To one who has passed
the years and months drawn always
toward the pine, the waiting—
let the warbler's first song reach
her ears, if only today
- Meaning
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To one who has passed the years and months drawn always toward the little pine, waiting—let the warbler's first note of the year reach her, if only today.
- Commentary
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Part One: Hatsune
On New Year's Day Genji went to the Akashi girl's rooms, where the page girls and servants were pulling up the little pines on the artificial hill before the veranda, at the game of the Day of the Rat; the young women could hardly keep still for wanting to join them. From the north quarter the lady of Akashi had sent baskets and lidded boxes evidently gathered for the day. On a five-needled pine branch of exquisite make a warbler was perched, and it seemed to have something on its mind. With the gift came this poem, and beside it the words "a village that hears no voice." Genji felt for her deeply; tears he could hardly stop, ill-omened as they were so early in the year, rose in him, and he said that the answer must be written by the girl herself, and had the inkstone brought.
"Matsu" plays on the little pine and on waiting; "drawn toward" belongs to the pine and to the pine-pulling of the day. The pine is the daughter she gave up four years before. "Passed" sounds also "grown old." "Hatsune" is the warbler's first song of the year, playing on "hatsu-ne," the first Day of the Rat, and asking for the girl's first word of the year. "A village that hears no voice" quotes an old poem: let me hear the first song at least today, for there is no living in a village where no voice is heard. The chapter takes its name from this poem. The four years between mother and daughter are entrusted wholly to the furnishings of a New Year's greeting, and the words are chosen so as not to sound like reproach—which is the measure of this lady's restraint.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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