Though you shake me off
and go on your way today,
at the Suzuka's
eighty shallows, will your sleeves
not be wet with the water
- Meaning
-
Though you shake me off and go today, will your sleeves not be wet at the many shallows of the Suzuka?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Sakaki
The party set out after dark, and their road from Nijo turning down Toin passed in front of the Nijo residence. Moved by it, Genji sent this poem fixed to a sakaki branch. It was dark and hurried and no answer came then; one arrived the next day from beyond the Osaka barrier. He admired the hand, and wished a little more feeling had gone into the words.
"Shaking off" names her resolve to cut everything loose. The Suzuka is a river on the road to Ise, taking the journey itself into the poem. "The waves of eighty shallows" is the many fords, and the plain fact that crossing wets one's sleeves is laid over their being wet with tears. Binding the real landscape of a journey to a state of feeling in a single word is one of this chapter's habitual moves.
- Author
-
Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
-
Genji Monogatari
- Other
-