The scent of the flower
does not stay on the branch it
has fallen from—yet
shall it sink at all lightly
into the sleeve it passes to?
- Meaning
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The scent does not stay on the branch the flower has fallen from; yet how lightly could it sink into the sleeve it passes to?
- Commentary
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Part One: Umegae
For the Akashi girl's coming of age Genji made preparations beyond anything the world had seen. The Crown Prince was to be capped that same Second Month, so that her entry into the palace would follow directly. At the end of the First Month, with both public and private life at leisure, he set about the blending of incenses, opening the storehouse at Nijo for old Chinese woods and asking each of the ladies for two kinds. On the tenth of the Second Month, with a little rain falling and the red plum before the veranda at its height, the Prince of War came to call. They were admiring the flowers when a letter arrived from the former High Priestess, tied to a plum branch whose blossoms had nearly gone. In an aloeswood box stood two lapis jars; on the dark blue one a five-needled pine was carved, on the white a plum, and even the cords were tied with a supple elegance. The Prince remarked what a graceful thing it was, and looking closer found this poem faintly written.
"The scent of the flower" is the incense. "The branch it has fallen from" is herself, past her season. "The sleeve it passes to" is the girl's. "Shall it sink lightly?" is rhetorical: no—it will sink deep. The conceit of the nearly bare plum branch to which the letter is tied becomes the poem's own language, so that gift and verse are one. She withdraws herself and offers the blessing to another: the modesty of this lady, and her mastery of the art of incense, are shown at a stroke. The Prince declaimed it with ceremony, and Genji whisked the letter out of sight.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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