雲のうへに思ひのぼれる心には
千ひろの底もはるかにぞ見る
千ひろの底もはるかにぞ見る
- Roma-ji
-
Kumo no ue ni omoinoboreru kokoro ni wa
chihiro no soko mo haruka ni zo miru - English Translation
-
To a heart that would
rise in longing to the realm
above the clouds, the
thousand-fathom deep itself
is a thing seen far below
- Meaning
- To a heart that would rise into the realm above the clouds, even the thousand-fathom deep is seen far below.
- Commentary
-
Part One: Eawase
Answering Hei no Naishi's poem, Dainy no Suke of the right spoke this one. Josanmi seems to have told of a low-born heroine rising to the court, and she boasts of that loftiness set against the depth of the sea of Ise. This exchange too went undecided, and Fujitsubo followed with a poem in the manner of a verdict.
"Above the clouds" is the court, where the Josanmi heroine rises. "Omoinoboreru" is to aspire high. "The thousand-fathom deep" takes up the sea and depth of the other poem and places that depth below. "Seen far off" is seen far beneath. Where the other boasted of the sea's depth, this sets height against it, and the exchange is built on the contrast of deep and high.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- 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?
- To the eye it may have grown worn, grown old with shore and years—but shall we sink the name of the fisher of Ise, aged as it is?
- Rather than sitting alone and grieving, I should have looked on it thus— the shore, laid out like this, where the fisherfolk make their home