Even if I do
not lay a wet robe of blame
upon you, can the
name of sleeves already rotted
through be hidden any more
- Meaning
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Even if I lay no false blame upon you, can the name of sleeves already worn through be hidden now?
- Commentary
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Part Two: Yugiri
Yugiri answered the Fallen Leaf Princess's poem with this one. Even without any doing of his, he says, the talk has already started and there is nothing left to hide—an attempt to close off her resistance by argument. Pushing through with reasoning of this kind is the earnest side of him turned inside out. She went on refusing, and the two of them passed the night that way.
"Even if" opens what is in effect a general claim. "A wet robe of blame" is an accusation one has not earned, and the word for wet connects it to her own "sleeves wet again." "Sleeves already rotted through" is her phrase received unchanged, so that the exchange corresponds word for word. The close is a rhetorical question: nothing can be hidden. Declaring the thing she fears to have happened already is a way of shutting every exit, and as a love poem it is remarkably high-handed.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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