世語りに人や伝へむたぐひなく
憂き身を覚めぬ夢になしても
憂き身を覚めぬ夢になしても
- Roma-ji
-
Yogatari ni hito ya tsutaemu tagui naku
uki mi o samenu yume ni nashite mo - English Translation
-
Will people pass on
this as a tale of the world,
though I make of my
wretched life beyond compare
a dream from which none awakes
- Meaning
- Will people hand this down as a tale of the world, even if I make of my incomparable misery a dream that never ends?
- Commentary
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Part One: Wakamurasaki
Fujitsubo answered Genji's poem with this one. She says nothing at all of the meeting itself, only of her fear that it will be handed down as gossip. As an emperor's consort she knows better than anyone that discovery would destroy her. Afterward, tormented by her pregnancy, she avoided any meeting with Genji with the strictest care.
"Yogatari" is what the world tells of a thing, that is, rumor. "A dream from which none awakes" takes up his "dream," and holds the wish that if it never ends it will never have been real. But "even if I make of it" follows at once, showing her resignation: convince herself as she may, the talk will not stop. Where he wrote of private feeling, she writes of public consequence, and the exchange sets their positions in plain contrast.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- That mountain well which, once drawn from, is said to leave regret behind it— while it stays as shallow, should one be shown a face in it
- Even having met, nights of meeting come so rare— here inside this dream I would that this body here might lose itself once for all
- Ever since I heard that one cry of the young crane, the boat that labors among the reeds cannot bear how hard the going has grown
- When shall I pluck it with my own hand and behold this young field grass here that runs down in its roots to the purple gromwell's own root