憂き世には雪消えなむと思ひつつ
思ひの外になほぞほどふる
思ひの外になほぞほどふる
- Roma-ji
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Ukiyo ni wa yuki kienamu to omoitsutsu
omoi no hoka ni nao zo hodo furu - English Translation
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Thinking I would go
from this wretched world the way
the snow goes, and yet
beyond all expectation
I am still here, letting time fall
- Meaning
- Thinking I would go from this wretched world the way snow goes, and yet, past all expectation, I am here still, letting the time fall past.
- Commentary
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Part Two: Maboroshi
Spring came and nothing lifted. Genji avoided company, and though he wished to take vows he could not bring himself to it for thought of how it would look. On a day of snow, looking out at the garden, he spoke this poem to himself. Since her death he had begun putting all his affairs in order, and at the same time he could not get over the fact that he was still alive. Nearly twenty of the poems in this chapter are his, and most of them are spoken like this, to no one.
"This wretched world" is the life he is living. "Go the way the snow goes" carries a second sense of departing, so that vanishing and dying are one word. "Past all expectation" is being surprised by one's own survival. "Letting the time fall past" plays the passing of time against snow falling, so the verb belongs with the snow. One image carries both the wish to be gone and the fact of remaining, and the wordplay is matched to the depth of the grief.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
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Ka o tomete kitsuru kai naku ōkata no
hana no tayori to ii ya nasubeki - Next Poem
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Uete mishi hana no aruji mo naki yado ni
shirazugao nite kiiru uguisu