Koi suru ni shini suru mono ni aramaseba chitabi zo ware wa shinikaeramashi - Shui Wakashu(English Translation & Meaning)

恋するに死にするものにあらませば
千たびぞ我は死にかへらまし

Roma-ji: Koi suru ni shini suru mono ni aramaseba chitabi zo ware wa shinikaeramashi
English Translation: If loving someone
were a thing that brought on death,
then it would be so:
a thousand times would I
have died and lived again.
Meaning: If love were something one could die of, I would have died and come back to life a thousand times over.
Commentary: Book Fifteen Love Poems V 935

Headnote continued from the preceding poem: "Topic unknown"
The poem says that if love were a thing that killed, I would have died and come back to life a thousand times. It expresses through the exaggeration of a thousand deaths both the intensity of love's suffering and its endless recurrence.
With the next poems, 936 and 937, three poems attributed to Hitomaro on dying of love stand together.
The author, "Hitomaro", is Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, a court poet of the Asuka period revered as the sage of poetry and the foremost poet of the Man'yōshū, and one of the Thirty-Six Immortal Poets. Many Man'yōshū poems are included in the Shūishū under Hitomaro's name.
A similar poem appears in Book Eleven of the Man'yōshū, with the fourth line "waga mi wa chitabi."

First line, "koi suru ni," means "by loving."
Second line, "shini suru mono ni," means "a thing that kills."
Third line, "aramaseba," means "if it were," with "mase" the irrealis of the counterfactual "mashi."
Fourth line, "chitabi zo ware wa," means "a thousand times I," with the binding particle "zo" forming a kakari-musubi with the final line.
Final line, "shinikaeramashi," means "would have died and returned," with "mashi" answering "maseba" in the third line and, as an attributive, concluding "zo" in the fourth.
Author: Kakinomoto no Hitomaro
Source: Shui Wakashu
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