Even to resolve
to forget you is a thing
full of sorrow—how,
oh how am I to manage,
and what am I to do?

Meaning

Even to resolve on forgetting you is full of sorrow—how am I to manage it, and what am I to do?

Commentary

Part One: Fujibakama

　The Commander of the Left Gate Guards, son of Prince Shikibu, was Murasaki's brother and often came to the Rokujo estate, so that he had heard the whole of the matter and was bitterly sorry. After a great deal of reproach he set down this poem. The letters that came that day differed in the color of the paper, the shade of the ink, the perfume burned into them, and the women all said how dull it would be when these gentlemen gave her up once she had entered service. Tamakazura did not look at any of them, but only listened as they were read.

　"Wasurenamu" is: let me forget. "How am I to manage, and what am I to do" repeats the same helpless question twice, so that the words themselves lurch with his distress. It leans on an old poem of Fujiwara no Yoshitaka—though I forget and forget again, I cannot forget; how am I to manage, what am I to do—taking over the lower lines almost whole. There is no pivot word, no figure; only the same question said twice. And that is why it carries. Set beside the two worked poems before it, its plainness throws the differences among these suitors into relief.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

Even to resolve to forget you is a thing full of sorrow—how, oh how am I to manage, and what am I to do?

Even to resolve
to forget you is a thing
full of sorrow—how,
oh how am I to manage,
and what am I to do?