Understanding sentence with 愛らしさ


A sentence from 四畳半神話大系

> 生後間もない頃の私は純粋無垢の権化であり、 **光源氏の赤子時代もかくやと思われる愛らしさ**
> 、邪念のかけらもないその笑顔は郷里の山野を愛の光で満たしたと言われる。

I'm uncertain what the bold part means and how it relates to the rest of the
sentence.

I think it means "adorableness that is like Kaguya when Genji was baby"?
Perhaps, there is a hidden と after 愛らしさ, which connects 邪念のかけらもないその笑顔?




First, please note that the text you have quoted doesn't say かぐや, as in your
gloss, but かくや. As you can see from [this dictionary
entry](https://kobun.weblio.jp/content/%E3%81%8B%E3%81%8F%E3%82%84), かくや is a
classical Japanese collocation that roughly corresponds to modern Japanese
こんなだろうか. In English, it's something like "[is/was X] perhaps like this?"

With that in mind, a stilted, overly literal, word-by-word translation of the
phrase you're asking about would be something along the lines of

> my adorableness, about which it was thought "was the time when Genji was a
> baby also perhaps like this?"

Of course, that's more or less incomprehensible in English, so if you were
translating this sentence you'd probably want to go with something more
idiomatic, like

> my appearance, which was so adorable that it evoked that of the infant
> Prince Genji himself.

As for how this phrase relates to the rest of the sentence, your question
about whether there might be a "hidden と" suggests that you are very much on
the right track. This phrase and the one that follows (邪念のかけらもないその笑顔) do in
fact form a compound subject (or topic, if you prefer) for the phrase
郷里の山野を愛の光で満たした.




First, please note that the text you have quoted doesn't say かぐや, as in your
gloss, but かくや. As you can see from [this dictionary
entry](https://kobun.weblio.jp/content/%E3%81%8B%E3%81%8F%E3%82%84), かくや is a
classical Japanese collocation that roughly corresponds to modern Japanese
こんなだろうか. In English, it's something like "[is/was X] perhaps like this?"

With that in mind, a stilted, overly literal, word-by-word translation of the
phrase you're asking about would be something along the lines of

> my adorableness, about which it was thought "was the time when Genji was a
> baby also perhaps like this?"

Of course, that's more or less incomprehensible in English, so if you were
translating this sentence you'd probably want to go with something more
idiomatic, like

> my appearance, which was so adorable that it evoked that of the infant
> Prince Genji himself.

As for how this phrase relates to the rest of the sentence, your question
about whether there might be a "hidden と" suggests that you are very much on
the right track. This phrase and the one that follows (邪念のかけらもないその笑顔) do in
fact form a compound subject (or topic, if you prefer) for the phrase
郷里の山野を愛の光で満たした.

