君なくて岩のかけ道絶えしより
松の雪をもなにとかは見る
松の雪をもなにとかは見る
- Roma-ji
-
Kimi nakute iwa no kakeji taeshi yori
matsu no yuki o mo nani to ka wa miru - English Translation
-
Since you went from us
and the steep path by the rocks
fell into disuse,
with what mind am I to look
on the snow upon the pines
- Meaning
- Since you left us and the steep path by the rocks fell into disuse, with what mind am I to look on the snow upon the pines?
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Shiigamoto
In winter, in the snowbound villa at Uji, Oigimi spoke this to her sister. While their father was shut away at the mountain temple, people had gone back and forth on that road; now that too has stopped. Naka no Kimi answered, and the loneliness of two sisters passing the winter alone is set out.
The steep path by the rocks is the difficult road joining the villa to the temple. The snow on the pines is the standard winter scene of a mountain village. What she once looked at with her father in mind has lost its meaning. The rhetorical "with what mind am I to look" catches how bereavement changes the way the world itself appears.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- These altered sleeves are the lodging that the dew takes, and beyond even that, this body of mine has nowhere at all to be set
- In the reach of sky where the autumn mist will not clear, all the more now they tell us, as they cry, that this world is a borrowed one
- If only I could think of the one who has gone as I think of snow that gathers on the needles of the pines in the deep hills
- Where snow lies deep on the bridge across the mountain, there is not one track of another treading through— none, my lord, except your own