契りしに変はらぬ琴の調べにて
絶えぬ心のほどは知りきや
絶えぬ心のほどは知りきや
- Roma-ji
-
Chigirishi ni kawaranu koto no shirabe nite
taenu kokoro no hodo wa shiriki ya - English Translation
-
By this music of
the koto, unchanged from when
we made our promise—
did you come to know how far
my heart runs on without end
- Meaning
- By the koto's music, unchanged since the day we made our vow, did you come to see how my heart runs on and never ends?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Matsukaze
Using as his pretext the Buddhist rites at the chapel he had long kept at Katsura, Genji left the capital and went to call on the lady of Akashi at the Oi villa. It was their first meeting in a long while. Between the two, come together again after parting on the shore of Akashi, there was still a feeling that would not end. When Genji urged her to play the koto, she plucked it, hesitant; and the sound was in no way changed from what he had heard at Akashi. Moved by it, he spoke this poem.
"When we made our promise" points to the pledge of reunion made long ago at Akashi. "The koto's music unchanged" is the tone not in the least altered from what he heard then. As the koto's music has not changed, so his own heart, he says, is unchanged and does not end. "Did you come to know" asks whether she had understood this. By laying the constancy of the music directly over the constancy of the heart, the poem tells of an affection that runs on through long absence.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Changed in this body, I have come back alone to the hills, where the wind through the pines blows with a sound like the one I knew before
- Longing in vain for the friends of the world I knew back in my old home, I twitter on—but who is there to tell what I would say
- Trusting in the vow you made me, that you would not change, I have gone on adding the sound of my tears to the voice of the pine wind
- Though the deep snow leaves the mountain road uncleared, still keep treading through and send word to me here, and let the footprints never break off