larryhammer | Kokinshu Book IIa: Spring 2 (69-100) (Reply)

Continuing on from book 1 of the Kokinshu, we get more cherry blossoms. Oh, and other flowers of spring. Through to the end of spring, in fact. All of them quite pretty, though they spend more time fading and scattering than actually blooming. It's the pathos of the thing.

Though I started these translations this January, the bulk were done May-August 2011. As with Book I, they were all initially posted in my poetry journal (a.k.a.

prettygoodpoet) with many revised since -- these are the latest-and-greatest versions. My reference materials are the same as for book 1, with the addition of an Ôbunsha classical language dictionary that I don't know how I got along without. Well, I do -- all those other references, but I've never been more thankful for teeny-tiny 5-point type (with 2-point furigana).

Because I haven't actually mentioned this: my translations mimic the original form of 31 syllables in lines* of 5-7-5-7-7. This syllable count was not strict, however: hypermetic lines with an extra syllable were not uncommon -- often but not always where adjacent vowels can be elided together. Sometimes, this was done to effect: a long last line gives it a slight emphasis, much as in English verse. I've taken advantage of this laxity to allow myself the occasional line that's a syllable short or, more rarely, long -- never more than one a poem. (Only once have I managed to reproduce the same long line, though.) I've tried to avoid padding the language solely to fill out the form, for that's neither good poetry or good translation -- roundabout phrasings generally correspond to something of the original, be it tone or syntax or padded language. Translations that streamline as much as possible can be unfaithful.

* As in ancient Greece, in practice poems were written as a single string, broken as space enforced. However, comma, orthography is not structure and the syllable groups are lines by any reasonable definition. Despite this, much ink has been spilled across many pages arguing the matter.

But without further ado, more culturally dominant images below the fold. As always, comments, critiques, and corrections are welcome. Encouraged, even.

69. Author unknown Topic unknown.
harugasumi tanabiku yama no sakurabana utsurowamu to ya iro kawari-yuku	Are cherry blossoms in the mountains with spring mists trailing across them starting to change color because they're about to fall?
At the end of book 1, the cherry blossoms were scattering -- and they still are here. I couldn't reproduce the ambiguity that it could be the mists that change color (because the flowers seen through them are fading).
70. (Author unknown) (Topic unknown.)
mate to iu ni chirade shi tomaru mono naraba nani o sakura ni omoimasamashi	If we told them, "Wait!" and they did not scatter but stayed on the branches, what could we possibly prefer over these cherry blossoms?
Unknown per the editors, anyway, but it's included in Sosei's collected poems. While a rhetorical question fits his manner, it's grammatically compressed in a way that seems not typical for him -- specifically, the comparison is elided, provoking much pondering what exactly the question is. How to read it is also complicated by the fact that in Kokinshu esthetics, it is precisely because the cherry blossoms scatter that they are admired (note the next poem, set by the editors in reply) but just a few generations before, this would have been a rhetorical question expecting a negative answer.
71. (Author unknown) (Topic unknown.)
nokori naku chiru zo medetaki sakurabana arite yo no naka hate no ukereba	It's precisely for scattering without remains that you are admired: cherry blossoms, it's hateful, remaining within this world.
The transience of beauty is also the beauty of transience. Being attached to the world is, of course, a failing in Buddhism -- note that nokori naku = "without remains" can also be understood as "without regret."
72. (Author unknown) (Topic unknown.)
kono sato ni tabine shinubeshi sakurabana chiri no magai ni ieji wasurete	So here I must sleep, a traveler in this village: in the confusion of falling cherry blossoms, I've forgotten the way home.
Darn those cherries, always causing problems. Whether the falling petals simply befuddle the speaker or are so thick they prevent him from seeing the right road is a matter of interpretation.
73. (Author unknown) (Topic unknown.)
utsusemi no yo ni mo nitaru ka hanazakura saku to mishi ma ni katsu chirinikeri	How they resemble our cicada-shell world! -- even while we watch the flowering cherries bloom, they're already scattering.
Utsusemi no ("of/like a cicada-shell") is a stock epithet for the world -- the idea being the Buddhist one that human existence is as empty and ephemeral as the discarded final juvenile molt of a cicada. The cherry blossoms are reversed from sakurabana to hanazakura for no reason I can explain.
