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
- Meaning
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Trusting the vow you made never to change, I have gone on adding the sound of my weeping to the voice of the wind in the pines.
- Commentary
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Part One: Matsukaze
The lady of Akashi answered Genji's poem with this one. It was your promise not to change your heart, and that alone, she says, that I leaned on through the long years we were apart. Restrained, yet the poem lets show the deep and steady longing with which she had gone on loving Genji.
"The vow that you would not change" takes up his own "promise," the pledge of a heart that would not alter. "Trusting in" is making that vow alone the mainstay of the heart. "Adding my voice to the pine wind" is setting the sound of her weeping against the wind in the pines—through the hard days of waiting she had shed her tears unseen. "Matsu," pine, plays on "matsu," to wait, and the heart that waited on is entrusted to the scene of the wind in the pines. As an exchange, it takes up the conceit of his koto and returns, from the side of the one who waited, the feeling of that long waiting.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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