憂しとのみひとへにものは思ほえで
左右にも濡るる袖かな
左右にも濡るる袖かな
- Roma-ji
-
Ushi to nomi hitoe ni mono wa omooede
hidari migi ni mo nururu sode kana - English Translation
-
It is not simply
as a wretched thing alone
that I feel all this—
and so my sleeves are wet on
the one side and the other
- Meaning
- I do not feel it simply as a bitter thing, and so both my sleeves, the one and the other, are wet.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Suma
That night Genji remembered how warmly the Suzaku Emperor had talked with him of old times, and how like their father he had looked; he kept beside him the robe the Emperor had given him and never let it out of reach. Murmuring a line of Chinese verse he went indoors, and spoke this poem there. Resentment and affection pressed on him at the same moment.
"Ushi" is bitter, hard to bear. "Hitoe ni" is wholly, in one direction only, and the poem says his feeling is not of one color. "Both sleeves wet" means tears of resentment and tears of longing running together. Two contrary feelings are set into the concrete form of a left sleeve and a right, and it shows very well a heart that does not settle into simple grievance.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Even the wild geese that have left the eternal land for strange sky here take some comfort while they keep from falling out of the line
- While I look at it I am comforted a while, though the moon's city, where I shall meet them again, lies far off from here indeed
- The towing rope of our boat, held back and drawn in by the sound of strings— this heart of mine that wavers, do you know any of it
- If the towing rope in the hand had wavered from a heart that felt it, would you have passed on by these waves on the shore of Suma