Ishii Tatsuhiko-I
Hiding Behind the Clouds
Elegy for Genji the Shining Prince
[Kumo-gakure, “hiding behind the clouds,” “hiding oneself in clouds,” is a metaphor for someone’s disappearance or death. It is also the name of a book (chō) in Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji) that exists only as a title on some lists, prompting some to assume its content was lost. Of the 54 books that make up the Tale, it is placed after the 40th book, Maboroshi, and before the 41st, Nioi-no-miya, as the Tale has been handed down over the centuries. Eight years pass between the 40th and 41st books and Genji’s death in the meantime is hinted.
Among those who have imagined what the “missing” content might have described is Marguerite Yourcenar. In Le dernier amour du prince Genghi (The Last Love of Prince Genji), included in her collection of short stories, Nouvelles orientales (Oriental Tales, tr. Alberto Manguel with Yourcenar), she attempted to fill the blank by opening it thus: “When Genji the Resplendent, the greatest seducer ever to have astounded Asia, reached his fiftieth year, he realized that the time had come to begin his death.”
“Genji” or “Genji the Shining Prince” by which the protagonist of the famous tale is referred to is actually a nickname, Genji being the clan name of the Minamoto with a deep link to the imperial family.
The tanka poet Ishii Tatsuhiko’s sequence Hiding Behind the Clouds is based on the threefold inspiration he had during his trip to New York City, from the end of 2001 and early 2002.
The main purpose of that trip was to see operas at the Metropolitan Opera House, but 9/11 had occurred just a few months earlier. So the morning after his arrival in New York he visited the ruins of the twin towers of the World Trade Center and was deeply moved by the sight.
He was equally moved by Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman without a Shadow), Richard Strauss’ opera with Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s libretto, that he saw at the Met. It was a new production directed by Herbert Wernicke and conducted by Christian Thielemann.
For the trip he had brought with him the six-volume Iwanami paperback edition of The Tale of Genji, to him the single greatest piece of Japanese literature. He had to mull over an invitation to contribute by the monthly magazine Eureka for it special issue to mark the 1000th anniversary of the tale.
So was born the sequence of 54 tanka, Hiding Behind the Clouds.--Hiroaki Sato]
Ash on an old man’s sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
—T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding
A thousand years! The world unable to inherit “someone to follow your noble
shadow,”[1] has, continued. . . .
Although words thrive, ah, all the stories are totally different from the tale
about him!
You who died a thousand years ago, you who were such an impeccable being that a hymn was sung, “The deities in the sky should praise your form,” I can’t help mourning you now, a thousand years later. Since you hid your noble shining self in the empty book retaining only its name, we have continued to bear the absence of the impeccable being for as long as a thousand years.
I sorrow over the depth of his heart for amorous attachments. Of what a man
ought to be (a human ought to be). . . .
evening, so someone, comes to, tell
Remorseful that he has loved way too many people the man, his, excess flesh
The althea flowers noisily fall. You should remain (always) cold dealing with
princesses
There ought to be a flower that blooms in winter as well. Exclusive love (on
each occasion) with all his heart
Plucked a wild rose just because he wanted to. . . . Ah, a man with both power
and beauty
A man’s cold dismissal. He’s gained an incomparable rank, or, so, I, only,
heard. . . .
Isolde and her prince, the man and his princesses, that, I hate that <and> which
separates the two!
“The sins she broods over unbeknownst,”[3] what? That which never melds with each other is two lives
At the close of the world where “the bond of dew are no more”[4] (still!) this heart of hateful weariness
Better than the next world this life. Let my floating name flow as I do (often) on heartfelt[5] things
“Ought to be different from the usual”[6] so thinking he stays awake. The last epistle, this!
The planet that’s grown cold and colder. Death resembling life and (life being equal to life)
I am singing this elegy in the giant city destroyed by the hateful violence resulting from the accumulation of intolerances. This city had cheerfully recognized itself as the capital of the world for the last hundred years, but now it has turned into a city of requiem lamenting both the several thousands who perished and a spectacle that was lost.
Smoke and dust erupt in the watch towers.[7] No matter how many centuries pass man is history’s slave
The tall towers collapsed, and the war. . . . In this world that’s already turbulent enough
Both landscape and human life are lost in the long run, I understand they are but even so. . . .
