asiFiki no
yamadi mo sirazu
sirakasi no
eda ni mo Fa ni mo
yuki no Furereba
The leg-wearying
Mountain paths I cannot tell:
For on the white oak
Branches, and on the leaves
Snow has fallen…
Hitomaro
One thought on “SIS IV: 252”
I am trying to understand the image conveyed by the poem and encountering a few problems. One is the grammar of the second line. The も of 山地も知らず・やまぢもしらず – does this function similar to modern も or が, or is it something different? Weblio kobun-jiten suggests けれども and のに as possible modern equivalents for も. For 〜知らず, I am leaning toward the sense of “I don’t know about X [, but…]” or “X is unaffected by…” However, the sense of “I can’t discern X” also seems to fit, even though this leads to an opposite interpretation.
Parsing for grammatical meaning, my current best guess for the first two lines is “Although the ground upon the (leg-wearying) mountain is unaffected…” with uncertainty as to whether this agrees with the conditional at the end of the last line, 降れれば・ふれれば (when/since [the snow] falls [spontaneously]).
I am trying to make sense of whether the perspective of the poem is supposed to be viewing the scene from far away, with Hitomaro noting that the mountainous district cannot be discerned as the trees are all covered in snow; or rather the perspective is of one standing under the trees upon the mountain, commenting that for all the snow fallen on them the ground beneath is not affected.
I am trying to understand the image conveyed by the poem and encountering a few problems. One is the grammar of the second line. The も of 山地も知らず・やまぢもしらず – does this function similar to modern も or が, or is it something different? Weblio kobun-jiten suggests けれども and のに as possible modern equivalents for も. For 〜知らず, I am leaning toward the sense of “I don’t know about X [, but…]” or “X is unaffected by…” However, the sense of “I can’t discern X” also seems to fit, even though this leads to an opposite interpretation.
Parsing for grammatical meaning, my current best guess for the first two lines is “Although the ground upon the (leg-wearying) mountain is unaffected…” with uncertainty as to whether this agrees with the conditional at the end of the last line, 降れれば・ふれれば (when/since [the snow] falls [spontaneously]).
I am trying to make sense of whether the perspective of the poem is supposed to be viewing the scene from far away, with Hitomaro noting that the mountainous district cannot be discerned as the trees are all covered in snow; or rather the perspective is of one standing under the trees upon the mountain, commenting that for all the snow fallen on them the ground beneath is not affected.