眺むれば山より出でて行く月も
世に住みわびて山にこそ入れ
世に住みわびて山にこそ入れ
- Roma-ji
-
Nagamureba yama yori idete yuku tsuki mo
yo ni sumiwabite yama ni koso ire - English Translation
-
When I look at it,
even the moon that comes out
from the hills and goes
across finds this world hard to
dwell in, and enters the hills
- Meaning
- When I look at it, even the moon that comes out from the hills and crosses the sky finds this world hard to dwell in, and goes back into the hills.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Sawarabi
Naka no Kimi spoke this alone, on the road up from Uji to the capital, or on a night after her arrival at the Nijo residence. She lays her own case, leaving the hills of Uji where she had lived so long and going up to the city, over the moon that comes out from the hills, crosses the sky, and sinks back into the hills. Behind it lies the fear that if things go badly in the capital she may have to return to Uji after all. She was in fact treated with great care by Niou at the Nijo residence, but in time the match with the Sixth Daughter brought her to grief.
Sumu, to dwell, carries sumu, to be clear, and so belongs with the moon. The moon's course out of the hills and back into them is laid over her own road out of Uji into the capital and possibly back again. Sumiwabite is to find a place hard to live in, and shows a mind already thinking of retreat with the capital still ahead of her. Set at the moment of a happy removal, the poem is all the darker for it.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- Having lived so long, I have come upon a shoal of gladness at last— whereas, had I thrown myself into the Uji river
- I do not forget how I long for one who is gone from us—and yet, before all else, today my heart goes as it would wish to
- Light on the water, on the grebe lake, of the boat that is rowed there—not a true sail, and yet we did look upon each other once
- Were it a flower that bloomed at a common hedge, then I might have gone and broken it off and looked at it as much as I wished