身に近く秋や来ぬらむ見るままに
青葉の山も移ろひにけり
青葉の山も移ろひにけり
- Roma-ji
-
Mi ni chikaku aki ya kinuramu miru mama ni
aoba no yama mo utsuroinikeri - English Translation
-
Has autumn come now
as near to me as all this?
While I watched, even
the hills that were green with leaves
have gone and changed their colors
- Meaning
- Has autumn come so close to me as this? While I watched, even the green-leaved hills went and changed their color.
- Commentary
-
Part Two: Wakana Jo
Ever since the Third Princess came, Murasaki no Ue had kept what she felt to herself. Autumn came, and looking out at the garden turning color she spoke this poem to Genji. There is not a word of reproach in it, and yet, on the pretext of the season, it asks whether his heart has changed. He answered at once denying it, but nothing was cleared away, and her wish to leave the world went on quietly deepening.
"As near to me" means that autumn has reached her own person rather than someone else's. "Autumn" puns on the word for having had enough, so that she asks whether he has tired of her. "The hills that were green with leaves" are what should not change and has changed. To speak only of the garden and let the doubt carry is exactly her way: oblique, and never off the point.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- I have not forgotten those years I lay sunk away, and even so, not learning, I could throw myself into this house's wisteria
- The pool you would throw yourself into is no true pool at all, and so I shall take no more of these unchastened waves upon me
- The water bird's wing, that blue-green, does not alter its color at all— it is under the bush clover that things have taken on change
- Come out at last to this shore that is worth the shells of a long old age, who would find fault with the fisher whose sleeves are wet with brine