死出の山越えにし人を慕ふとて
跡を見つつもなほ惑ふかな
跡を見つつもなほ惑ふかな
- Roma-ji
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Shide no yama koenishi hito o shitau tote
ato o mitsutsu mo nao madou kana - English Translation
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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
- Meaning
- Meaning to follow the one who has crossed the mountain of death, I look at the traces of her hand and am the more lost.
- Commentary
-
Part Two: Maboroshi
In the Twelfth Month, preparing to take vows, Genji began destroying all the letters he had kept. Among them was a bundle from Murasaki no Ue, sent while he was in exile at Suma. Her hand and her words were as fresh as ever, and his eyes clouded so that he could not read on. He spoke this poem to himself. He then had the women tear the letters up and put them in the fire. With that, the sorting of everything that had been hers was over.
"The mountain of death" is the one the dead are said to cross. "The one who has crossed" is Murasaki no Ue. "Meaning to follow" is wanting to go after her. "The traces of her hand" is her writing, that is, the letters. "Am lost the more" is being thrown into confusion. He took up her things as a way of holding to her and they only unsettled him, and the poem stays entirely inside that concrete act of sorting.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- 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
- 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
- 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
- Not knowing whether I shall live until the spring, let me wear today in my hair this plum that has taken color in the snow