Rowing clear at last
of the island of Floating,
still I cannot tell
where our course is taking us,
nor what harbor waits for us
- Meaning
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We have rowed clear of the island of Floating, and still I cannot tell where we are bound, nor what harbor may be waiting.
- Commentary
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Part One: Tamakazura
The Vice Governor of Bungo saw that if he set himself against the Audit Officer he would not be able to stir a step and might well come off worse; but the girl's misery—she had sunk into saying she would rather not live than be his wife—was more than he could bear, and he laid his desperate plan. His elder sister had too large a household to leave; only the younger, the Lady of the Guards, went with them aboard the boat. Of the country where they had lived so long there was little they were sorry to leave, but the shore before the shrine at Matsura, and the parting from that sister, they could not help turning to look back on, and it was sad. The Audit Officer had gone home to Higo and was choosing a day about the twentieth of the Fourth Month to come and fetch her; it was in that interval that they fled.
"Ukishima," the island of Floating, is taken as a place in Suo Oshima, and "uki" plays on "憂き," wretched: though we have rowed clear of that bitter place. "Where are we bound" asks the direction, and "what harbor" asks where the boat will tie up tonight—and beyond that, where this life of hers will come to rest. On a pivot made of a place name she states the whole anxiety of a voyage with no destination. Parted from her sister, out at sea with none but her lady to follow, she entrusts her loneliness to the sight of an island falling astern.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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