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71
HARUO
72
SHIRANE
As evening falls,
The autumn wind along the moor
3 Fujiwara no Shunzei was born in Eikyii 2 (1114), the third son of Fujiwara no Toshitada
to Shunzei at the age of fifty-four. When he
He changed his name from Akihiro Y
,
took holy vows at the age of sixty-three, he assumed the Buddhist name of Shakua $P J.
LYRICISM
Mi ni shimite
Uzura naku nari
Fukakusa no sato
AND
73
INTERTEXTUALITY
At first glance, the poem simply appears to describe the poet's observation of an autumn evening in the country. Fukakusa, which
literally means "deep grass," is the name of a secluded country
village to the south of Kyoto in the Fushimi district. The poet's feelings of loneliness and desolation-which
are expressed in the kami
no ku (5/7/5)-are
embodied or projected in the shimo no ku (7/7), in
the image of the quail crying in the deep grass.
Konishi Jin'ichi, one of the leading scholars of medieval poetry
and poetics, regarded this poem as an example of Shunzei'syuzgen g
i! style and argued that there is a fusion between the expressing subject (who describes the setting) and the expressed object (the quail
crying on the open field). To borrow Konishi's terms, the expressing subject enters into the expressed object and becomes one with it,
filling it with a sense of loneliness and creatingyuzgen, the overtones
that extend beyond the immediate meaning of the words themselves.4 This reading is based on the assumption that the poem is
primarily mimetic, on the belief that the primary function of the
text is to represent a given setting, however mystifying and complex-filled with "overtones"-that
scene may be. What happens,
however, if we regard the poem intertextually, primarily in relationship to earlier texts and literary conventions, as an "open" text in
which each word or phrase refers, not to a fixed referent (a given
scene), but to other signs and signifiers?
To begin with, the opening line, "With the arrival of evening"
(Yzi sareba), immediately recalls a number of poems, such as the
following two from the Kokinshul,that open with the same phrase.
Yu1sareba
Itodo higataki
Waga sode ni
Aki no tsuyu sae
Okisowaritsutsu
As eveningfalls,
My sleeves are harder
Than ever to dryEven the autumn dew
Joins my tears.
(Kokinshuk,Love I, No. 545, Anonymous)
"Shunzei no yiigen-fiu to shikan" WA;DIAt
12 ,
74
HARUO
Yzisareba
Hitonaki toko o
Uchiharai
Nagekamu tame to
Nareru wagami ka
SHIRANE
As eveningfalls,
I dust and clean an empty bedHave I become one
Whose fate is to grieve?
(Kokinshuk,Love V, No. 815, Anonymous)
LYRICISM
AND
INTERTEXTUALITY
75
through the quail which, having retreated from the world, cries in a
dilapidated village or house.
It is not until we recall the following subtext, found in the Kokinshu/ (Msc., Nos. 971-92), that these pieces fall together to form a
striking intertext.
He lived in the village of Fukakusa, and when he decided to visit the capital, he
sent the following poem to his lover.
Toshi o hete
Sumikoshi sato o
Idete inaba
Itodo fukakusa
No to ya narinamu
Her answer:
No to naraba
Uzura to nakite
Toshi wa hemu
Kari ni dani yawa
Kimi ga kozaramu
If it becomes a moor,
I shall pass the years
Crying like a quail.
Will you not come back,
If only for a while, as a hunter?
If it becomes a moor,
I will become a quail
And cry in sorrow.
Will you not come back,
If only for a while, as a hunter?
76
HARUO
SHIRANE
is a lonely woman who has grown weary of waiting for her lover,
that the cry of the quail echoes a woman in sorrow, and that the
grass has grown deep as a result of the man's prolonged neglect..
In Semiotics of Poetry, Michael Riffaterre, one of the more innovative intertextual critics, argues that the modern reader first
attempts to read a poem mimetically (that is to say, representationally), and when he or she finds that-for various reasons, particumimetic reading
larly grammatical and semantic fracturings-the
fails or proves unsatisfactory, he or she then attempts to read the
poem semiotically, or intertextually, as a text referring to various
subtexts or signs.5 In this particular case, Shunzei's poem can easily
a subjective description of pastoral scenebe read mimetically-as
but the informed reader (which includes Konishi in a later interpretation),6 realizing that the mimetic reading is of limited significance, begins reading the text as an intertextual construct, as a
poem referring to other poems and literary clusters-particularly
the elegant world of love found in the Heian classics-and sees the
text as an inventive variation on a familiar topos found in both
Heian fiction and poetry: that of the melancholy, lonely woman
abandoned in the countryside.
In contrast to the traditional notion of allusion, intertextuality
does not depend on the existence of a unique or fixed pretext or
source. The classical concept of allusion is founded on, or at least appeals to, the notion of authorial experience and intention, as is evident in the attempts by scholars to establish which texts or sources a
given author may have read or otherwise come in contact with. Intertextuality dispenses with the classical criteria of authorial consciousness or contact and replaces it with an approach which takes
into account not only the literary tradition but the role of a collective unconscious. Thus, while the two Fukakusa poems in Ise monogatari fall under the traditional category of allusion, "as evening
falls" (yu sareba) or "autumn wind" (akikaze) do not. Whether
Shunzei had in mind the Kokinshuk
poems cited above in connection
with "as evening falls" and "autumn wind" when composing this
5
1-6.
6 Konishi Jin'ichi, Michi: Chufsei
no rinen,K6dansha shinsho series (K6dansha, 1975), pp.
49-50.
LYRICISM
AND
INTERTEXTUALITY
77
78
HARUO
SHIRANE
LYRICISM
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INTERTEXTUALITY
79
80
HARUO
SHIRANE
LYRICISM
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INTERTEXTUALITY
81
82
HARUO
SHIRANE
LYRICISM
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INTERTEXTUALITY
83
If only I had
A sleeve wide enough
To cover the sky.
I will not leave the scattering
Cherry blossoms to the wind.
(Gosenshul,Spring II, No. 64)
NKBZ 50.94.
13
84
HARUO
SHIRANE
grasps the hon'i of the topic by focusing on the voice of the hototogisu,
but he does more than follow the conventional attitudes, which were
waiting for, seeking out, or rejoicing at the sound of the cuckoo.
The speaker instead asks the "mountain cuckoo" (yamahototogisu)
a cuckoo that is already singing but has not yet ventured out of
the hills-not to add its tears to his own. Yamahototogisualso implies
that the "grass hut" is in the mountains and that the "night rain"
is the "summer rains" (samidareEA Mi)of the Fifth Month, considered by the poetic tradition to be long, unpleasant, and melancholy.
The interlinked images-the
grass mountain hut (traditionally
associated with loneliness), the damp rain of summer (which implies tears and memories), and the mournful voice of the mountain
cuckoo-create
a mood of unbearable loneliness, a theme further
developed by an allusion to a famous poem in which Po Chii-i compares his present situation, as an official who has retired to Mount
Lu, with that of his three friends, who are still flourishing in government. Two lines from this poem appear in the Wakanroeishuz1J*q
U* (No. 555), which is the primary text through which Shunzei
and otherJapanese poets appreciated this Chinese poem.
LYRICISM
AND
INTERTEXTUALITY
85