そのかみやいかがはありし木綿欅
心にかけてしのぶらむゆゑ
心にかけてしのぶらむゆゑ
- Roma-ji
-
Sonokami ya ikaga wa arishi yūdasuki
kokoro ni kakete shinoburamu yue - English Translation
-
And that autumn, then—
what was it that happened there,
that a cord like this
should be laid upon your heart
and remembered as it is
- Meaning
- And what was that autumn, then, that a mulberry cord should be laid upon your heart and remembered so?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Sakaki
The Asagao princess answered on the edge of the mulberry cloth with this poem. He speaks as though something had happened that autumn; she deflects him by professing not to know of anything of the kind. Genji judged her hand not fine but full of spirit, her running script much improved, and let himself imagine how she must have grown as well.
"That autumn" and "the mulberry cord" both take up his own words, as the exchange required. "What was it, then" is a rhetorical question implying that there was no particular past between them. She uses the language of the rites exactly as he did while stripping out the amorous sense he had loaded into it—a reply entirely in keeping with her steady refusal.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- When the wind blows, first of all the thing to be thrown into disarray is the spider on the dew of reeds whose color turns now
- To speak of it is a thing to be feared, and yet this mulberry cord brings back to mind that autumn of the days that are long gone
- Is it mist that stands between us in this ninefold palace, that the moon above the clouds should be so far off when I think of it
- The light of the moon has not changed from autumns past of the world we knew, and it is the mist between that is hard and cruel here