琴の音も月もえならぬ宿ながら
つれなき人をひきやとめける
つれなき人をひきやとめける
- Roma-ji
-
Koto no ne mo tsuki mo e naranu yado nagara
tsurenaki hito o hiki ya tomekeru - English Translation
-
Though this house has both
a koto and moon past praise,
with those strings of hers
could she draw and hold in place
the man who would not stay here
- Meaning
- For all that the koto and the moon here are beyond praise, could those strings really have held back the man who would not stay?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Hahakigi
The Sama no Kami went on to tell of a woman whose refinement went too far. After he had stopped visiting her, he passed her house on a moonlit night and heard a wagon koto sounding inside. As he played his flute along with it, a courtier who was with him spoke this poem. It was sent in to the woman, and she answered with a poem of her own. The episode only deepened his disenchantment, and he gave up going there altogether.
"E naranu" means beyond anything one could say, so the poem first praises the koto and the moon as faultless, then turns in the second half to the barbed question of whether all that could hold back a man who had grown cold. "Hiki" plays on plucking the strings and drawing a person to oneself, making the point that skill in the arts alone cannot keep a heart. In a single poem it names what the whole rainy-night discussion is about: how far a woman's taste and accomplishment are worth.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- Bending back my hands to count the times we have met, is this one alone the bitter joint you have known— this single knuckle of yours
- 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
- That flute whose sound blows joined with the withering wind— I have not a word with which to draw it back here and hold the player near me
- Though the woven fence of this poor hill dwelling breaks, still from time to time let your pity fall on us as dew falls upon the pink