みなれぬる中の衣と頼めしを
かばかりにてやかけ離れなむ
かばかりにてやかけ離れなむ
- Roma-ji
-
Minarenuru naka no koromo to tanomeshi o
ka bakari nite ya kakehanarenamu - English Translation
-
I had put my trust
in a robe between us worn
until it was known—
and is it over so slight
a thing that we come apart
- Meaning
- I had trusted in a bond worn familiar between us; is it over so slight a thing that we are to come apart?
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Yadorigi
Naka no Kimi's reply to Niou's suspicion. She asks whether a bond of years is to break over a trace of scent, and so puts the charge aside. She had never had any intention of an affair with Kaoru, and the suspicion had no ground. But Niou was the man who had gone forward with the match to the Sixth Daughter, and was in no position to suspect anyone: that irony lies inside the exchange.
Minarenuru is to have grown familiar with the sight of a thing, and takes over his nare. Naka no koromo is the robe that lies between them and at the same time carries naka, the tie between two people. Kabakari is so much as this, with ka sounding ka, scent, so that the irony of "over one fragrance" is in it. Koromo and nare belong together as words. Piling double meanings into a few syllables to make her case is very much her manner.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- The dew lay so thick on the road I parted through for nothing that the autumn sky brings the old days back to me as I look up
- The scent that has passed into a sleeve grown used to another man—it has gone into me deeply, and I have resented it
- The under-cord that was tied in a bond not mine— am I to hold it against you with a single, undivided resentment
- Had I not recalled this as the tree I lodged in, how lonely a thing this travellers' sleep at the foot of the tree would have been