Hyakunin Isshu: Meet the Poets
Acting Middle Counselor Atsutada

Meaning

Compared to this feeling after meeting you, the longing I felt before seems like nothing at all.

Commentary

This poem captures a paradox unique to the Heian emotional world: meeting the beloved does not relieve longing, but intensifies it. Before meeting, the speaker imagined he understood what it meant to yearn for someone. But having seen her — perhaps only briefly, through a screen or curtain — he now knows that everything he felt before was merely a pale shadow of the real thing.

Fujiwara no Atsutada held the title of Acting Middle Counselor and was known in his lifetime as one of the most handsome men at court. This biographical detail lends poignancy to his poem about being helplessly captivated by another's presence. He was an active and highly regarded poet of the mid-Heian period.

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