貌鳥の声も聞きしにかよふやと
茂みを分けて今日ぞ尋ぬる
茂みを分けて今日ぞ尋ぬる
- Roma-ji
-
Kaodori no koe mo kikishi ni kayou ya to
shigemi o wakete kyō zo tazunuru - English Translation
-
Wondering whether
the face-bird's voice runs close to
the one I once heard,
I have parted the thickets
and come seeking it today
- Meaning
- Wondering whether the face-bird's voice runs close to the one I once heard, I have parted the thickets and come seeking it today.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Yadorigi
Since Ben the nun had told him of Ukifune, Kaoru had gone on wanting to see the girl. On a day when he went down to look at the chapel at Uji, he came upon the party of Ukifune, who had stopped at the villa on her way back from a pilgrimage to Hatsuse, and with Ben's help he caught sight of her. Struck that her face was the living likeness of the dead Oigimi, he spoke this to himself. The Yadorigi chapter closes here, and the tale passes on to Azumaya.
Kaodori is a bird whose identity is not clear; some take it for the cuckoo. Here the sound kao, face, is used to carry the resemblance of one face to another. Kikishi ni kayou ya asks whether the voice runs close to one heard long ago, and states his search for the elder sister's likeness. "Parting the thickets" is to push through grass to reach a place, giving the road to the ruined villa exactly as it was.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- The spray I broke off for my sovereign's headdress is a show of flowers yielding nothing whatever to the clouds of deep purple
- It does not look like a colour of the common world—this wisteria, whose flowering waves have risen as far as the reach of cloud
- If she is a stand- in for the one I once knew, I will keep her close and make of her the figure I rub my longing into
- A figure to be put out at the shallows of the river of rites— who would trust in such a thing as a shadow at her side