明けぐれの空に憂き身は消えななむ
夢なりけりと見てもやむべく
夢なりけりと見てもやむべく
- Roma-ji
-
Akegure no sora ni uki mi wa kienanamu
yume narikeri to mite mo yamubeku - English Translation
-
Into the dark sky
before dawn let this wretched
body vanish now,
so that it may be seen as
a dream, and so be over
- Meaning
- Let this wretched body vanish into the dark sky before dawn, so that it may be taken for a dream and be over with.
- Commentary
-
Part Two: Wakana Ge
The Third Princess answered Kashiwagi's poem with this one. She had been asleep, taking the man beside her for Genji, and passed the night without fully grasping what had happened. There is neither pleasure nor reproach in the reply, only the wish that she might cease to exist. Kashiwagi went away and was eaten by guilt; she shut herself up in fear of what others might see. In time she was with child, and what the two of them had done came to Genji's knowledge.
"The dark before dawn" takes up his own phrase, so the etiquette of the exchange is kept. "This wretched body" is her own life felt as a burden. "Let it vanish" is a wish directed outward, at whatever might grant it. "Taken for a dream and be over with" is to have it end as something that never happened. The poem is written out of the single wish to undo a fact, and the absence of any craft in it is exactly what conveys the shock she has taken.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- The frost, set down so that one takes it for the white mulberry they hang— is it not the plainest proof that the god is truly here
- Rising now to go, I cannot tell what sky lies ahead in this dark before dawn—and from where has the dew come that wets my sleeve
- To my own regret I plucked it and so sinned—that blade of hollyhock, when it was no head-ornament the god had given me leave for
- Out of the paired leaves, why was it the fallen one that I gathered up, when in name they are two twined ornaments close to each other