思ふどちなびく方にはあらずとも
われぞけぶりにさきだちなまし
われぞけぶりにさきだちなまし
- Roma-ji
-
Omoudochi nabiku kata ni wa arazu tomo
ware zo keburi ni sakidachinamashi - English Translation
-
Though I am not of
the quarter the two who love
each other lean toward,
I shall be the one to go
first, becoming smoke myself
- Meaning
- Though I am not in the quarter the two who love each other drift toward, I shall go first, and be smoke.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Miotsukushi
Fearing she would hear it elsewhere and take it wrongly, Genji told Murasaki no Ue that a daughter had been born at Akashi. The talk moved on to the woman herself—the smoke of that last evening, the poem she had sent back, the face he had glimpsed, the fine touch of her koto. Turning her face away, Murasaki no Ue spoke this poem almost to herself, and he answered.
"Omou dochi" is two people who love each other: Genji and Akashi no Kimi. "The quarter they lean toward" takes up his own Akashi poem about the salt-smoke drifting the same way. "To go first as smoke" means dying, with the smoke of the pyre inside it. She lifts the word from the poem he sent another woman and turns the same smoke into her own death, so that the pain of the one who has to listen is shown as technique.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- How soon may I lay my sleeve across her—the rock that the heavenly maiden strokes as ages pass, and the years still to come here
- Stroking her alone, my sleeve has not the breadth for what it must cover; I wait for a shade that would spread wide enough to cover
- For whose sake was it that I went round this wretched world by sea and hill, a body that floats and sinks in tears that will not leave off
- Living in a shade that knows no season, like the seaweed of the deep— how is she to tell this day from another, iris day?