Why should it be that
I dyed my heart so deeply
in a purple that
will not take the mordant, and
is not to be come at all?
- Meaning
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Why should I have dyed my heart so deeply in a purple that will not take, and that I cannot come at?
- Commentary
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Part One: Makibashira
By the light of the late moon the Emperor's face was beautiful past describing, and in no way unlike the Chancellor's. There were two such men in the world, then, she thought. Genji's feeling for her had been deep, but troubled; surely this Emperor could have no such crooked thought. Then, very gently, he began to reproach her for how differently things had turned out; and she could not face him. She hid behind her fan and made no answer, and he said that it was strangely hard to make her out, that he had thought his feelings plain from the matter of her rank at least—and made this poem.
"Hai-ai-gataki" is dyeing in which the lye will not take, and plays on "ahi-gatashi," hard to meet. "Purple" is Tamakazura: that year she had been raised to the third rank and was entitled to purple, so that the color stands for the person. "Somekemu," to begin to love, is also to dye, again belonging to purple. Speaking of dye he speaks of love; speaking of her rank he presses his suit—two things at once, and a good deal of art for so young a man. "Is it never to grow darker?" he adds, laying depth of color over depth of intimacy.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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However it may be,
the water among the rocks
is bound fast and still—
and I see nothing here that could
hold me, or keep me either
-
The bird that perches
wing to wing in the mountain tree—
no spring was ever
so hard to bear as this one,
none ever galled me so
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This purple, whose true
shade I never understood—
with what great care, then,
you must have gone about it,
the dyeing of it for me
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If the ninefold mist
comes down and keeps us apart,
plum blossom, must I
not have even so much as
this, your fragrance, coming to me?