今も見てなかなか袖を朽たすかな
垣ほ荒れにし大和撫子
垣ほ荒れにし大和撫子
- Roma-ji
-
Ima mo mite nakanaka sode o kutasu kana
kakiho arenishi yamatonadeshiko - English Translation
-
To look at it now
only rots my sleeves the more
with the tears they take—
this yamato pink beside
a fence gone all to ruin
- Meaning
- Looking at it now only rots my sleeves the more with tears—this yamato pink beside a fence fallen to ruin.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Aoi
Omiya, who had been weeping at every stir of wind, could not hold back and answered with this poem. To her grief for her daughter is added the fact that the sight of the child left behind only deepens it. Afterward Genji wrote to the Asagao princess as well, and when night fell he sat talking with the women of the household.
"Nakanaka" means rather, on the contrary, and sets up the paradox that what should console instead deepens the grief. "Kutasu" is to weep until the sleeves rot. "A fence gone to ruin" figures a household that has lost its mistress, taking up his "brushwood fence." "Yamato pink" likewise returns his own word. She takes over every term of the exchange and uses them to deny the very logic of consolation by keepsake.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- The very sky where the one I knew has turned to rain and gone from us is darkened over the more by these showers, this season
- This pink that remains at the withered brushwood fence where the grasses die— I look on it as a sign of the autumn we parted
- This evening above all others my sleeve is wet with the dew of it, though I have passed through many autumns of grieving before
- Since I heard that you were left behind by the one gone in autumn mist, I have wondered how it is with you under these showers