かこつべきゆゑを知らねばおぼつかな
いかなる草のゆかりなるらむ
いかなる草のゆかりなるらむ
- Roma-ji
-
Kakotsubeki yue o shiraneba obotsukana
ikanaru kusa no yukari naruramu - English Translation
-
Not knowing the cause
that you would lay it upon,
I cannot be sure—
just what sort of grass is it
that I am the tie of here
- Meaning
- Not knowing what cause you would lay it to, I am left uncertain—just what kind of grass am I said to be kin to?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Wakamurasaki
Reading the poem Genji had written, the girl did not understand it, and though she was shy about spoiling the page, she wrote her own at his urging. This is that poem. In her hand and in the directness of the verse Genji saw something of the dead nun, and held her the dearer for it. The chapter closes with this exchange, and their story is carried on into the chapters that follow.
"Kakotsu" is to make a pretext of something, and she is saying she does not know why he should call her the grass of a tie. She takes up his "grass of the tie" and keeps the form of the exchange exactly. A child who knows nothing of Fujitsubo asks, in all innocence, the very question at the heart of the matter, and only the reader knows the answer. As the first poem Murasaki no Ue composes in the tale, it holds a weighty place.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- If you stand and find this fence of mist hard to pass and go by our gate, then a bolt made of grasses would be no hindrance to you
- I have not yet seen the root, and still I hold dear this grass of the tie on Musashi plain, where I weary of parting the dew
- Together we left the great palace mountain, yet you will not show me where you go in to—you are the moon of the sixteenth night
- The light that falls on every village alike we see, but who is it that goes seeking Irusa, the hill where the moon goes in