あふさかの関やいかなる関なれば
しげきなげきの中をわくらん
しげきなげきの中をわくらん
- Roma-ji
-
Ausaka no seki ya ikanaru seki nareba
shigeki nageki no naka o wakuran - English Translation
-
The barrier at
Ausaka—what kind of a
barrier is it,
that one must push through a stand
of trees so thick with sighing?
- Meaning
- The barrier at Ausaka—what manner of barrier is it, that one must push through so thick a stand of grief?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Sekiya
Utsusemi answered his poem with this one. Her brother carried it to her with some awe, urging her to reply: it was more than they deserved that Genji's kindness had not changed, and no one would blame a woman for answering. She felt more diffidence now than ever, but perhaps could not hold back at so unexpected a letter; she added that it seemed like a dream. Genji kept her in mind as a woman whose sweetness and whose hardness he could not forget, and went on now and then sending word to unsettle her.
"The barrier at Ausaka" carries the word for meeting, so that a barrier named for meeting is where no meeting occurs. "What manner of barrier is it that…" sets the question. "Shigeki" is both thickly grown and abundant. "Nageki" is grief with the word for tree inside it. "Waku" is to push through undergrowth and to make one's way through sorrow. A chain of associations struck from the place-name runs through the whole poem and states the irony of a meeting-place where they did not meet.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Going out and now coming back, these tears of mine that will not be dammed— do people take them for the spring that never runs dry here?
- Meeting you by chance on the road to Omi, I put my trust in it, and still nothing came of it— a sea with no shells nor salt
- Was it the small comb I set upon your parting road that the god took for pretext, to warn us to a bond as far off as this?
- Even that one word you spoke from so far away at our parting turns back on itself, and the thing is sorrowful now indeed