橘の香をなつかしみほととぎす
花散る里をたづねてぞとふ
花散る里をたづねてぞとふ
- Roma-ji
-
Tachibana no ka o natsukashimi hototogisu
hanachirusato o tazunete zo tou - English Translation
-
Finding the fragrance
of the orange dear to it,
the cuckoo has come,
seeking out and calling on
this village of fallen bloom
- Meaning
- Drawn by the fragrance of the orange blossom, the cuckoo has sought out and come calling on this village where the flowers fall.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Hanachirusato
Genji reached the house he had been making for and sat first with the Reikeiden Consort, talking of the past until the night grew late. As the moon of the twentieth rose, the shadows of the trees lay deep and an orange tree nearby gave off its scent. The Consort had aged, but she was thoughtful, refined, and easy to be fond of. When a cuckoo—perhaps the one from that earlier hedge—called in the same voice, Genji spoke this poem. The chapter takes its name from it.
The orange had long been the flower that brings the past to mind, which suits a scene of remembering the late Emperor. The cuckoo runs on from the Nakagawa scene and again stands for Genji himself. "The village where the flowers fall" is this house, where the Consort and her sister live. Using the standard pairing of orange and cuckoo, he folds into it his actual errand—coming to someone with whom the past can be shared—and the poem carries the theme of the whole chapter.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- Turning back again I cannot help but recall, cuckoo that you are, this hedge of the house where once we spoke a word together
- The cuckoo's voice that comes calling and asking is the same voice, and yet how hard it is to be sure under a sky of long rains
- At a house gone wild where no one comes to see it, it is the orange bloom alone that has become the eaves' one reason to call
- Wondering whether it might resemble the smoke that burned at Toribe, I go to see the shore where the fisherfolk burn their salt