いづこにか世をば厭はむ心こそ
野にも山にもまどふべらなれ
野にも山にもまどふべらなれ
- Roma-ji
-
Izuko ni ka yo o ba itowamu kokoro koso no ni mo yama ni mo madou beranare
- English Translation
-
Where then shall I go
to turn away from the world?
It is my heart
that through the fields and mountains
seems to wander lost.
- Meaning
- Where can I go to renounce the world? It is my own heart that seems to wander astray through the fields and over the mountains.
- Commentary
-
Book Eighteen Miscellaneous Poems II 947
Headnote: "Topic unknown"
The poet would renounce the world, but the heart itself wanders off into fields and mountains, so there is nowhere to escape to. It shows a monk's introspection: changing one's place does not free one from the confusion of the heart.
The depth of the poem lies in the fact that the author, himself a monk, looks honestly at the wavering of one who has left the world.
The author, "Sosei" as written in kana, is the monk Sosei, son of Archbishop Henjō; his lay name was Yoshimine no Harutoshi. He lived at Urin'in and elsewhere after taking vows, and is counted among the Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals.
The first line, "where then," uses the interrogative ka, answered by the attributive mu in the second line.
The second line, "shall I ... turn away from the world?", uses the emphatic o ba; the poem breaks after this line.
The third line, "it is my heart," uses koso, completed by the perfective form nare at the end.
The fourth line, "through the fields and mountains," lists the places where recluses live.
The last line, "seems to wander lost," uses beranari, a conjectural expression of the early Heian period that was common in the age of the Kokin Wakashū.
- Author
- Sosei
- Source
- Kokin Wakashu
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