The mourning robes went
on but yesterday, I thought,
and today already
the rite, the shallows—a world
that shifts and will not hold still
- Meaning
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It seems only yesterday that I put on these mourning robes, and today the season of the cleansing rite has come—yesterday's deep pool is today's shallows, in a world that shifts so fast.
- Commentary
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Part One: Otome
This is her answer to Genji's letter of condolence. Finding it apt to the season and gracefully done, she added only the words "how fleeting," and sent it back; and Genji, as always, lingered over her hand. He also let no occasion pass without a note to his aunt, the Fifth Princess, who was greatly moved, praising the boy she had thought a child only yesterday for having grown so considerate. Whenever she met her niece she brought the matter up in her old-fashioned way, recalling how the late Prince Shikibu had regretted that the match was never made, and urging her to accept him. But the lady replied that she had gone through life letting her father think her willful, and that it would ill become her to yield to the world's opinion now—so firmly, and with such dignity, that her aunt could press her no further.
"Fujigoromo" is the wisteria robe, that is, mourning dress. "Se," the shallows, plays also on the sense of a season or time, and "fuji" calls up "fuchi," the deep pool, so that pool and shallows are set against each other. The poem draws on the old verse, "What in this world stays constant? Yesterday's deep pool in the Asuka River is today's shallows," to speak of how swiftly all things change. She takes up the very words Genji had used, "fuji" and the cleansing rite, and turns them back to him—an accomplished reply. Yet she answers only in the words themselves; she comes nowhere near his suit, and keeps to the sorrow of passing time. That distance is itself her answer.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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