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
- Meaning
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Had I not remembered this as the tree I once lodged in, how lonely this travellers' sleep at its foot would have been.
- Commentary
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Part Three: Yadorigi
Kaoru went to Uji, where arrangements were going forward to make the Eighth Prince's villa into a temple. Staying in the house as it began to fall into disrepair, and thinking of the prince and of Oigimi, he spoke this to the old nun Ben. She answered with a poem of her own grief. That night Ben told him of Ukifune, a daughter the Eighth Prince had fathered outside his household, and that disclosure sets the rest of the tale in motion.
Yadorigi is a plant that lodges on a tree, and carries the sense of the tree, or house, one lodges in; the chapter takes its name, Yadorigi, from this word. "Travellers' sleep at the foot of the tree" is the standard way of speaking of a poor night's lodging. The reasoning, that it is memory alone that saves the place from loneliness, states his feeling at staying in the ruined house, and the poem is among the better known of the Uji sequence.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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