earticle

영어

There is a phrase, “Praise heavenly gods, pray to earthly gods” in a song 904 in Mangyousyuu. The expression of “heavenly gods” is found once and “earthly gods” is found three times, while “gods of heaven and earth” is found 23 times, in the whole book. The latter style of expression was very popular in those days. The poet Okura laid stress on a harmonized cosmic image by contrasting heaven and earth separately.
However there are two contrary expression of “nether world”in reply song 905 and “heaven” in song 906 for the same meaning of death. This paper is to focus on okura's such poetic style of expression. Such expressions can not be said “contradictory”. It was caused from the free idea of Okura who pursued his own poetic world differentiated with others.