Memories of loving a landscape being more intimate (than! memories of loving a human). . . .
The tall towers that are beautiful (were beautiful!) I visited them once again, saw them, and wept.
Count on a magician[8] and look at the blue sky![9] The snow-white towers as they form
Mankind hadn’t ever been reformed, nothing of the sort. Ever lecherous, ever bellicose!
As one of those who remain alive I’ll (continue to) live. Ruler and subjects look at one another
everyone wets his clothes with tears.[10] Though cursed for his skill in getting on in the world
Is it a crime? To, live disheartened in the world where “only sick despicable things multiply”[11]
Simply living for amour ought to be praised. Ah, the man fond of war we’d rather avoid
Both parents and children and siblings (actually) live in a battlefield. Though the winter sky is cerulean
That which was once beauty. . . . A soldier alone in the ruins puts a single rose to flames
Can we in the end find a being of your impeccability only in tales? For a thousand years since you hid your light mankind has continued to be an imperfect being committing only foolish acts, even though, having said that, I hesitate to call you, the impeccable being, a happy man.
Human life is strife. Yessir, it’s strife! “Even at the close of the evening when life is about to end”[12]
Out in the field —O weh, Falke, o weh![13] So aggrieved was, the young emperor
Wo kommt sie her?[14] The execution ground for the sin called love is in the heart
Forgotten even by your lovers you die, that’s all. In a winter when the snow doesn’t fall
Anyone would think of someone alive. Rather than a person in the next room (just now) dying
Humans are all blind. The sin called love, even your mother, commits, in the darkness of night
Call mother’s son your younger brother[15] is quite natural. Even though she said that shouldn’t be out. . . .
The winter rose has fleetingly fallen. Think of it, it’s “the life he didn’t know himself”[16]
“Lost as foam fades away”[17]. . . . Both the sound of the bell for morning prayers and the life of the enemy in love
The sins in my afterlife may be light. Even saying that (What a man says!) is close to a curse
As with the world (mother) is terrifying! Whenever you hear about the precedent of the King of Thebes
The baron left old wasting. You’re right, he always had some resemblance to my other. . . .
Charles Swann, mort![18] so he says and falls obstinately silent. Does that mean the Light[19] has hidden, itself?
In an opera I saw in this city, a deathless woman, an elf queen who was like the light itself, was trying to become a human being who must die. To become a human being who must die means to have a shadow. A human being is a human being because she has a shadow.[20] And you, who were the incarnation of light, surely had a shadow. It is you like that I deeply mourn a thousand years later, in a city that vividly retains the scars of mankind’s foolish acts.
“The magicians going back and forth in the big sky”[21] (there were two planes, they say) had no shadows
A great many posters in the city of silence ——Ah! “where in the world are you if I may ask?”[22]
To “look at your cremains,”[23] that wish. . . . I reaffirm it. In the ruins a thousand years afterward
Turn them into tales, into verses. . . . Mankind’s foolish acts (that never stop being repeated)
Good luck (slowly slowly the gong and drum[24]) isn’t, no, inherited by the progeny far in the distance
Suspicious of the ash of the roses on a sleeve. Better? to die young than to grow old and die
Gloaming light it was. Even calling “The Loser” you who hid yourself behind the clouds
What remains are only the shadows. Yes, that’s the way it should be, I ought, to, nod in assent
I love the absence of transmission of death. The snow-white pages continuing forever and ever. . . .
Schatten zu werfen, beide erwählt![25] If this is the way it must be
The light of the sun overflowing the ruins. . . . Ah, what’s this? Everyone has his own shadow
“This regret will never end,”[26] so, I think but. . . . Il était grand temps[27]. . . . you can, say that, too
Will be purified, and forgotten. Today’s dead people all when a thousand years (!) have passed. . . .
New York, 2001-2002
[1] From the Genji book Nioi-no-miya.
