すべらきのかざしに折ると藤の花
及ばぬ枝に袖かけてけり
及ばぬ枝に袖かけてけり
- Roma-ji
-
Suberaki no kazashi ni oru to fuji no hana
oyobanu eda ni sode kaketekeri - English Translation
-
Meaning to break it
for my sovereign's headdress, I
have laid my own sleeve
on a wisteria branch
that lies beyond my reaching
- Meaning
- Meaning to break it for my sovereign's headdress, I have laid my sleeve on a wisteria branch that lies beyond my reach.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Yadorigi
In the Second Month Kaoru took the Emperor's Second Princess as his wife. In the Fourth Month a wisteria banquet was held at the Fujitsubo, the Emperor himself attending, and poems were exchanged. This, by Kaoru, is the first of them. He puts his awe at having been given so high a lady into the figure of the wisteria. The Emperor, Yugiri, and the Kobai Grand Counsellor follow, and the banquet goes brightly on, while Kaoru's mind is still at Uji.
Suberaki is the sovereign, and kazashi is a flower or spray worn in the hair or at the cap. "A branch beyond my reach" is a high branch, said of the Second Princess's rank. Sode kaketekeri is to have laid one's sleeve on a thing, with the sense of having stretched out a hand to what is above one. The deference he had stated at the opening of the chapter, in the poem about a flower at an ordinary hedge, returns here as awe after the marriage.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- You are thinking, it seems, without putting it forth in ears—the slender plume grass, whose beckoning sleeves are thick with the fallen dew
- That the fields have come to the end of autumn, too, is known by nothing but the faint stirring of wind through the slender plume grasses
- It is a flower that will bloom and be fragrant through ten thousand years, and so today too I look on a hue none can tire of
- The spray I broke off for my sovereign's headdress is a show of flowers yielding nothing whatever to the clouds of deep purple