ほのめかす風につけても下荻の
半ばは霜にむすぼほれつつ
半ばは霜にむすぼほれつつ
- Roma-ji
-
Honomekasu kaze ni tsukete mo shitaogi no
nakaba wa shimo ni musubōretsutsu - English Translation
-
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
- Meaning
- Even at the wind that hints its meaning, this reed below is half bound up in frost and cannot loosen itself.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Yugao
Nokiba no Ogi answered Genji's poem with this one. Already another man's wife, she was glad of his letter and yet in no position to respond to it. She entrusts that divided feeling to a reed held fast in frost. Genji read in the answer the openness and youth that mark her, but nothing further came of it.
"The wind that hints" takes up his "however faintly," carrying the exchange's words forward. "Shita ogi" is the reed of the undergrowth, standing for her own position out of the light. "Musubohore" picks up his "had I never tied" and turns it toward being knotted and unable to come loose—a fine instance of the technique by which an exchange reuses a word and shifts its sense.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- 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
- 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
- While I looked on it as a keepsake to hold me until we should meet, this sleeve of mine has wholly worn away and rotted through
- Like the cicada, I have changed and left behind that summer garment, and seeing it returned now my voice cries out all the same