If this hardness of
our meeting is not something
bounded by today,
then how many lives to come
must I go on grieving through
- Meaning
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If the hardness of our meeting is not a thing of today alone, through how many lives to come must I go on grieving?
- Commentary
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Part One: Sakaki
After the Retired Emperor's death, Fujitsubo, anxious for the Heir Apparent and above all afraid that Genji's obsession would come to light, went so far as to have prayers said to be free of him. But on one occasion he laid his plans deeply and got near her, and she found herself facing him as in a dream. Shut into a storeroom through the day, he came into the curtained bed at night and spoke this poem to a woman who would not yield. She answered, and at daybreak he went out barely in his right mind.
"The hardness of meeting" is the difficulty of coming together. "Not bounded by today" assumes that the difficulty will go on. "Ikuyo" is a number of existences including lives to come, resting on the Buddhist idea of rebirth. By casting a refusal in this life as grief running on into the next, he insists that the bond will not end—which for Fujitsubo makes the words as heavy as they could be.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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