いくそたび君がしじまにまけぬらむ
ものな言ひそと言はぬ頼みに
ものな言ひそと言はぬ頼みに
- Roma-ji
-
Ikuso tabi kimi ga shijima ni makenuramu
mono na ii so to iwanu tanomi ni - English Translation
-
How many times now
have I given way before
your unbroken hush,
trusting that you have not said
the words: do not speak to me
- Meaning
- How often have I been defeated by your silence, holding on to the one hope that you have never told me to be quiet.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Suetsumuhana
On a night past the twentieth of the eighth month, Myobu at last let Genji through to a place near the lady's room. But she would not speak at all, and gave no sign of answering anything he said. To a woman who simply kept silent, he spoke this poem, having tried every other word he had. Still she did not reply, and her foster-sister Jiju, unable to watch any longer, answered in her place. That night Genji and the lady were joined.
"Shijima" is the state of being wholly silent, and points to how completely she says nothing. "Have been defeated" is his account of himself, drawing back each time without being able to press through. "You have not told me to be quiet" is the smallest hope available, and saying that this is all he has to go on lets his helplessness show. It is an unusual love poem, since its subject is simply that the other person will not respond.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- 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
- To strike the bell and so close the matter would be more than I can do, and yet an answer comes hard— which, to me, makes little sense
- Though I know it well, that not to speak may say more than speaking would say, to be shut out like this is a hard thing to bear indeed