[2] Alludes to a line in Changhenge (Song of Everlasting Regret), a long poem by Bai Juyi (Po Chü-I: 772-846): “The hibiscus curtain is warm as the spring evening passes.” The poem describes the Tang Dynasty’s ninth emperor Xuanzong’s (685-762) fateful love of the beauty Yang Guifei, the infatuation that provoked his general An Lushan’s revolt in 755 and led to his abdication. The “hibiscus curtain” refers to a partition made of cloth into which a hibiscus design is stitched. As the poem goes on to say, the night spent making love to Guifei is felt to be so short that soon the emperor is unable to get up in the morning to discharge his matutinal imperial duties. Song of Everlasting Regret provides a motif for the first book of The Tale of Genji.
[3] From the Genji book Wakamurasaki. Genji’s father, Emperor Kiritsubo, falls in love with Fujitsubo because she looks exactly like Genji’s mother who died after giving birth to him. Later he makes her his wife. Genji, yearning for his dead mother, falls in love with Fujitsubo because she is said to look exactly like his mother, and impregnates her. She naturally agonizes over this sinful development.
[5] The original for “heartfelt” is kokoro-zukushi, a word in Genji that points to something that makes one reflect on various sad aspects of being.
[7] A phrase in Song of Everlasting Regret.
[8] The original of “magician” is maboroshi. Most often maboroshi means “phantom,” “illusion,” but here in reference to Genji and Song of Everlasting Regret, it means “magician.” In Bai’s poem, it’s a Daoist with divine powers that Xuanzong summons to search for the soul of Guifei. whom he was forced to kill. He can “open up the sky, ride on the air, rush like lightning, climb into heaven, and enter the earth.” The title poem of the 40th book of Genji reads: “Magician who flies through the big sky, search the whereabouts of her soul that doesn’t appear even in dreams.”
[10] A line in Song of Everlasting Regret says, “Ruler and subjects look at one another; everyone wets his clothes with tears.” On his way back to the capital Chang-an from his place of exile, Xuanzong and his followers come to a spot where he had to have the love of his life, Yang Guifei, killed. In Bai’s poem, “ruler . . . with tears” forms a single line.
[15] In The Tale of Genji, Emperor Reizei is supposed to be Emperor Kiritsubo’s son and therefore Genji’s younger brother. But actually he is Genji’s son. See footnote 3.
