KKS 2
Text
春たちける日よめる
袖ひちて むすびし水の こほれるを 春立つけふの 風やとくらむ
Translation
Read on the first day of spring.
The water that I scooped, (2) / drenching my sleeves, (1) / is frozen -- / today at the start of spring, / perhaps the wind will thaw it.
Detailed Notes
- ひちて
- Many editions and commentaries voice the second syllable (ひぢて). The base text also has voicing marks. But the most recent editions read it unvoiced.
- むすびし、はる、たつ、とく
- All four of these words have potential secondary meanings as engo with 袖. むすぶ - "weave", はる - "stretch [cloth]", たつ "cut [cloth]", とく "separate."
Analysis
This poem has been consistently praised since the early days of poetry commentary:
- Fujiwara no Toshiyori used it as an example of a poem with both a good feeling (kokoro) and good words to express the feeling.
- Shunzei echoed this judgment, saying that for a KKS poem it had good feeling and words. However, Shunzei did feel that the word ひつ was old-fashioned, and Teika says that he was sternly admonished (by Shunzei) not to use the word in his poetry.
- Teika also (in the Kindai shuka) labeled the first two lines as something that should not be used in honka-dori (because it was too well associated with a particular famous poem or poet).
- The pseudo-Teika Kirihioke uses this as an example of the basis of good poetry.
- Sogi praised it as a perfect poem for the beginning of spring, and suggested it worked better as the first poem of the collection (where Tsurayuki himself placed it in his Shinsen waka).
- Mabuchi praised the poem as having a strong tone and surplus-feeling (余情), as well as an old poetic style.
The idea of spring wind melting ice may derive from the 礼記 (Classic of Rites). In the 月令 chapter, which discusses the various seasons, it says that in the first month, "The east wind melts the ice" (東風解凍). This may seem like a tenuous link although it appears in scholarship from the 12th century up to the present. In the Wakan roeishu, the 立春 section includes three Japanese poems, including this one, as well as some lines of Chinese verse. One of the lines is 池凍東頭風度解 "The east wind passes across the frozen lake and melts it", showing that poets soon after Tsurayuki recognized the reference.
Part of the skill of this poem comes in the use of three seasons in sequence -- the summer when the water was scooped, the winter when it froze to ice, and the spring wind at the end. A few Edo-period commentaries disputed this idea and claimed the water was being scooped on the first of spring. Some earlier commentaries had also tried to work autumn into the poem as well, but this is a minority position. One commentary (Gyokudenshu waka saicho) even tried to also label sode as "miscellaneous" and tokuramu as "love", thus working the six major divisions of poetry into the single poem. This shows the stature that this poem achieved in the late Heian period.
Kubota points out that the reference to spring is in fact to the spring that is not quite here yet, despite the calendar. This echoes Kaneko, and this may suggest a connection to the first poem -- even though the canonical Chinese texts claim the spring wind will melt the ice, that's not actually going to happen on this cold day despite it technically being the start of spring. Miura agrees, saying that the focus on the water connects to the life of spring, and he imagines the poet sitting inside thinking of the Chinese texts, wondering when that will be reflected in life.
What is this "water"? Kubota sees this poem as evoking the summer gatherings in mountain areas, where the Heian elite would go to escape the severe heat of the summer. Katagiri offers a different reading -- the bustle of a mountain well in the summer with travelers fighting to get some (and thus wetting their sleeves). This contrasts with the stillness and isolation of winter. This is similar to Takeoka's effusive praise of the poem -- he notes the "movement" of the water, then the freezing ice, then the movement once again of the wind. According to Takeoka, the を particle at the end of the first lines reflects the freezing in the way it stops the flow of the sentence as well.
Accompanying all of this is the dense use of engo connected to 袖, which overlays a technical skill on what is already an evocative poem. McCullough says that these "enrich the texture of what is already an exemplary court-style waka" (410-411).
McCullough also says that this poem was "placed precisely where it showed to best advantage, between the shallow wit of [poem 1] and the simple, songlike, anonymous [poem 3]" (426-7).
Related poems
- 袖ひちてわが手にむすぶ水の面にあまつ星あひの空をみるかな
- In the surface of the water I scooped, I see the sky where the two stars [Tanabata] meet. (SKKS 316, Fujiwara no Nagayoshi)
- 夏の夜はいはかきし水月さえてむすべばとくるこほりなりけり
- - (Fugashu 388)
Other Sources
- 新撰和歌１
- 古今和歌六帖２・春立つ日・貫之
- 拾玉集３４７３ This is a set of 100 poems based on KKS poems, and Jien wrote the following poem is written based on KKS 1:
- 春風の結ぶこほりを吹きとけばさらにやけふは袖もひちなん
- If the spring wind blows and melts the frozen ice, will my sleeves become even more wet today?