わかれ路に添へし小櫛をかごとにて
はるけきなかと神やいさめし
はるけきなかと神やいさめし
- Roma-ji
-
Wakareji ni soeshi ogushi o kagoto nite
harukeki naka to kami ya isameshi - English Translation
-
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?
- Meaning
- Was it the small comb I added on your parting road that the god took as pretext, warning us into a bond as far apart as this?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Eawase
The former Priestess's entry to the Reizei Emperor's court drew near, and under Fujitsubo's urging Genji stood in a parent's place to see to it. The Suzaku Retired Emperor, who had long cared for her and now found his wishes thwarted, had let his letters lapse for shame; but on the day itself he sent a comb box, incense, and other things beyond compare. With Genji present, the woman official showed the gifts, and on the ornamental flower of the comb box this poem was tied. She answered.
"Wakareji" is the parting road, meaning the rite of the farewell comb in the Sakaki chapter, when at the great hall the Emperor set a small comb in the Priestess's hair and said she must not turn back toward the capital. "Ogushi" lays that comb over the one he sends now. "Kagoto" is a pretext. "Harukeki naka" is a bond far apart. A rite of more than ten years past is raised as the ground of a grievance, and a scene from the Sakaki chapter is called back through this single poem.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- 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
- The barrier at Ausaka—what kind of a barrier is it, that one must push through a stand of trees so thick with sighing?
- Even that one word you spoke from so far away at our parting turns back on itself, and the thing is sorrowful now indeed
- Without tracing out the deep heart of the sea of Ise, shall the waves wipe it away as a trace grown old and left behind here?