Out on a sea road
whose far end cannot be seen
we have set our boat,
and this body of mine drifts,
floating wherever the wind wills
- Meaning
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We have put out on a sea road whose end cannot be seen, and this body of mine drifts wretchedly wherever the wind may take it.
- Commentary
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Part One: Tamakazura
This is her answer to the Lady of the Guards. Having made it, she felt so wholly at a loss that she lay down on her face. They all worried that once word of the flight passed from mouth to mouth the Audit Officer's pride would send him after them; but the boat had been fitted out for speed, a favoring wind came up as they wished, and they ran up toward the capital fast enough to be frightening.
"Yukusaki" is where one is bound, and so also the future. "Namiji" is the road of waves, the sea passage. "Leaving it to the wind" is to go as the wind blows—a life in which she can settle nothing for herself. In "uki tare," "uki" plays on floating and on wretchedness, laying the boat on the water over the hardship of her lot. Taking up the "uki" of the other poem's "island of Floating," she closes with "this body of mine drifts," carrying the same pivot word forward in answer. The whole of her life—taken from the capital at four, brought back past twenty with her parentage still unknown—is gathered into these lines.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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