes the kakari-musubi of "zo" with the attributive form of the adjective "kanashiki." The paradox that there is no reality to return to on waking shows the frailty of life itself.
- Author
- Fujiwara no Sukezane
- Source
- Shin Kokin Wakashu
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