At the warbler's voice
my heart will wander further
still from me—here where
already it has been dyed
fast to these flowering boughs
- Meaning
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At the warbler's voice my heart will wander further still from me, here where it is already dyed fast to these flowering boughs.
- Commentary
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Part One: Umegae
The moon rose, and over the wine they talked of old times. The moonlight through the haze was deep and quiet, a little wind came after the rain, and with the scent of the flowers the house was filled with the perfumes, so that everyone was in an exquisite humor. From the chamberlains' quarters came flutes, rehearsing for the next day's music. Kashiwagi and the Lesser Captain, who had come only to be entered in the register, were kept back, and instruments were called for: the Prince took the lute, Genji the thirteen-stringed koto, Kashiwagi the Japanese koto, Yugiri the flute; and when the Lesser Captain beat time and sang "The Branch of Plum," it was charming. The Prince and Genji joined their voices, and it made a fine evening's music without ceremony. As the cup was offered, the Prince made this poem, adding, "A thousand years might pass so."
"The warbler's voice" recalls the saibara he had just heard, in which a warbler comes to the plum branch; here it is the singer. "Akugaru" is for the soul to drift free of the body. "These flowering boughs my heart is dyed to" is the Rokujo estate itself, with "shimu" playing the dyeing of scent against the fixing of the heart. "A thousand years" quotes an old poem: while the flowers do not fall, a thousand years might pass with the heart still wandering the fields. The judge of the incense contest carries its very vocabulary into the poem of the feast—the deft beginning of a sequence in which flower, scent, and warbler run through every verse of this gathering.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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