泣く泣くも今日はわが結ふ下紐を
いづれの世にかとけて見るべき
いづれの世にかとけて見るべき
- Roma-ji
-
Naku naku mo kyō wa waga yū shitahimo o
izure no yo ni ka tokete mirubeki - English Translation
-
Weeping as I tie
with my own hands, on this day,
this under-sash cord—
in what world am I to see
it loosened, opened again
- Meaning
- Weeping, I tie this under-cord with my own hands today—in what world will I ever see it loosened again?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Yugao
Recovered from his illness, Genji held the forty-ninth-day rites for Yugao in secret at a Lotus hall on Mount Hiei. He had Koremitsu prepare the offerings, among them a pair of trousers, and as he tied the cord with his own hands he could not hold back this poem. It was a mourning no one could be told of, and with these rites his days with Yugao come to a close.
The "shitahimo" is the cord tied inside a garment, and "toku" means both to loosen it and to open one's heart. The chapter has already had a poem about a flower loosening its cords, and the word recurs as a figure for their bond. Here the act is reversed—he ties it himself—and the parting brought by death is turned into a concrete gesture: a knot that will never be undone.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- You do not ask why I do not ask after you, and the days wear on— how greatly, all this while, has my heart been torn and confused
- I had come to know this cast-off shell of a world is a bitter thing, and still my life hangs upon a few leaves of words from you
- Had I never once, faint as it was, tied a knot in that eaves-reed there, on what could I now hang out this small complaint of the dew
- Even at the wind that comes hinting through the reeds, this low reed beneath is half bound up in the frost and cannot open itself