74. Prince Koretaka Written and sent to Archbishop Henjô.
sakurabana chiraba chiranamu chirazu tote furusatobito no kite mo minaku ni	O cherry blossoms, if you must fall, then fall now -- for even if you don't fall, he still won't come see, that companion of old.
Koretaka (844-897, first met in #53 as Ariwara no Narihira's patron) was the oldest son of Emperor Montoku (d.858) but was passed over for the succession in favor of his half-brother Seiwa, the grandson of prime minister Fujiwara no Yoshifusa (see #52). He has two poems in the Kokinshu, both believed to have been written after 872 when, following a serious illness, he took Buddhist vows and became a religious recluse. Both his mother, a daughter of the Ki family, and his son also have poems in the Kokinshu. As for the poem, yes, that's three forms of chiru ("fall"/"scatter") in a row, and without inflections to vary things there's no real way to keep it from sounding even more heavy-handed in English. The grammatically unmarked flowers could be also be the subject of all that falling, but it's easier (not to mention gives better irony) to read them as address. Furusatobito ("person from one's hometown") is often, as I have here, understood as an idiom for a long-time intimate friend, with connotations of one-time. The funky syntax of the second half attempts to match the original's inverted sentence structure and the ambiguity of whether Henjô won't see the flowers or speaker.
75. Sôku Written on seeing the cherry blossoms scatter at Urin Temple.
sakura chiru hana no tokoro wa haru nagara yuki zo furitsutsu kiegateni suru	Although it is spring in this place where cherry trees scatter their flowers, snowflakes continue to fall and are unable to melt.
Sôku is an otherwise obscure monk with three poems in the Kokinshu. Urin ("cloud forest") was originally a detached palace built for Emperor Junna, later converted to a Tendai temple that came under the control of Henjô in 869; its former site is now part of the grounds of Daitoku Temple at the foot of Mt. Hiei in Kyoto. Koretaka may have lived there after taking vows, which gives an additional connection with the previous. The wordiness of my last line (instead of a shorter "cannot melt") mimics the original -- for it was with this, dear readers, I fully realized that mediocre poems are easier to translate than good ones.
76. Sosei Written on seeing the cherry blossoms were scattering.
hana chirasu kaze no yadori wa tare ka shiru ware ni oshieyo yukite uramimu	Does anyone know the dwelling place of the wind that scatters flowers? Please tell me at once, for I want to go there and complain.
Another of Sosei's witty rhetorical questions.
77. Sôku Written on cherry blossoms at Urin Temple.
iza sakura ware mo chirinamu hito sakari arinaba hito ni ukime mienamu	Ah, cherry blossoms -- I want to scatter as well. One who no longer possesses the bloom of youth is surely painful to see.
This poem also appears in Sosei's collected poems -- though if it really is his, it's not up to his usual standard. Sakari can mean "peak (bloom)," "prime (of life)," and other similar senses -- thus "bloom of youth," encompassing both speaker and flowers.
78. Ki no Tsurayuki Written, attached to a flower[ing branch], and sent to a close friend who had visited and returned home.
hitome mishi kimi mo ya kuru to sakurabana kyô wa machimite chiraba chiranamu	Today, try to wait for the one that even you, O cherry blossoms, caught a glimpse of when he came -- then if you must fall, fall then.
Typically when Tsurayuki packs more than you expect possible into a poem, it's still easy to read -- this, however, is grammatically involute, and I'm not all that confident I've construed it correctly. In addition, I don't really capture the strength of the final wish that the flowers scatter -- but then, I don't for the identical second line of #74. Social history notes: the headnote shows that the practice, mentioned in Genji and The Pillow Book, of attaching message-poems to thematically appropriate vegetation dates to at least a century before those were written.
79. (Ki no Tsurayuki) Written on seeing mountain cherry [blossoms].
harugasumi nani kakusuramu sakurabana chiru ma o dani mo mirubeki mono o	The haze of springtime -- why must it conceal them? I would at least like to see the cherry blossoms, if only while they scatter.
The attribution, which is implied rather than explicit, is disputed, apparently fueled by Tsurayuki not including this in his collected poems. This has not one but two nouns without case-markers, the haze and the blossoms, giving a larger than usual matrix of possible readings. That they are balanced at the start of paired sentences suggests treating them equally, which meant taking both as subject of verbs, for conceal and scatter, respectively. Less straining would be "O haze of springtime, / why must you conceal them?" but grace in the target language is not a good reason for choosing a reading of the original.
