思ふらん心のほどややよいかに
まだ見ぬ人の聞きかなやまむ
まだ見ぬ人の聞きかなやまむ
- Roma-ji
-
Omouran kokoro no hodo ya yayo ika ni
mada minu hito no kiki ka nayamamu - English Translation
-
How much do you feel,
and in what measure—well now,
how is it? Should one
who has not yet seen your face
be troubled by what she hears?
- Meaning
- And how much is this feeling of yours—well now, how is it? Should one who has never seen you be troubled by hearsay alone?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Akashi
The daughter at last took up her own brush and answered Genji's poem with this. It is the first in which Akashi no Kimi speaks in her own voice rather than through her father. Reserved as it is, it turns his words back on him, and from this reply Genji understood that she was no ordinary country woman.
"Yayoya ikani" takes up his own phrase, keeping the etiquette of exchange. "One who has not yet seen you" is herself. "Should she be troubled by hearsay?" is a rhetorical question expecting no. He had used a call to summon her own voice; she returns the same call and asks it back at him, so that wit and wariness work at once.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- If she gazes too at the same cloud-realm you gaze into, then surely the feeling in her must be the very same as your own
- How the heart is closed and troubled with what it holds— and there is no one to say, well now, how is it with you, and ask after me
- Moon-dappled horse of this autumn night, gallop up to the cloud-realm that I long for, so that I may see it even a moment
- If only there were someone to share close talk with, that the dream I have of this wretched world might come half awake from itself here