憂き世にはあらぬところのゆかしくて
背く山路に思ひこそ入れ
背く山路に思ひこそ入れ
- Roma-ji
-
Ukiyo ni wa aranu tokoro no yukashikute
somuku yamaji ni omoi koso ire - English Translation
-
Drawn as I am toward
a place that is not of this
wretched world, I too
send my thoughts along the road
of the hills I turned toward
- Meaning
- Drawn as I am to a place that is not of this wretched world, I too send my thoughts along the mountain road of those who have turned away.
- Commentary
-
Part Two: Yokobue
The Third Princess answered her father's gift and poem with this one. Already a nun, she says she would like to enter the same mountain temple as he. Forced into vows while still young, and with no place to put her heart even at the Rokujo residence, she sets down her state exactly as it is. Afterward Genji came to see her, found the small Kaoru gnawing at the bamboo shoots that had been sent, and spoke a poem of his own.
"This wretched world" is the secular life. "A place that is not of this world" is paradise, or the temple in the hills, and it takes up her father's "place" unchanged. "Drawn toward" is being pulled by longing. "The road of those who have turned away" is the mountain path of renunciation, again from his own poem. Carrying each of his words forward and saying she would go the same way, she keeps the etiquette of the exchange carefully.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- Though the leaf-guarding god may no longer dwell in the oak, is this a treetop at our house that should be made familiar with men
- Though you come after me on the road I have taken, parting from this world, seek out the same place, you too, where I am bound at the end
- I have not forgotten the hard joints of it, and yet this bamboo shoot here— this child—has turned out to be a thing I cannot cast off
- That saying nothing in words outdoes the saying— this I can make out in the very look of one who is shy before others