If the world you left
lies still uneasy behind,
then do not force your
way free of the tether that
is so hard to part from now
- Meaning
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If the world you left still weighs on you, then do not force yourself free of a tether you find so hard to part from.
- Commentary
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Part Two: Wakana Jo
Murasaki no Ue answered Suzaku's poem with this one. If the Princess weighs on him so, she asks in the mildest words, need he have forced himself away at all—so that beneath the courtesy she is questioning his taking of vows. She was herself a woman whose position had been shaken by the girl's arrival, and that runs under the reply. What Suzaku made of it is not told, and the tale returns to the daily life of the Rokujo residence.
"The world you left" takes up his own phrase, and "tether" is received unchanged, so the etiquette of the exchange is exactly kept. "Force" is doing a thing against the grain, and the closing words are a prohibition: do not part from it. Where he lamented the tether, she tells him not to leave it—the same word turned to the opposite sense. Inside language that gives no offense, a clear judgment has been set down.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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