命こそ絶ゆとも絶えめ定めなき
世の常ならぬ仲の契りを
世の常ならぬ仲の契りを
- Roma-ji
-
Inochi koso tayu tomo taeme sadame naki
yo no tsune naranu naka no chigiri o - English Translation
-
Let this life of mine
be cut off, if cut it must—
but in a world where
nothing holds, ours is a bond
that is not of the world's kind
- Meaning
- Let my life be cut off if it must; but in a world where nothing holds, the bond between us is not of the world's ordinary kind.
- Commentary
-
Part Two: Wakana Jo
Genji took up the poem Murasaki no Ue had written out and answered it where he stood. He accepts her lament that the world shifts, and then insists that their own bond, at least, is not of the world's usual kind. But her uneasiness was not a thing words could remove, and he knew it and spoke anyway. That night he went to the Third Princess, and the balance of the Rokujo residence began, very quietly, to give way.
"Let this life be cut off, if cut it must" is as strong a way of putting it as the language allows. "A world where nothing holds" is the impermanent world, taking up her "world." "Not of the world's kind" means a bond unlike ordinary ones, and the poem is a vow that it will not change. She spoke of change as it actually is; he speaks of a bond that does not change. Both turn on the same word, and they point in opposite directions—which is precisely the distance between where the two of them stand.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Drawn along, perhaps, by the years still to be lived in that young pine grove, the new shoots of the meadow will gather years of their own
- Here before my eyes it shifts, and shifting it turns into something else— and on this world I had set my trust for the years ahead
- It is not so deep as to close the road that runs between the two of us, and yet it troubles my heart, this thin snow of the morning
- So frail a thing, it must vanish in the middle of the empty sky— this thin snow of the springtime that drifts wherever winds go