まことにや花のあたりは立ち憂きと
霞むる空の気色をも見む
霞むる空の気色をも見む
- Roma-ji
-
Makoto ni ya hana no atari wa tachiuki to
kasumuru sora no keshiki o mo mimu - English Translation
-
Is it truly so,
that where the flower stands you
find it hard to leave?
I shall watch the look of that
sky where the mist is rising
- Meaning
- Is it really true that you find it hard to leave where the flower stands? I shall watch the look of that misted sky and see.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Wakamurasaki
The nun answered Genji's poem with this one. She turns aside his claim that he cannot leave the flower, saying she is not obliged to believe it, and so repeats that she will not give up her granddaughter. Genji felt again how little opening she left him, and went down to the capital. The negotiation over the girl continued by letter.
She takes up his "flower" and "mist" and returns them, as the exchange required. "Hard to leave" answers his "hard to set out," using his own word but turning it toward doubt: she will see whether it is true. "The look of the misted sky" transposes a heart she cannot read into a landscape, which lets her voice suspicion without stating it.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Opening rarely the pine door of this deep hill where I keep shut in, I have looked upon the face of a flower never seen
- In the dusk I saw faintly the color of one flower, and this morn the mist that rises makes it hard for me to rise and go
- That face does not leave this body of mine at all— the mountain cherry, though with all the heart I had I left my heart there with it
- Only while they hold, the cherries on that ridge where the storm wind is up, do you keep your heart with them— and how frail a thing that is