むつごとを語りあはせむ人もがな
うき世の夢もなかばさむやと
うき世の夢もなかばさむやと
- Roma-ji
-
Mutsugoto o katariawasemu hito mogana
ukiyo no yume mo nakaba samu ya to - English Translation
-
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
- Meaning
- If only there were someone to talk softly with, so that this dream of a wretched world might half wake from itself.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Akashi
Arriving at the hillside house and finding her unwilling to respond, Genji went on speaking to her at length. This poem came then, less a declaration of love than a request for someone to share a mind with. She answered, and that night they became lovers.
"Mutsugoto" is the easy talk of people close to each other. "Mogana" expresses a wish. "Uki yo" is this wretched world, meaning his life in exile. "That the dream might half wake" figures days in a place of banishment that hardly feel real. Though it is a lover's poem, its shape is a plea for rescue from solitude, and Genji's whole condition in this period is its content.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- 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?
- 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
- To a heart that goes astray in a night that has not yet come to dawn, which of these is dream and which is not, that it might be told?
- Wet through with brine, I find myself weeping first of all—though the seaweed glimpsed in passing was no more than a fisher's idle sport