80. Fujiwara no Yoruka Written upon seeing, as she lay ill with the blinds closed to avoid the wind, that the cherry [blossoms] that had been plucked for her were beginning to scatter.
tarekomete haru no yukue mo shiranu ma ni machishi sakura mo utsuroinikeri	During my period of seclusion, unaware of the course of spring, even the cherry blossoms I waited for have faded.
Yoruka is believed (the records aren't conclusive) to have been a daughter of Fujiwara no Takafuji by a different wife than the presumed half-sister who married Emperor Uda and gave birth to Emperor Daigo. Her dates are unknown, but she became an attendant in the imperial household in 871 under Emperor Seiwa and served at least four successors, last appearing in the records with a promotion upon her nephew Daigo's accession in 897; of her 4 poems in the Kokinshu, those with dateable contexts are from the 870s. Her mother (under her religious name, Kyoshin) also has a poem in the Kokinshu. Tarekomeru, here "seclude," literally meant "to seclude oneself behind lowered blinds" (rather than the common modern meaning of "to hang low over"). It's possible to read her has saying not "even" but "also" the blossoms have faded.
81. Sugano no Takayo Written on seeing cherry blossoms fall and float away in the stream at the Crown Prince's quarters.
eda yori mo ada ni chirinishi hana nareba ochite mo mizu no awa to koso nare	Because they're flowers that frivolously scattered from the branches, once they fall, they're nothing more than froth upon the water.
Takayo's dates are unknown aside from that he flourished around 810 and last appears in records in 820; he has this single poem in the Kokinshu. The conceit implies the transient flowers were but as froth to begin with (as are we all). I have to wonder if there wasn't a way to express this without the clunk of two synonyms for falling (chiru and ochiru, with connotations of scattering and dropping, respectively).
82. Ki no Tsurayuki Written on fallen cherry blossoms.
koto naraba sakazu ya wa aranu sakurabana miru ware sae ni shizugokoro nashi	With things are they are, why do you bother to bloom, O cherry blossoms? Even I, when I see you, do not have a peaceful heart.
Following other texts, and to make it make any sense, I've emended the first word of my base text from goto ("each" or "like/similar," usually a suffix) to koto ("thing/situation"). The question in the original first two lines is a double-negative ("why isn't it that you don't bloom?") marked as a rhetorical question, but that's awkward and confusing in English. The implication, re-enforced by grammatical ambiguity, is that the flowers as well as the speaker aren't at peace.
83. (Ki no Tsurayuki) Written when someone said nothing scatters as quickly as cherry blossoms.
sakurabana toku chirinu to mo omooezu hito no kokoro zo kaze mo fukiaenu	I cannot believe the cherry blossoms scatter especially quickly, for a person's heart can change even before the wind blows.
"Change" is not explicit but a sort of double-meaning (not quite a pivot-word) of "blow."
84. Ki no Tomonori Written on cherry blossoms falling.
hisakata no hikari nodokeki haru no hi ni shizugokoro naku hana no chiruramu	Gentle light shines down from the eternal heavens, so on this spring day why do the cherry blossoms scatter with such restless hearts?
Hisakata no is a untranslatable stock epithet applied to things in or descending from the sky, likely related to hisashii ("long-standing"). The original poem has just "flowers," but it's "cherry blossoms" in the headnote -- and at this point it could hardly be anything else. As usual for Tomonori, the original is lovely, with its repeated h and k sounds. Shaping the progression of vowels produces only a pale imitation of the effect.
85. Fujiwara no Yoshikaze Written on cherry blossoms scattering at the station of the Crown Prince's guards.
harukaze wa hana no atori o yogite fuke kokorozu kara ya utsurou to mimu	O winds of spring, don't you blow anywhere near these cherry blossoms: I would like to see whether they fall of their own desire.
Yoshikaze appears in the court records as a middling courtier between 898 and 911, and so was probably born around 860. He has this single poem in the Kokinshu. Again it's just "flowers" in the original poem, but again it could hardly be another. The brusk tone reflects his direct imperative, in contrast to the desiderative inflections of previous, more wistful poems.
