You are the master
here, who keeps this house—clear spring
that seeps through the rocks,
do you know where she has gone,
the one we used to see here?
- Meaning
-
You are the master who keeps this house, clear spring that seeps through the rocks; do you know where she has gone, the one we used to see here?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Fujiura
Yugiri, risen to Counselor and grown in consequence, found his lodgings cramped and moved with Kumoinokari to the Sanjo house where the late Princess had lived. He had the somewhat dilapidated place handsomely repaired, and living now in the very rooms that had been hers, he found it a home to stir the heart, everything recalling the old days. The plantings, once small, had grown to deep shade; the tuft of pampas grass that had run wild he had trimmed; the water-weed in the stream was cleared, and the current ran bright. Gazing at the lovely dusk together and talking of their painful, childish past, they were full of longing, and Kumoinokari remembered with shame what people must then have thought. The old women who had served since the Princess's time had not scattered but gathered to them, all glad at heart. It was then that Yugiri made this poem.
"Nare" is "you," addressed to the clear spring. "Iwa moru" is seeping through the rocks, with "moru" also "to guard": you are the master who has watched over this house. "The one we used to see" is his grandmother, the Princess. "Do you know where she has gone?" asks after her. The water alone has flowed on unchanged, so surely it knows; and in unchanging nature he mourns the dead—a conceit close to the exchange between the Akashi nun and Genji in the chapter of the Wind in the Pines. At the very height of his happiness, united at last with Kumoinokari in the house of memory, he grieves for the grandmother who raised him: a quiet poem with great depth in it.
- Author
-
Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
-
Genji Monogatari
- Other
-