ささがにのふるまひしるき夕暮れに
ひるま過ぐせといふがあやなさ
ひるま過ぐせといふがあやなさ
- Roma-ji
-
Sasagani no furumai shiruki yūgure ni
hiruma sugose to iu ga ayanasa - English Translation
-
At this dusk, when signs
the spider gives are so clear,
to be told to wait
and let the daylight go by
makes no sense that I can see
- Meaning
- On an evening when the spider's signs are this plain, being told to let the daylight pass first makes no sense at all.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Hahakigi
The last to speak was the Tо̄ Shikibu no Jo, who told of a learned scholar's daughter. When he called on her, she said she had taken garlic as medicine for a chill and asked him to wait until the smell had gone. Put off by so comic a refusal, he spoke this poem and fled. She sent a poem after him, and Genji and the others burst out laughing at the story.
"Sasagani" is the spider, and the poem draws on the old belief that a spider spinning its web foretells a lover's coming. "Hiruma" holds both "daytime" and the interval until the garlic smell fades, so that solemn learning and a ridiculous circumstance are tied together in one word. The scene closes the rainy-night discussion on laughter, and serves as a judgment on a woman whose scholarship has outrun everything else.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Among mingled blooms I cannot tell which color stands above the rest, and yet there is nothing here that comes near the summer pink
- On the summer pink, where the sleeve that brushes dust is wet with its dew, autumn has come now as well, adding the storm wind to it
- If we were a pair who let no night come between the times that we meet, why would the daylight hours then be anything to shrink from
- Before I have done blaming her for her coldness, at this break of dawn the cock crows to startle me into leaving all behind