おほかたの秋をば憂しと知りにしを
ふり捨てがたき鈴虫の声
ふり捨てがたき鈴虫の声
- Roma-ji
-
Ōkata no aki o ba ushi to shirinishi o
furisutegataki suzumushi no koe - English Translation
-
Autumn in general
I have come to know as a
hard thing—and even
so, what I cannot shake off
is the bell cricket's voice
- Meaning
- Autumn in general I have come to know as a hard thing; and even so, what I cannot shake off is the voice of the bell cricket.
- Commentary
-
Part Two: Suzumushi
In autumn Genji had the garden before the Third Princess's apartments made over to look like open country, and set loose a great many autumn insects, bell crickets among them. On the excuse of listening to them he came often, and spoke of feeling that had still not ended. She found it burdensome and could not bring herself to say so. On the evening of the fifteenth of the Eighth Month they read the sutra together in low voices and listened to the insects. Genji said he thought the bell cricket better than the pine cricket, and she answered with this poem. He replied at once, and then took up the koto for the first time in a long while.
"Autumn in general" is the season as a whole, and the word sounds the verb for having had enough, so that she means she has been tired of. "A hard thing" is what one finds painful. "Shake off" is to cast something away, and the verb also carries the shaking of a bell, so that it belongs with the cricket's name. To say that one who has left the world still cannot let this one sound go is to admit that something remains uncut, and the chapter takes its name from the poem.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- We had promised each other one same lotus seat, and yet how sad this day is, when the dew upon the leaf is parted in two
- Though you promise us one lotus dwelling with no wall set between, your own heart, I think, will never settle and be clear in it
- Of your own accord you turned away and left this lodging in the grass, and still the bell cricket's voice has not grown old in the least
- Even to a house set far away and apart from above the clouds, it comes and does not forget— this moon of the autumn night