深き夜のあはればかりは聞きわけど
ことより顔にえやは弾きける
ことより顔にえやは弾きける
- Roma-ji
-
Fukaki yo no aware bakari wa kikiwakedo
koto yori gao ni e ya wa hikikeru - English Translation
-
The feeling of the
deep night I could make out, yes—
but could I have played
as though to put on my face
what the strings might say for me
- Meaning
- The feeling of the deep night I could make out; but could I have played as though to put on my face what the strings might say?
- Commentary
-
Part Two: Yokobue
The Fallen Leaf Princess answered Yugiri's poem with this one. She grants the beauty of an autumn night and denies that she played to show anything, turning aside his attempt to make something of Sofuren. Her reticence moved him the more, and his visits to the Ichijo residence went on. That night, as he was leaving, her mother gave him the flute that Kashiwagi had loved.
"The feeling of the deep night" is the mood of the late hours. "Make out" is to hear and distinguish. "What the strings might say" carries, as his poem did, both the koto and the act of speaking. The closing is a rhetorical question: she could not have played so. Taking his pivot word unchanged and using it to deny his reading, the reply is modest and exactly to the point.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- 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
- Here at this weed-grown house where the dew lies heavy, the voices of the insects have not changed at all from the autumns of long ago
- The flute's own measure has not changed at all, and yet the sound of weeping for the one who came to nothing is a sound that does not end