Leaves that scatter on
the wind are light things indeed—
the color of spring
is what you should look upon,
hung on the pine at the rock's root
- Meaning
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Leaves that scatter on the wind are light things indeed; it is the color of spring you should look upon, hung on the pine that roots among the rocks.
- Commentary
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Part One: Otome
This is Murasaki's answer to the Empress's gift of maple leaves. In the same box lid she laid moss, arranged it in the likeness of a crag, and tied her poem to a branch of five-needled pine. The pine at the rock's root, looked at closely, proved to be an exquisitely made artificial thing. The Empress was delighted by a wit that could contrive so much on the instant, and her women praised it among themselves. Genji said, "That letter with the maple leaves seems to have got the better of you. To speak slightingly of maples in this season may offend the goddess of Tatsuta; yield the point for now, and answer her when the spring blossoms are at their height." The exchange is settled in the end, splendidly, in the chapter of the Butterflies.
"Karoshi" is frivolous, shallow: she calls the transience of scattering leaves "light" and has done with it. "The color of spring" is the moss she laid and the green of the five-needled pine, the color of what endures. "Iwane," the root of the rock, stands for what is constant and everlasting. "Kakete," to entrust, sounds also the hanging of the poem on the pine. Setting the scattering leaves against the pine's unchanging green, she argues the worth of what lasts. And the whole is made not of words alone but of words and object together—the crafted pine sent with the poem—which shows how far the intercourse of the Rokujo ladies went beyond mere sociability into a contest of wit.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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