If I made my way
to the house that sends abroad
the flower's fragrance
would the world not fault me for
loving color overmuch
- Meaning
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If I made my way to the house that sends its flower's fragrance abroad, would the world not fault me for loving color too well?
- Commentary
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Part Three: Kobai
This is his answer to the Dainagon's second poem. Niou took it that the other meant, by this exchange of letters, to give the world the impression that the match was going forward; and yet, since he was the one being cast as the husband, he was moved in spite of himself. Even so he did not let down his guard, and answered in these terms. The Dainagon found it galling. Afterward he talked the matter over with Makibashira, but Niou's heart was set not on Naka no Kimi but on the Lady of the Chamber, her daughter by her former husband, and the lady herself was too retiring to answer his letters. Makibashira, thinking of how changeable Niou was, could not bring herself to press it either, and the chapter ends there.
"The house that sends its flower's fragrance abroad" is the Dainagon's house and also Naka no Kimi, and it restates "the garden plum whose scent the wind bears" from the first poem. "Tome-yuku" is to seek a place out, that is, to go to a woman. "Iro" is both the color of the red plum and the color of gallantry, so that to go there would be to be blamed by the world as a man of appetites: this too is a refusal. All four poems are strung together by the words scent, fragrance and flower, and they fall into a pattern in which the sender twice asks by way of the flowers and the answerer twice slips away into a supposition. These four are the only poems in the chapter, and all of them belong to this exchange. The maneuvering over the daughter's marriage is carried entirely by the poems, and with the Prince's real interest disclosed to the reader alone, the tale moves on to Takekawa.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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