[24] A line in Song of Everlasting Regret says, “Slowly slowly the gong and drum; this the first long night.” Back in his palace and alone, Xuanzong feels acutely that time without Yang Guifei passes with excruciating slowness. Gongs and drums were used to tell the hours of the day. “Long night” refers to the autumn night.
雲隠
光源氏のための挽歌
Ash on an old man’s sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
—T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding
千年も！ 御影に立ちつぎ給ふべき人ありがたき世、は、続きをり……
言の葉は繁けれど、ああ、あの方の物語とは全く違ふ！
千年前の死者であられるあなた、神など空にめでつべきかたち、と言挙げされるほどに完璧な存在であられたあなたを、わたくしは千年後の今、深く悼まずにはいられません。名のみ残る空虚の一帖の中にあなたがその光り輝く御姿を隠されてから、わたくしたちは千年もの間、完璧なものの不在にひたすら耐え続けてきたのです。
愛着の心深きを愛しめり。男たるもの（人間たるもの）の……
芙蓉帳暖かなれど春の宵に花が咲かぬ、と、告げ来る、が、あり
あまりにもおほくのひとを愛せしと悔ゆる男の、その、太り肉
音立てて散る立葵。女君には冷やかに（つね）接すべし
冬に咲く花もあるべし。寵愛は（その時々に）ただ一身に
欲望のままに手折りし野の薔薇の…… ああ、権力も美も持つ男
冷酷な男の仕打ち。並びなき御位を得、と、ただ、聞く、ばかり……
イゾルデと殿御、男と女君、の、間隔つるその〈と〉が憎い！
人知れず思す罪、とは？ つひに融け合はぬふたつの生命なりけり
露のほだしなくなりにたる世の暮れに（なほ！）厭はしき厭離の心
来世より今生。心づくしなる事に憂き名は（まま）流すとも
常よりも殊なるべくとおきてさせ給ふ。最後の消息が、これ！
冷えに冷え入りし惑星。死は生に似てゐて（生は死に等しくて）
今わたくしがこの挽歌を詠みつつあるのは、不寛容の蓄積に由来する忌むべき暴力によって破壊された、巨大な都市においてです。この都市はここ百年ほど世界の首都を暢気に自認してきたのですが、今や数千人の死者と失われた景観とをふたつながらに嘆く、鎮魂の場と化してしまいました。
城闕ニ煙塵生ズ。何世紀経つても人間は歴史の奴隷
高楼は潰え、戦争は……。ただでさへ物騒がしき事多き世に
風景も人間の生命も結局は失はれる、とわかつてゐても……
風景を愛でし記憶は（人間を愛した記憶、より！）濃やかで……
美しき（美しかりし！）高楼をふたたび訪れて、視て、泣きぬ。
幻といふをたのみて青空に見よ！ 真つ白な塔の姿を
人類は変革なんてされなかつた。色を好んで、好戦的で！
生きて在る者のひとりとして（なほも）生きむ。君臣相顧ミテ
盡ク衣ヲ霑シヌ。世渡りの上手い奴だと罵られても
罪なりや？ いと煩はしくはしたなきことのみまさる世に住み侘ぶ、は
ただ恋に生きてこそ褒められめ。ああ、疎ましき戦争好きの男
親も子も兄弟姉妹も（実は）戦場に住む。冬空は紺碧なのに
かつて美であつたもの…… 兵士がひとり廃墟に燃やす一輪の薔薇
あなたのような完璧な存在は、結局は物語の中にしか見出すことができないのでしょうか？ あなたがその光を隠されてから千年、人類は、愚行ばかり繰り返す不完全な存在でありつづけたのでした。もっとも、完璧なあなたをさえも、幸福な人間と呼ぶことは躊躇われるのですが……。
人の生は闘争。さうさ、闘争さ！ 今はのゆふべ近きすゑにも
狩に出でて —O weh, Falke, o weh! と嘆き給ひぬ、若き皇帝は
Wo kommt sie her? 恋といふ罪の刑場は心の中にある
恋人にさへも忘れられて死ぬ、といふこと。雪の降らない冬に
誰だつて生者を想ふ。隣室に（今まさに）死にゆく人間よりも
人間は誰もが盲目。恋といふ罪は、母さへ、闇夜に、犯し
母の子を弟と呼ぶ当然のこと。もらさじとのたまひしかど……
冬薔薇はかなく散りぬ。惟みよ、みづからながら知らぬいのちを
泡の消え入るやうに失せ…… 晨朝の鐘の音も、恋敵の生も
後の世の罪は軽む、と言ふさへも（男ツたらね！）詛言に近し
世とともに（母は）恐ろし！ テーバイの王の先例を聞くにつけても
老残の男爵。さうね、あの方はいつもお母さま似でしたけれど……
Charles Swann, mort! と言ひて押し黙る。つまり光は隠れたつてこと、か？
この都市で観たオペラでは、不死の女、光そのものであるかのような妖精の王女が、愛のために、死すべき人間になろうとしていました。死すべき人間になる、ということは、影を持つ、ということなのです。影を持っているからこそ、人間は人間なのです。そしてあなたにも、光の権化であるあなたにも、たしかに影はあったのでした。そういうあなたを、千年の時を隔てて、人類の愚行の痕も生々しい都市で、わたくしは深く悼むのです。
大空を通ふまぼろし（飛行機が二機だつた、とか）には影がない
沈黙の都市に数多の貼り紙が ──ああ！ いづ方にかおはしましぬる？
亡き御骸をも見たてまつらむ、との冀求…… 肯ふ。千年後の廃墟にて
物語にも書け、詩にも……。人類の（繰り返されて罷まぬ）愚行は
幸運は子子孫孫に受け継がれ（遲遲鐘皷！）たりは、しない、さ
片袖の薔薇の灰を訝しむ。老いて死ぬより夭死が増し、か？
仄暗き光なりけり。雲隠したまふ君を「敗者」と呼ぶに
残されたものは影のみ。さう、それでよかつたのさ、と、頷く、べき、だ
死の伝承なきを愛しむ。真つ白なページは未来永劫つづき……
Schatten zu werfen, beide erwählt! さうでなければならないのなら
廃墟には陽光あふれ…… ああ、なんと！ すべての人間に影がある
此の恨み絶ゆる期無し、と、思へども…… Il était grand temps… さう、とも、言へる
浄められ、忘れられなむ。千年も（！）経つたら今日のすべての死者は……
