Since the bond I had
in a life before this one
is known by my grief,
I cannot bring myself yet
to trust in what is to come
- Meaning
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The sorrow of my life makes plain how thin my bond was in an earlier existence, and so I cannot yet trust in what lies ahead.
- Commentary
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Part One: Yugao
To Genji's poem pledging a bond into the next life, the woman answered with this one. From the hardship of her present state she reads the thinness of her karma from a former life, and says she cannot trust in what is to come. Her restrained, shadowed reply only drew him further in. Soon afterward the two left the house at Gojo for a deserted mansion where no one would see them.
"The bond of a former life" is karmic connection, and the poem follows the thinking of the age, which read one's present circumstances as the fruit of an earlier existence. "Shiraruru" means to come to know something despite oneself, a passive form: she does not choose to feel this. Where he pledges the next world, she answers from a present she cannot move out of, and the distance between their positions becomes the distance between the poems.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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