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
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How I regret ever having worn that leaf—a name and nothing else, a blade of grass that only leads one on.
- Commentary
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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
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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