世のつねの紅葉とや見るいにしへの
ためしにひける庭の錦を
ためしにひける庭の錦を
- Roma-ji
-
Yo no tsune no momiji to ya miru inishie no
tameshi ni hikeru niwa no nishiki o - English Translation
-
Do you take them for
the common maples of the world—
this brocade laid down
across the garden after
the old example of long ago?
- Meaning
- Do you take them for the common maples of the world—this garden brocade laid down after the old example of long ago?
- Commentary
-
Part One: Fujiura
In answer to Suzaku's wistful poem, the Reizei Emperor offered this. His face, growing more finished as he matured, seemed the very image of Genji's; and beside him Yugiri served as Counselor, his own features so like the Emperor's as to be startling—indeed in brightness and beauty Yugiri seemed to surpass him. Yugiri played the flute, the Lesser Captain lent his fine voice to the songs, and it seemed that such houses do bring forth their remarkable men. With this exchange at the progress the chapter of the Wisteria Leaves closes, and Part One is complete.
"The common maples of the world" are ordinary ones. "Ya miru" is: do you take them for. "The old example" is the precedent of long ago—the Festival of the Maples at Suzaku's own palace. "Hikeru" is arranged in that likeness. "The garden brocade" is the maple-strewn garden seen as brocade. These are no ordinary maples, he says, but a garden laid out after the very festival you once held—an answer that honors and consoles Suzaku. Where the Retired Emperor sang the loneliness of one passing from the scene, the Emperor replies that it is that Retired Emperor's own past glory which today's occasion takes for its model, and so thinks of the older man's heart. At the scene of Genji's fulfilled glory, foretold in his boyhood, the Emperor himself sets down a poem that blesses the continuity of the generations, and Part One quietly comes to its close.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- The chrysanthemums, so like the auspicious clouds of purple—I take them for the very stars of a reign without a stain
- Through autumn on autumn the cold rains have fallen, and I, a villager grown old, have never in all that time seen maples such as these
- Still set in the hair, it has carried what was then down into today— and so this jeweled small comb has taken on the gods' age
- One after the other I would go on seeing them, through ten thousand reigns, until this small boxwood comb has taken on the gods' age