Left (Win).
小萱原吹來る秋の夕風に心亂れと鶉鳴くなり
| ogayawara fukikuru aki no yūkaze ni kokoro midare to uzura naku nari |
Across the sedge fields Come blowing the autumn Evening winds; My heart’s in disarray, The quails are crying… |
339
Right.
秋風を厭ひやすらん夕間暮淺茅が下に鶉鳴く也
| aki kaze o itoi ya suran yūmagure asaji ga shita ni uzura naku nari |
The autumn wind: Do they dislike it, I wonder? In the dark of evening From beneath the sparse stalks of cogon grass The quails are crying… |
340
The Right feel that, ‘Just having “my heart’s in disarray” (kokoro midare to) is lacking something.” The Left have no particular criticisms of the Right’s poem.
Shunzei responds, ‘The gentlemen of the Right have remarked upon the lack in the Left’s poem, wondering, no doubt, if this should be “feeling my heart’s in disarray” (kokoro midare tote). If one were to say that this is definitely the way the poem should have been composed, it would be something of a loss to the Way of Poetry, I feel. If we permit poets to say they are “moved” (aware nari), why not that their “heart’s in disarray”? The Right’s poem has a superlative final section, but one cannot know whether quails dislike the autumn wind or not. In Springtime, the warblers frolic in the mists; in Autumn, the insects cry from beneath the dewdrops – but each only at their allotted time, and from this one can tell the season. The quails’ cries make one feel the chill of the autumn wind. If one composes that they hid themselves from dislike of it, it restricts the imagination about quails too much. The Left wins.’