86. Ôshikôchi no Mitsune Written on falling cherry [blossoms].
yuki to nomi furu dani aru o sakurabana ika ni chire to ka kaze no fukuramu	If they must fall, it should be as the snowflakes. These cherry blossoms -- how can the winds blow like this, commanding them to "Scatter!"
The original plays on a contrast between the separate verbs for "fall" used for precipitation like snow (furu) and for objects like flower petals (chiru), aided by the intermediary of fuku ("blow"). It's also somewhat idiomatic, as befits a bit of social fluff of the sort Mitsune specialized in, so my version is less literal than usual.
87. Ki no Tsurayuki Written upon returning from ascending Mt. Hiei.
yama takami mitsutsu wa ga koshi sakurabana kaze wa kokoro ni makasuberanari	As the hills were high, I just gazed and gazed and came back. Those cherry blossoms -- the winds, I trust, must surely be working their will with them.
Mt. Hiei, the site of several important temples and monasteries, is northeast of Kyoto. The verb for what the winds are doing is left implied, though the adverb that they are doing it as they will is explicit.
88. Ôtomo no Kuronushi Topic unknown.
harusame no furu wa namida ka sakurabana chiru o oshimanu hito shi nakereba	Might they be tears, this falling spring shower? -- for indeed there is no one who does not regret the cherry blossoms scattering.
Unlike most Kokinshu authors, Kuronushi (c.830-923?) wasn't nobility -- there is no record of his having any court title -- but rather was from a land-owning clan of Ômi Province (modern Shiga Prefecture) reputed to be of remote imperial descent. He is mentioned in court records in 866, took part in the second known poetry competition in 887, and wrote poems for imperial occasions in 897 and 917. Another of the Six Poetic Geniuses, he has four or three or two poems in the Kokinshu -- some attributions are tentative, including this one, which some manuscript traditions claim is author unknown. As for the poem itself, a sentence structure inverted it has: normally, the "for/because" clause would precede the consequence. I'm fond of the how the two implicitly nominalized verbs balance each other, but the disjoint between the tentativeness of the initial suggestions and the final statement's emphatic strength makes it feel off-kilter.
89. Ki no Tsurayuki Written during the poetry contest in the Teiji Palace.
sakurabana chirinuru kaze no nagori ni wa mizu naki sora ni nami zo tachikeru	The cherry blossoms have scattered in the wake of the winds rising up as waves into a sky without water
The central image of this relies on a idiom taken literally: nagori is the waves that continue after the wind dies down, and by metaphoric extension any aftermath -- "wake" comes close to encompassing this double-meaning. To convey even a ghost of the original's effect (not to mention maintain the ambiguity of whether the winds or petals are seen as waves) I had to give up trying to keep the form -- it was either that or pad the language, which felt even more inaccurate. It's the really good poetry that's hardest to translate. And with the scattering inflected to indicate a completed action, we are finally done with cherry blossoms.
90. Written by the Nara Emperor.
furusato to narinishi nara no miyako ni mo iro wa kawarazu hana wa sakikeri	Even in Nara, the capital that became an old village, the colors aren't changing: the flowers are still blooming.
Emperor Heizei (774-824) abdicated in 809 and spent his retirement in the recently former capital of Nara; this is the only poem firmly attributed to him in the Kokinshu. What doesn't come through in translation: "became" is inflected to indicate personal experience, unlike the other verbs. This starts a series on hana, generic "flowers" -- in theory those of late spring, but in practice they seem to jump about the whole season.
91. Henjô Written as a poem of spring.
hana no iro wa kasumi ni komete misezu to mo ka o dani nusume haru no yamakaze	The flowers' beauty is imprisoned by the haze -- mountain winds of spring, if you cannot reveal them, at least steal away their scent.
The attribution for this (and two other poems) is actually to Yoshinune no Munesada, Henjô's lay name. While this might indicate it was written before he took orders, there's also a poem attributed to "Henjô" with a headnote indicating it was written before he took orders. Editorial consistency was not a high priority of the compilers, who also write names in a variety of ways (which I have been silently regularizing).
92. Sosei A poem from the poetry contest held in the palace of the consort in the Kanpyô era.
hana no ki mo ima wa hori-ueji haru tateba usturou iro ni hito naraikeri	I'll never again plant a flowering tree. When spring begins, people learn to imitate how their colors fade away.
