It is past reason
a win or a loss that turns
on who is stronger
how would you make it over
to your own heart's wish alone
- Meaning
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It is past reason. A win or a loss turns on who is stronger; how would you make it over to your own heart's wish alone?
- Commentary
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Part Three: Takekawa
Chujo no Omoto laughed and answered him with this. That she could answer him at all was one more hard thing for him to bear. He returned another poem of his own, and the two of them talked the night through, now weeping, now laughing.
"Makasuru" is at once to entrust a thing to someone and to defeat someone, two senses folded into the one word. "Tsuyoki" and "kachimake" are again terms from go, so that she answers him in his own vocabulary. A win or a loss goes to the stronger player, she tells him, and no wish of his will change it: the plain fact that he cannot outmatch the Retired Emperor, handed to him in the language of the game. It is a gentlewoman's reply, and all the sharper for its wit.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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