千尋ともいかでか知らむ定めなく
満ち干る潮ののどけからぬに
満ち干る潮ののどけからぬに
- Roma-ji
-
Chihiro to mo ikade ka shiramu sadame naku
michihiru shio no nodokekaranu ni - English Translation
-
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
- Meaning
- How am I to know it is a thousand fathoms, when the tide that rises and falls is never once at rest?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Aoi
Murasaki no Ue wrote this on a piece of paper at hand in answer to Genji's poem. She turns aside his promise to see her whole future, saying she cannot simply believe it. He admired her hand and her wit, and held her the dearer for it. Afterward they went out to watch the festival, and there they met Naishi no Suke.
"A thousand fathoms" takes up his own word and returns it, as the exchange required. "The tide that rises and falls" carries his sea imagery forward while laying a changeable human heart over it. "Nodokeshi" is being calm and settled. Answering a blessing with doubt, the poem holds no reproach, and shows a young girl already too clear-eyed to take his words at face value. That distance she keeps from what Genji says runs on through the chapters to come.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Only a shadow on the Mitarashi stream, and he passes by— how wretched my own lot is I come to know all the more
- 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 fleeting it is— for the hollyhock one wears I have waited here for this day on which the god gives us all his leave to meet
- That heart of yours which wore the leaf seems to me all faithlessness, given that on this day you would meet with the whole crowd, one and all