年へつる苫屋も荒れてうき波の
かへるかたにや身をたぐへまし
かへるかたにや身をたぐへまし
- Roma-ji
-
Toshi hetsuru tomaya mo arete uki nami no
kaeru kata ni ya mi o taguemashi - English Translation
-
The rush-thatched hut where
I have passed these years will fall
to ruin—shall I
send my body along with
the sad waves, the way they turn?
- Meaning
- The rush-thatched hut where I have passed these years will fall to ruin; shall I let my body go with the sad waves, the way they turn back?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Akashi
Akashi no Kimi answered his poem with this one, setting down exactly what was in her mind, and it made Genji weep openly. Behind it stands the charge her father had laid on her since the Wakamurasaki chapter—that if her destiny failed she should go into the sea—so that the poem hints at drowning. Its weight settles the shape of her character from here on.
"The rush hut of many years" is her own home, spoken of with self-deprecation; "tomaya" is a hut thatched with sedge. "Uki nami" is a floating wave with the word for wretched inside it. "The way they turn back" is the direction of the retreating water, and also the capital Genji is returning to. "Tagufu" is to send one thing along beside another. Letting her body go with the waves suggests drowning, so that the gravest thing in the poem is the thing never said outright.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- The middle string that we pledge to each other as a keepsake until we meet again—may its tune never once alter its note
- Sad enough to leave you behind and set out—and how will it be here in the wake the shore waves leave, I find myself wondering
- This travelling robe I have cut and layered while the waves came shoreward— will you find it wet with brine and turn from it in dislike?
- It is right that we exchange these robes, each for each, as keepsakes—the robes worn between, which stand between us the count of all the days