誰により世をうみやまに行きめぐり
絶えぬ涙にうきしづむ身ぞ
絶えぬ涙にうきしづむ身ぞ
- Roma-ji
-
Tare ni yori yo o umi yama ni yukimeguri
taenu namida ni ukishizumu mi zo - English Translation
-
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
- Meaning
- For whose sake did I wander this wretched world by sea and hill, a body rising and sinking in tears that never end?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Miotsukushi
Genji answered her poem with this one: it was all for her sake, and if he takes care not to be blamed over trifles, that too is for one person only. He drew a koto over and pressed her to play, but having just heard how well the other woman played she would not touch it. He found her stubbornness the more attractive for it.
"Tare ni yori" asks for whose sake. "Yo o umi" plays finding the world hard to bear against the sea, and leads into "sea and hill." "Yukimeguri" is wandering—the exile at Suma and Akashi. "Ukishizumu" is rising and sinking, belonging to the sea. It is the same pun the novice used at Akashi, and the vocabulary of the shore has now been carried into a conversation indoors in the capital.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- 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
- 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
- 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?
- The crane that cries out hidden away on an isle of no account here— today too there is no one to ask how it is with her