つらしとも思はむ人は思ひなむ
我なればこそ身をば恨むれ
我なればこそ身をば恨むれ
- Roma-ji
-
Tsurashi tomo omowamu hito wa omoinamu ware nareba koso mi oba uramure
- English Translation
-
That you are heartless,
anyone who thinks so
would surely think it;
it is only because I am I
that I blame myself instead
- Meaning
- Anyone else who would think you heartless would surely think so; it is only because I am who I am that I blame myself instead.
- Commentary
-
Book Eight Love Poems II 488
Others would surely think the beloved heartless, the poet says, but precisely because it is she, she resents not the other but herself. Setting herself against others as one who blames herself rather than the other, the poem conveys a devoted love.
Poem 455 in this book asks whether one can lay all on one's own sorrow and never resent the other, while this poem, in the opposite direction, says it is oneself and not the other that one resents.
First line, 'tsurashi tomo', means that you are heartless.
Second line, 'omowamu hito wa', means anyone who would think so, using the attributive of mu in its softening sense.
Third line, 'omoinamu', means would surely think so, na, the irrealis of the emphatic nu, followed by the conjectural mu, the poem breaking after the third line.
Fourth line, 'ware nareba koso', means precisely because I am I, the particle koso answered by uramure in the final line.
Final line, 'mi oba uramure', means I resent myself, closing with the perfective form uramure in answer to koso in the fourth line.
- Source
- Kinyo Wakashu
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