For the most part this
is a world I have thought my
way out of, and still—
should I go on plucking, and
so sinning, at the heartvine

Meaning

For the most part I have thought my way out of this world; and still, should I go on plucking at the heartvine and sinning by it?

Commentary

Part Two: Maboroshi

　Genji answered Chujo no Kimi's poem with this one. He has thought his way out of most things, he says, and the heartvine he would still like to pluck—a light jest at the woman in front of him. That a man set on taking vows could still speak so shows how unsettled he was. In the Fifth Month Yugiri came, and the two of them listened to a cuckoo and remembered Murasaki no Ue together.

　"For the most part" concedes the greater part. "A world I have thought my way out of" is his intention to renounce it. "Heartvine" is the festival plant, and since the old poems its name has sounded the phrase for a day of meeting; here it means Chujo no Kimi. "Plucking, and so sinning" puns the verb for picking against the verb for transgressing. Plucking, sinning, and the plant itself all belong to the vocabulary of the rite, so even a jesting poem is fully worked.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

For the most part this is a world I have thought my way out of, and still— should I go on plucking, and so sinning, at the heartvine

For the most part this
is a world I have thought my
way out of, and still—
should I go on plucking, and
so sinning, at the heartvine