影をのみ御手洗川のつれなきに
身の憂きほどぞいとど知らるる
身の憂きほどぞいとど知らるる
- Roma-ji
-
Kage o nomi Mitarashigawa no tsurenaki ni
mi no uki hodo zo itodo shiraruru - English Translation
-
Only a shadow
on the Mitarashi stream,
and he passes by—
how wretched my own lot is
I come to know all the more
- Meaning
- I see only his reflection on the Mitarashi stream as he passes without a glance, and I learn all the better how wretched my own lot is.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Aoi
On the day of the new High Priestess's purification, Rokujo no Miyasudokoro went out incognito to see Genji in the procession. The party of Aoi no Ue, then with child, forced its way in, and her attendants shoved the other carriage roughly aside. Miyasudokoro's carriage was pushed to the back, its stand broken, and she could see nothing. When the procession passed, Genji went by without appearing to notice her. She spoke this poem with the tears coming. That humiliation is the seed of the living spirit that will later torment Aoi no Ue.
"Kage" is a reflection on water, standing for a Genji she can only watch from a distance. The Mitarashi is the river of the Kamo purification, taking the day's setting straight into the poem. Its name sounds the word for having seen, and "tsurenaki" answers both the coldness of the water and Genji's manner. Publicly shamed, she turns no reproach on anyone and takes it all as the wretchedness of her own lot, and her pride shows in that.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Here on Irusa, the hill where the catalpa bow's arrow goes in, I wander, to see whether that faint moon shows itself yet
- If your heart were set and truly aimed toward one place, would you wander so under a sky with no moon, no drawn bow of a moon there
- Down in that deep bed a thousand fathoms far down the seaweed's fronds grow— and where they grow to at last I alone shall be to see
- How am I to know it is a thousand fathoms, when the tide that comes and goes is so changeable and never at rest at all