You who by your own
choosing wait for spring—look, then,
at least on these leaves
of my garden's autumn, sent
to you by way of the wind
- Meaning
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Since it is by your own choosing that you wait for spring, look at least on the autumn leaves of my garden, sent to you by way of the wind.
- Commentary
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Part One: Otome
The Rokujo estate was finished, and about the autumn equinox Murasaki and the lady of the falling flowers moved in. Five or six days later the Empress came down from the palace to the autumn quarter in the southwest. Genji had walls and galleries built and joined so that the quarters opened onto one another, that the ladies might visit back and forth on easy terms. By the Ninth Month the maples were coloring here and there, and the plantings before the Empress's rooms were beyond describing. On a windy evening she filled the lid of a box with flowers and colored leaves mixed together, and sent it across the arched bridge of the covered walk to the spring quarter, carried by a tall page girl finely dressed. This poem came with it. The Empress, who had once told Genji she preferred autumn when he asked, was throwing down her challenge to Murasaki, who had chosen spring.
"Kokoro kara" means by one's own heart, of one's own preference. "The garden that waits for spring" is Murasaki in the spring quarter. "By way of the wind" is a message carried on the wind—here, the letter the page girl brings. "Dani" is at least, if only. Now, at the height of autumn, your garden must be dull; look at my maples instead—an elegant provocation. The debate over spring and autumn is as old as Princess Nukata's poem in the Man'yoshu; the wit of this scene lies in playing it out through a residence whose very quarters are the four seasons.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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