見るめこそうらふりぬらめ年へにし
伊勢をのあまの名をや沈めむ
伊勢をのあまの名をや沈めむ
- Roma-ji
-
Mirume koso urafurinurame toshi henishi
Ise o no ama no na o ya shizumemu - English Translation
-
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?
- Meaning
- To the eye it may have grown worn and old with years; but shall we sink the name of the fisher of Ise?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Eawase
With the women's dispute still undecided, Fujitsubo spoke this poem in place of a verdict. The loftiness of the Josanmi heroine was not to be dismissed, she said, but the name of the Middle Captain—Narihira—could not be brought low. With this the side defending the Tales of Ise carried the day, and the exchange of the women is joined by the authority of the Empress.
"Mirume" is the eye's view with the seaweed of that name inside it. "Urafuri" is a heart grown old, with the word for shore in it. Seaweed, shore, the fisher of Ise, and sinking all belong to the sea. "The fisher of Ise" is the fisherman there, laying the Ise hero Narihira over Genji in his Suma and Akashi years. It draws on the Suma poem about the fisher of Ise who cuts the wretched seaweed, so that a defense of the tale is overlaid with the memory of Genji's own exile—there lies the depth of the poem.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- 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 a heart that would rise in longing to the realm above the clouds, the thousand-fathom deep itself is a thing seen far below
- 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
- More even than at the time I knew that wretched grief, today once more the tears turn back toward the days that are gone and past now