見ても思ふ見ぬはたいかに嘆くらむ
こや世の人の惑ふてふ闇
こや世の人の惑ふてふ闇
- Roma-ji
-
Mite mo omou minu hata ika ni nagekuramu
ko ya yo no hito no madou chō yami - English Translation
-
You grieve having seen,
and she who has not seen him—
how must she grieve too?
Is this, then, the very dark
they say a parent wanders
- Meaning
- If seeing brings such grief, how much must the one who cannot see him suffer? Is this the darkness people speak of, that a parent wanders in?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Momiji no Ga
Omyobu, who served close to Fujitsubo, answered Genji's poem with this one. Having gone between the two of them, she saw the suffering on both sides at once and could take neither part without pain. She did not go on to arrange the meeting, and Genji had to withdraw with his longing unrelieved.
"Grief even in seeing" points to Fujitsubo, who can look at the child; "not seeing" points to Genji, who cannot. "The dark that people wander in" draws on an old poetic way of speaking of the darkness in a parent's heart, and she takes both their sufferings as forms of that darkness. Setting the feelings of both parties side by side in a single poem is exactly what her position as go-between requires.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- The men of Cathay and their waving sleeves are far off and long ago, but in each rise and each step I did see something moving
- In what way was it that a bond was tied between us in lives before, that in this world we should have such a barrier between
- Setting it beside the one I long for, I look, and my heart is not eased at all—the dew only gathers on the pink the more
- Thinking of the child as kin to that dew which wets the sleeve you speak of, I find the yamato pink is not one I can put off