限りあれば薄墨衣浅けれど
涙ぞ袖を淵となしける
涙ぞ袖を淵となしける
- Roma-ji
-
Kagiri areba usuzumigoromo asakeredo
namida zo sode o fuchi to nashikeru - English Translation
-
Since a limit holds,
this robe of pale ink is light
in its color, yet
the tears have gone and made of
my sleeves a deep pool indeed
- Meaning
- Custom sets a limit, and so this mourning robe is pale; but my tears have turned the sleeves into a deep pool.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Aoi
Home from the funeral, Genji could not sleep, and went back over how things had stood between him and Aoi no Ue. That they had never come to be easy together, that his careless behavior had wounded her—there was nothing but regret in it. Looking at the grey mourning robe they had put on him, he thought that had he gone first she would have dyed hers far darker, and spoke this poem. Afterward he passed his days reading sutras, taking what comfort he could in the sight of the infant.
"Since a limit holds" refers to the fact that the color of mourning was fixed by rank and relation. A husband's robe was pale grey, and the whole poem turns on the gap between that paleness and the depth of his grief. "Fuchi" is a deep still pool, figuring sleeves soaked through. Setting the lightness of the color against the depth of the tears states a sorrow the forms cannot carry, and the tangled feeling of a man full of regret comes through clearly.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- This soul of mine that, worn out with grief, goes drifting loose across the sky— bind it and hold it here, please, by your under-garment's hem
- The smoke that has climbed and gone I cannot tell out from the rest of it, and yet the whole of the sky where the clouds are moves my heart
- Even to hear of how it goes with human life leaves me wet with dew, and I think of the sleeve of the one who is left behind
- The one who remains and the one who has vanished are one dew-like world, and to keep reserve in it is a frail thing, is it not