宮人は豊明といそぐ今日
日影も知らで暮らしつるかな
日影も知らで暮らしつるかな
- Roma-ji
-
Miyabito wa Toyonoakari to isogu kyō
hikage mo shirade kurashitsuru kana - English Translation
-
Today, while the court
bustles about the Feast of
Abundant Light, I
have let the day go by and
not known even the sun's light
- Meaning
- Today, while the court bustles about the Feast of Abundant Light, I have let the day go by without even knowing the sun's light.
- Commentary
-
Part Two: Maboroshi
In the Eleventh Month, after the Gosechi dances, came the Feast of Abundant Light. The palace was in high spirits and the young men went to it with the festival vine on their caps. Genji could not enter into any of it, and let the day pass without so much as looking at the sunlight in the garden. He spoke this poem to himself. The man who had once danced the Blue Sea Waves and sent poems to the Gosechi dancers now heard the sounds of the occasion from far off, and the contrast tells quietly that his life is ending.
"The court" is those who serve at the palace. The Feast is held the day after the harvest rite, with the dances performed. "Bustles about" is being caught up in it. "The sun's light" also sounds the name of the vine worn on caps at that very feast. "Let the day go by" is the lament. The brightness of the palace is set against the dark of his own room, and a single pivot word ties the festival to his solitude.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- The white dew on the chrysanthemums we used to sit up and set out together falls this autumn onto one sleeve, and alone
- You who pass across the great sky, conjurer—go and seek out for me the whereabouts of a soul that will not come even in dreams
- Meaning to follow the one who has crossed over the mountain of death, I look at the traces of her hand and am lost the more
- Gathered up and looked at, they come to nothing—these salt-weeds of hers; so let them be smoke and go up into that same sky as she