Bitter joints I've kept
counting in my heart alone—
and is this the time,
this one, when I must part from
your hand and let go of it
- Meaning
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I have counted these bitter turns in my own heart alone, and now perhaps this is the moment I must let go of your hand.
- Commentary
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Part One: Hahakigi
When the Sama no Kami, his finger bitten, spoke his half-joking poem, the jealous woman answered at once with this one. On the surface she matches his light tone, but what she says is that she has resolved on parting. He left the house with the quarrel unsettled, stopped visiting, and she sank into illness and died. Only later did he come to feel that she was the woman who should have been the wife of his house.
"Bitter joints" takes up his own word and returns it, as the etiquette of poetic exchange required. But where he counted the joints of a finger, she shifts the sense to the pain she alone has been counting in her heart. "Koya" is a way of pressing the question—is this the moment?—so that beneath the light exchange lies a sense that this parting will be final. That the teller himself misread her meaning is what gives the anecdote its weight.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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