More than you, who turn
your back on the world before
my very eyes, it
is my soul, parting from you
at a distance, that grieves me
- Meaning
-
Sadder than you, who renounce the world before my eyes, is my own soul, which parts from you at a distance.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Hashihime
At Uji the old gentlewoman Ben put into Kaoru's hands a bundle of old letters that bore on his birth. When he opened it, he found the letters exchanged by his father Kashiwagi and his mother, the Third Princess. This poem was written from Kashiwagi's sickbed when he heard that she had taken vows, with death close upon him. Meeting his father's hand so vividly, Kaoru has his answer.
To turn one's back on the world is to become a nun or a monk. The soul that parts at a distance is his own, leaving the body while he is kept away from her. He sets the parting of religion beside the parting of death, and says that the second is the harder. The past of the Kashiwagi chapter is opened again, more than twenty years later, in Kaoru's own hands, so that the story of his parents is built into the opening of the Uji chapters.
- Author
-
Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
-
Genji Monogatari
- Other
-