Is there some old bond?
For I keep you in my mind,
and I find that I
think of you with pity and
hear of you with resentment
- Meaning
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Is there some bond from another life? I keep you in mind, and I think of you with pity while I hear of you with resentment.
- Commentary
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Part Two: Yugiri
What lay between Yugiri and the Fallen Leaf Princess became the talk of the world, and word reached the retired Chancellor that his daughter had gone home. Grieved that she should be made a laughingstock, he sent a letter to the Princess by the hand of the Chamberlain Lieutenant, Kashiwagi's younger brother. This poem was in it. Bewildered by so unexpected a rebuke, she nonetheless answered. The tie between the Princess, who had been his son's wife, and the old man himself is taken up here once more.
"Some old bond" is a connection carried over from a former life. "Keep you in my mind" is holding someone in one's thoughts. "Pity" is what he feels because she was his dead son's wife. "Resentment" is what the world says of a woman who has taken his daughter's husband. Two contrary feelings are set side by side in one poem, and the position of a father caught between them is stated exactly as it is.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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