唐衣君が心のつらければ
袂はかくぞそぼちつつのみ
袂はかくぞそぼちつつのみ
- Roma-ji
-
Karagoromo kimi ga kokoro no tsurakereba
tamoto wa kaku zo sobochitsutsu nomi - English Translation
-
That Chinese robe—and
since your heart is hard to me,
my sleeve goes on so,
doing nothing else at all
but growing wet and wetter
- Meaning
- I send this robe; and since your heart is hard toward me, my sleeve does nothing but grow wetter and wetter.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Suetsumuhana
At the end of the year, New Year's clothing arrived from the lady for Genji: garments in dated colors that looked as though they had been worn before, with this poem attached. She had meant it as her best effort of consideration, but the old-fashioned taste and the commonplace verse drew an honest reaction out of him. It is this gift that leads him to give her the name Suetsumuhana.
"Karagoromo" is a formal robe with wide sleeves, long used in poetry as a word that leads into "sleeve," "cuff," and "to wear." "Sobotsu" is to be soaked through with tears. The poem follows exactly the pattern of a woman's poem to a man—reproach, and a wet sleeve—with almost nothing of her own added. Yet that very conformity conveys her earnestness and her old-fashioned mind, so that the poem and the character are of a piece.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- The icicles hung at the eaves where morning sun strikes have come untied, and why then should the ice there stay bound and hold itself closed
- The one who looks on that snow fallen on a head grown old with the years wets, no less than he does, his own sleeve on this morning here
- It is not a hue that draws the heart to itself, so why should it be that I have let my own sleeve touch this last-picked safflower
- Though the crimson of this one flower-dyed garment is thin in color, let no name be raised that would wholly rot her name away