Never having sought
the deep road of Imose-yama,
I went straying with
my letters at the bridge whose
very name is a thread cut short
- Meaning
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Never having looked into the deep road of Imose-yama, I went straying with my letters at the bridge whose name means a thread cut short.
- Commentary
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Part One: Fujibakama
The mourning over, Tamakazura's entry into service was fixed for the Tenth Month. Every suitor was in despair, and pressed such women as he could reach; but they answered that to hold her back would be harder than damming the falls at Yoshino. The Captain of the Guards, Kashiwagi, who had courted her so hard and had broken off the moment he learned she was his sister, and whom the women had been laughing at for his easy heart, now came as his father's messenger. It was a bright moonlit night, and he stood in the shadow of the katsura tree; where once he had been ignored, he was now shown right up to the blinds on the south side. Tamakazura still could not bring herself to answer him directly and spoke through Saisho, and so stiffly that he swallowed what he had meant to say, and made this poem instead.
"Imose-yama" is the pair of hills facing each other across the Yoshino and Ki rivers, and stands here for brother and sister. "The deep road" is the hidden fact of their kinship. "The bridge of Odae" is a poetic place in Michinoku, whose name suggests a cord snapped and a tie broken. "Fumi" plays letter against treading, so that sending love letters and losing his way in love are one. Two poetic places set side by side name his error exactly; and yet, as the narrator adds, there is no one to blame, since he began it himself. It is the grief of a man who has learned too late, with nowhere to put it.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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