雪間なき吉野の山をたづねても
心の通ふあと絶えめやは
心の通ふあと絶えめやは
- Roma-ji
-
Yukima naki Yoshino no yama o tazunete mo
kokoro no kayou ato taeme ya wa - English Translation
-
Though one should seek out
the hills of Yoshino where
no gap breaks the snow,
could the footprints along which
our hearts pass ever break off?
- Meaning
- Though one should visit the hills of Yoshino where the snow never lifts, could the footprints by which our hearts pass ever break off?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Usugumo
The nurse answered Akashi no Kimi's poem through her tears with this one. She was to go with the child to the Nijo residence and so would be parted from her mistress. She pledged that word would never cease, and so consoled her. After this, when the snow had melted a little, Genji came to fetch the child, and the tale moves to the parting of mother and daughter.
"Yukima naki" is with no break in the snow. "The hills of Yoshino" is a poetic name for deep-snow mountains, taking up her "deep mountain" as a figure for the distance between them. "The footprints by which our hearts pass" is word between them, carrying over her word for footprints. "Could they break off?" is a rhetorical question expecting no. Where her mistress wished word never to cease, she pledges that however deep the snow that divides them, the passing of their hearts will not break, taking up the very words of the exchange to answer.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- 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
- Parted now from the two-leafed pine whose years reach far ahead, when shall I ever come to look upon the high-grown form it will take?
- The root it sprang from runs deep, and so like the twin pines of Takekuma I shall set mother-pine and small pine side by side for an age