Whom do they long for,
these boatmen, that from the bay
of Oshima
their voices should carry so,
sounding of sorrow to us
- Meaning
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Whom can the boatmen be longing for, that from the bay of Oshima their voices should reach us sounding so of sorrow?
- Commentary
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Part One: Tamakazura
After Yugao's sudden death, the little girl left behind in the western city—the future Tamakazura—waited for a mother who never came, since Ukon, bound by Genji's charge of silence, sent no word. Then the husband of the child's nurse was appointed Deputy Governor of Dazaifu, and the nurse went down to Tsukushi with the girl, then four. No search turned up any trace of the mother, and there was no way to tell the father, the Minister of the Center; and when they put the child aboard a poorly appointed boat and rowed out, it was pitiful indeed. Each time the girl asked in her innocence whether they were going to her mother, their tears began again, and though they warned one another that tears aboard ship are ill-omened, they wept all the same, gazing at the Inland Sea and remembering their lost lady. Then the boatmen sang out roughly, and the nurse's two daughters, facing each other, wept and exchanged poems, of which this is one.
"Funabito" are the men who work the boat. "Oshima" is taken to be the island of that name off Chikuzen, and "the bay (ura) of Oshima" plays on the "ura" of "ura-ganashi," a vague sorrow. In hearing the boatmen's rough song as the cry of someone longing, the poet shows us her own heart. What she longs for is the vanished Yugao, and without naming her she places the grief in the singing that carries across the bay. Weaving a place name into a pivot word is the manner of travel poems; here the loneliness of a party carrying a small child far to the west dissolves into the sea itself. With this boat song the chapter opens its tale of wandering.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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