心ありて風の避くめる花の木に
とりあへぬまで吹きやよるべき
とりあへぬまで吹きやよるべき
- Roma-ji
-
Kokoro arite kaze no sakumeru hana no ki ni
toriaenu made fuki ya yorubeki - English Translation
-
The very wind, it
seems, has the grace to keep clear
of these flowering boughs—
should I blow my way so near
that the birds can bear no more?
- Meaning
- Even the wind, it seems, has the grace to keep clear of these flowering boughs; should I blow my way so near that the birds can bear no more?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Umegae
This is Yugiri's answer to Kashiwagi. When he added, "How unfeeling of you," the whole company laughed. The Lesser Captain followed, and toward dawn the Prince went home; and for a parting gift Genji sent out to his carriage a set of his own informal robes with two jars of untouched incense.
"Having a heart" credits the wind, which has none, with feeling: the flowers are so lovely that even the wind keeps off. "Toriaenu" is being too hard pressed to take hold of anything, with "tori," bird, hidden in it, answering the warbler and its roost in the poem before. "Should I blow my way near?" turns aside the praise of his flute with a show of modesty: if the wind itself forbears, would it not be crude to press close with a flute? The compliment is deflected by an argument out of pure elegance—and the young man whom the narrator once called clumsy at verse shows here that he knows exactly how such an evening is played.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Until their color and their scent have passed to you, this spring at least, do not go away from this house where the flowers are in bloom
- Blow, and go on blowing, flute of the deep night, until even the branch where the warbler has made its roost bends and sways before the sound
- If only the haze did not stand between the moon and the flowering boughs, the bird upon its roost would open its throat and sing
- If I carry home this flower scent, borne away in so fine a sleeve, my lady will surely charge me with having gone astray