Set against the beat
of a heart that pounds and pounds
with all its trouble,
even the Sea of Thunder
proved no hindrance to us at all
- Meaning
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Against the pounding of a heart so full of trouble, even the famous Sea of Thunder proved no hindrance at all.
- Commentary
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Part One: Tamakazura
The boat passed the Sea of Thunder without incident, but someone said, "Pirates, perhaps—a small boat coming on as though it flew." Worse than reckless pirates was the thought that the dreadful Audit Officer might be after them, and there was no sitting still. The poem belongs to that moment. When word came that the river mouth was near they began to breathe again, and even the boatmen's rough singing struck them as moving. The Vice Governor of Bungo, thinking back on the wife and children he had abandoned, wept; and the Lady of the Guards too turned over in her mind how she had left a husband of many years. With no home to return to and no one to depend on, for the sake of one girl alone, they entered the capital.
"Uki koto" is what is hard, what troubles the heart. "Only my breast is in tumult" is the heart beating hard and fast, that is, fear and unease. "Hibiki" plays on the pounding within and on the Hibiki Nada, another name for the Harima Sea. "Sawarazarikeri" is: it proved no obstacle, it was nothing much. The strait famous for rough water was less than the tumult in a breast in fear of pursuit—a witty measurement of feeling taken by way of a place name. Some hold this poem to be the Lady of the Guards'.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
-
Genji Monogatari
- Other
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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
-
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
-
Had I not come here
to seek the place where they stand,
those two cedar trees,
would I have found you at all
beside the old river's edge?
-
Of the Hatsuse,
of its swift past, I know nothing—
yet at this meeting,
this glad crossing of today,
even my body flows away