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I have difficulty deciphering the meaning and structure of the bold sentence below

遠くから、近くから、無数に折り重なる波音を風が運んできた。曇天に白点ひとつ、さみしく鳴く春かもめが、雪の名残ひとひら、まだ冷たい三月の風だった。

This sentence contains lots of commas so it looks like there are multiple smaller sentences combined into one. I'm uncertain about the が after 春かもめ. It marks subject for what?

Also, I don't understand the meaning of 白点 here.

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    Assuming you have copied it correctly, I think this is an intentional anacoluthon. If you were confused and read this twice, that's the author's intent :)
    – naruto
    Nov 13, 2022 at 17:52

1 Answer 1

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It is almost like a prose poem at best, and not really parsable as a sentence.

白点 should be simply a white dot referring to the seagull or snowflake (or both even if inconsistent with ひとつ).

One possible interpretation:

曇天に白点ひとつ、さみしく鳴く春かもめが、

Here かもめ is the subject for some missing verb modified by 曇天に白点ひとつ: A spring seagull crying sadly (flies like) a white dot in the cloudy sky.

雪の名残ひとひら、まだ冷たい三月の風だった。

Here both are noun phrases describing the situation: A snowflake (in the air), (there was) March wind which was still cold.


Another possibility is to consider literally かもめが as subject for 三月の風だった: A spring seagull crying sadly, (which looks like) white dot in the cloudy sky, with a snowflake, was the cold March wind.

Anyway it is a description of a scenery with seagull and snow in the cold wind.

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  • Thanks, it seems like multiple other interpretation are possible.
    – Jimmy Yang
    Nov 13, 2022 at 21:14

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