The claim in #89 that we were through with cherry blossoms was something of a hedge: many of the unspecified flowers of book 2 are flowering trees -- and some even clearly cherries. But if there isn't an explicit sakura, I don't have to understand it that way. Just disclosing my biases here. Contrast with #49 where the cherry trees teach each other to fade, and with #34 where plum trees are sworn off because they deceive the speaker.
93. Author unknown Topic unknown.
haru no iro no itari itaranu sato wa araji sakeru sakazaru hana no miyoramu	It isn't as if the spring colors arrive at this town and not that -- so how is it we can see some flowers bloom but not others?
The faux naivete is from Chinese models -- I sometimes wonder if this influence was entirely a good thing. Also, while a line consisting of a verb in positive and then negative form ("arrive and not arrive") can strike a clever note, that doesn't mean that a second such line ("bloom and not bloom") is twice as clever; at least the structures aren't fully parallel, though what this distinction implies eludes me.
94. Ki no Tsurayuki Written as a poem of spring.
miwa yama o shika mo kakusu ka harugasumi hito ni shirarenu hana ya sakuramu	Why on earth do you conceal Mt. Miwa like that, O springtime haze? Flowers we don't know about are probably blooming there.
Mt. Miwa is in Nara Prefecture. The first two lines are ~~ripped off from~~ quoting Man'yoshu I:18, where it's clouds concealing the mountain. "There" is interpolation for rhythm and clarity.
95. Sosei Written to the Crown Prince of Urin Temple when [the author] traveled to the northern hills to view flowers.
iza kyô wa haru no yama-be ni majirinamu kurenaba nage no hana no kage ka wa	And so for today, let us go linger among the springtime hills. If it gets dark, won't shelter beneath the flowers be enough?
The Crown Prince is Tsuneyasu, son of Emperor Ninmyô, who like his friend Henjô (Sosei's father) took vows after Ninmyô's death in 850 and retired to the Urin Temple (see #75) until his own death in 869. Some commentaries interpret this as an indirect request for shelter at Urin. The hills are those just north of Kyoto. If rhetorical questions were not such a hallmark of Sosei, I'd render the final clause as something like "it's not as if there isn't shelter beneath the flowers."
96. Sosei Written as a poem of spring.
itsu made ka nobe ni kokoro no akugaremu hana shi chirazu wa chiyo mo enubeshi	And for how long might my heart be entranced by these meadows? If flowers did not scatter, it'd be for a thousand years.
Sequence-wise, the meadows/fields look forward to a symbol of summer, the summer grasses.
97. Author unknown Topic unknown.
harugoto ni hana no sakari wa arinamedo aimimu koto wa inochi narekeri	Every spring there certainly will always be flowers blossoming, but seeing them once again depends upon my lifespan.
What doesn't come through in translation: the seeing is a mutual action -- an encounter with the flowers rather than just spotting them. The original last line is a terse in a way that English can't readily reproduce: more literally, the seeing "is (mortal) life."
98. (Author unknown) (Topic unknown.)
hana no goto yo no tsune naraba sugushite shi mukashi wa mata mo kaeri-kinamashi	If it were the way of the world to act like spring, then those days of old that have indeed passed me by would also return again.
In a later anthology, this is attributed to Sosei. The word translated as "way" (tsune) indicates habitual actions.
99. (Author unknown) (Topic unknown.)
fuku kaze ni atsurae-tsukuru mono naraba kono hito moto wa yogiyo to iwamashi	If I were able to make the blowing winds obey my commands, I would say, "This single tree -- avoid it entirely!"
Compare to #85.
100. (Author unknown) (Topic unknown.)
matsu hito mo konu mono yue ni uguisu no nakitsuru hana o oritekeru kana	He isn't coming, the person I'm waiting for, so I have plucked off the flowering branch where -- ah! -- the bush warbler was singing.
Remember our old friend from early spring, the confusable bush warbler? Though for once it's not confused -- but I sure am over what the heck the speaker (most likely a woman waiting for her lover) is doing to it. A grammatical ambiguity compounds the problem: mono yue ni can be understood as either a resultive ("therefore") or concessive ("although") conjunction. If the former, then she seems to be displacing the bird out of spite. If the latter, she's determined to enjoy the flowers despite it all ... at which point the warbler is kinda grafted on as decoration. The clumsiness of that last is what inclines me toward the former reading.