Leaving you behind
in a lodging of dew on
a plain of low reeds,
it is the storm on all sides
that gives my heart no quiet
- Meaning
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Having left you in a dwelling frail as dew on a plain of low reeds, it is the storm on every side that gives my heart no rest.
- Commentary
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Part One: Sakaki
After what had passed with Fujitsubo, Genji found even appearing in public burdensome, and went into retreat at Unrin-in, partly to see the autumn fields. Shut up in the cell of a priest who was his late mother's brother, reading scripture and keeping the observances, he felt the impermanence of things and thought of taking vows himself. But what weighed on him most was Murasaki no Ue, left behind at Nijo, and this poem went with one of the letters he sent her. She wept over it and wrote a reply.
"Asajiu" is ground overgrown with low reeds, standing for a neglected dwelling. "A lodging of dew" is a temporary shelter as frail as dew. "The storm on all sides" is the wind from every quarter, figuring danger from without. He thinks of leaving the world and at the same time worries for the one he would leave in it, and the poem takes the shape of exactly that hesitation.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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