The fire I cannot
forget, that burned while we fished
at that shore—has this
wretched drifting boat of mine
come following after it?
- Meaning
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The unforgettable fishing-fire of that shore—has this wretched drifting boat of mine come following after it?
- Commentary
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Part One: Usugumo
In a quiet season, Genji visited Akashi no Kimi at Oi under cover of his constant devotions. In a dwelling whose loneliness deepened as she grew used to it, she, seeing him, thought that the hard bond of a former life had after all not been shallow, and seemed the harder to console. From among the thickly grown trees, the fishing-fires of the cormorant boats on the Oi River could be taken for fireflies over the garden stream. When Genji remarked that had he not suffered such a dwelling at Akashi he might have found these fires a novelty, she spoke this poem. He answered.
"The fire-light while we fished" recalls the fishing-fires of the Akashi shore and those years at Suma and Akashi. "The fire I cannot forget" lays the cormorant-boat fires before her over the remembered fires of Akashi. "This wretched drifting boat of mine" figures her wretched self as a drifting boat, playing "wretched" against "floating," the boat set as a word belonging to the fire. "Come following after it" asks whether it has. Drawing the fire before her back into the memory of Akashi, she asks whether a hard past has followed her here—a poem full of the technique characteristic of Akashi no Kimi.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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