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Kobun in modern situations

4 Apr 2014
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First i'd like to mention that my familiarity with kobun has been limited to 百人一首 poems and i treat き-adjectives just like い-adjectives. (by き-adverbs i mean ones like 「悲しき」 in this tanka 奥山に 紅葉踏みわけ 鳴く鹿の 声きく時ぞ 秋は悲しき)

But today i stumbled upon き-adjective while reading manga.
DEATH NOTE#02_051.jpg(click to enlarge)

How should i treat き-adjectives in that case? What mood do they project?
 
Where did you get the term き-adjective? ~しき is just the inflection of an attributive form (連体形) of -shiku conjugation adjectives (シク活用形容詞). Thus, 悲しき is just a classical form of 悲しい. It's used to add a poetic nuance (jokingly in your example).
形容詞 - Wikipedia
(all in Japanese)

As for the tanka you quoted, the predicative at the end of the sentence changes to the attributive form because of 係り結び for the particle ぞ.
声きく時 秋は悲し --> 声きく時ぞ 秋は悲しき
係り結び - Wikipedia
(all in Japanese)
 
I knew i was writing something silly.
Anyway, thanks for the answer. Had no clue that such thing as 係り結び exists, thought that 悲しき in the tanka was used to add a poetic nuance
 
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