かくれなきものと知る知る夏衣
きたるをうすき心とぞ見る
きたるをうすき心とぞ見る
- Roma-ji
-
Kakure naki mono to shiru shiru natsugoromo
kitaru o usuki kokoro to zo miru - English Translation
-
Knowing all the while
that it hides nothing at all,
you have come here in
this thin summer robe, and I
read that thinness as your heart
- Meaning
- Knowing perfectly well that it conceals nothing, you came here in a thin summer robe—and I take that thinness for your heart.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Momiji no Ga
Genji answered To no Chujo's poem on the spot with this one. Knowing it would hide nothing, he says, you came here in a thin summer robe—and it is that thinness of feeling that is at fault. Neither with any grievance left against the other, the two went off together in disarray. The next morning the trousers and sash left behind on the spot arrived from the lady, and the exchange over the sash and the torn sleeve followed.
"Kakurenaki" means impossible to conceal, denying his friend's "wrap away" head-on. "Kitaru" plays wearing a garment against coming to a place, so it means both that he has the thin robe on and that he turned up here. "Usuki" plays the thinness of the cloth against thinness of feeling, so two double meanings sit inside one poem. Where the other man built from associated words, Genji cuts back with puns, and the poem shows the two of them evenly matched.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- Another man's wife— ah, what a troublesome thing; at this eastern hut, at its eaves, I think I will not grow too familiar here
- The name you wrap up and keep hidden may yet leak out and be let known— through this middle robe of ours that we tore open pulling
- Bitter as I am, there is no use in saying— after waves that rose one upon another, then drew away and left nothing
- At that roughened wave my heart is not stirred at all, and yet how should I not resent the shore that drew and let such a wave come in