悔しくもかざしけるかな名のみして
人だのめなる草葉ばかりを
人だのめなる草葉ばかりを
- Roma-ji
-
Kuyashiku mo kazashikeru kana na nomi shite
hitodanome naru kusaba bakari o - English Translation
-
How I regret now
ever having worn the leaf—
a name and no more,
nothing but a blade of grass
that leads one on to nothing
- Meaning
- How I regret ever having worn that leaf—a name and nothing else, a blade of grass that only leads one on.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Aoi
Naishi no Suke sent this after his curt reply, saying with some bitterness that she had been a fool to trust in a day named for meeting. The people in the surrounding carriages, seeing that Genji had someone with him and would not raise his blinds, wondered and speculated. Genji himself found this contest of festival leaves a dreary business.
"Wearing the leaf" runs on from the two poems before, so that all three answer one another inside the same set of associations. "A name and no more" says the aoi bears the name of meeting without the substance. "Hito-danome" is holding someone to a hope that comes to nothing. By calling it "nothing but a blade of grass" she pulls the aoi down to a mere plant and denies the pun itself. Drawn as a comic figure, she never once falters in the handling of a poem.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- 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
- Knowing all the while that it is a road of love that wets the sleeves through, the field hand who steps down in is wretched by her own will
- It is in shallows that you have stepped down, I think; as for me, my own road of love is deep enough to soak me quite through and through