The heart I have left
behind in the world I turned
my back upon—that
is the very tether on
the mountain road I would take
- Meaning
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The heart I left behind in the world I turned my back on is the very tether that holds me on the mountain road I mean to take.
- Commentary
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Part Two: Wakana Jo
Suzaku had taken his vows and shut himself away at a temple in the hills, but he could not put the Third Princess out of his mind. She was young still, and unsure of herself in the place of Genji's principal wife. So he wrote to Murasaki no Ue, who had long ordered the women's quarters at the Rokujo residence, and asked her again to look after the girl. This poem came with that letter. Murasaki answered with his position in mind, and from then on she did in fact take the Princess's care upon herself.
"The world I turned my back upon" is the world he has renounced, and the demonstrative sounds the word for child, folding in his feeling for his daughter. "Tether" is the rope that hobbles a horse, an image for whatever holds back one who means to give himself to the Way. To say that a father's love binds his feet on the mountain road is to say he cannot fully leave. That the woman he entrusts his daughter to is the one who gave up the place of principal wife makes the exchange more tangled still.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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