恨みずは忘れぬ人もありなまし
思ひ知らでぞあるべかりける
思ひ知らでぞあるべかりける
- Roma-ji
-
Urami zu wa wasurenu hito mo ari namashi omoishirade zo aru bekarikeru
- English Translation
-
Had I not reproached him,
there might have been one who
would not forget me;
I should have gone on as though
I had never known the truth
- Meaning
- Had I not reproached him, there might have been someone who would not forget me; I should have stayed as one who never knew how cold he was.
- Commentary
-
Book Fifteen Love Poems V 916
Headnote: "Composed on the theme of reproach when presenting a hundred-poem sequence in the reign of Emperor Horikawa"
Composed on the theme of reproach when he presented a hundred-poem sequence in the reign of Emperor Horikawa. Had I not reproached, he says, there might have been one who would not forget me; I should have stayed unknowing. Having seen the beloved's coldness and voiced reproach, only to drive that heart further away, he regrets it and says he should have pretended not to notice. It is a poem that catches a subtlety of love: that reproach itself can lose one a lover. The sequence is the Horikawa Hundred-Poem Sequences.
The author, "the monk Ryūgen," was the son of Fujiwara no Michimune, Governor of Wakasa. A monk of Mount Hiei, he was known as the Wakasa Ajari. He assisted his uncle Fujiwara no Michitoshi in compiling the Go-Shūi Wakashū and was one of the poets of the Horikawa Hundred-Poem Sequences. He wrote the poetic treatise Ryūgen Kuden.
Poem 954 of this book, "urami shi koto zo kuyashikarikeru," also regrets having reproached, and the two share a mood.
First line, "urami zu wa": "zu wa," the negative "zu" with the particle "wa," gives a hypothetical condition, "had I not reproached." It answers "mashi" in the third line.
Second line, "wasurenu hito mo": "someone who would not forget me."
Third line, "ari namashi": "na" is the irrealis of the perfective "nu," here intensifying, and "mashi" the counterfactual auxiliary, "there might have been." The poem pauses here.
Fourth line, "omoishirade zo": "omoishiru" means to realize deeply, and "de" is a negative conjunctive particle, "without realizing." The emphatic "zo" closes with the attributive "keru" in the last line.
Fifth line, "aru bekarikeru": "bekari" is the continuative of "beshi," expressing what ought to be, and "keru" the attributive of the exclamatory "keri," closing the "zo" of the fourth line. "So I ought to have been," it says in regret.
- Author
- Ryūgen
- Source
- Senzai Wakashu
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