Offering Innumerable Blossoms To The Sky

Last Monday I was heading up a steep hill on the outskirts of Hiroshima to have lunch with a former colleague of mine. I was a little early so I stolled up to have a look at the local shrine. On my way back down I suddenly noticed the magnolia tree that I had passed beneath without seeing on my way up the slope.

What caught my eye was the blossom opening against the clear blue sky,

完全な静寂の中で、木蓮は無数の花を空に捧げた。(夏目漱石、 草枕, 1906)

"In perfect silence the magnolia offered up its innumerable clouds of blossoms to the sky."
(Natsume Soseki, Three-Cornered World [aka Grass Pillow - Kusamakura], translated by Alan Turney, 1965)

This! This is what I, unawares, had strayed up to the shrine for to see, and those blossoms led me back to Natsume Soseki, one of the first Japanese novelists that I read when I arrived here back in the late summer of 1990.

Let's look at the line, from Soseki's novella, Kusamakura (Grass Pillow), translated by Alan Turney in 1965 and titled by him, Three-Cornered World:

完全な静寂の中で、= Kanzen na / seijaku / no naka de, = Perfect / silence / in the middle of

木蓮は無数の花を = mokuren wa / musū no / hana o = Magnolia / of innumerable / flowers

空に捧げた。= sora ni / sasageta. = to the sky / offered up

Here is my translation, in an attempt to hint at the melopoeia of the original:

In complete and utter silence, the magnolia offered multitudes of blossoms to the firmament.

Cheers!

DH
#InspiredFocus

Further Reading

Natsume Soseki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natsume_S%C5%8Dseki
Three-Cornered World: https://bookreadfree.com/book/13561
On Alan Turney's translation: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200203/p2a/00m/0et/023000c
An introduction to the novel: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2383247

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