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
- Meaning
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If she is a stand-in for the one I knew, I will keep her by me and make of her the figure into which I rub my longing.
- Commentary
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Part Three: Azumaya
Kaoru was twenty-six. Ukifune was a daughter the Eighth Prince had fathered on a gentlewoman, Chujo no Kimi, and had never acknowledged. Chujo no Kimi had taken the girl with her when she remarried the Governor of Hitachi, and they had lived long in the eastern provinces. At the Nijo residence, Naka no Kimi told Kaoru, who was still looking for the likeness of the dead Oigimi, that such a half sister existed. Hearing that there was someone who might stand in for the dead woman, Kaoru spoke this poem. Naka no Kimi answered and turned the request lightly aside.
"The one I once knew" is the dead Oigimi. Katashiro is a thing a spirit is lodged in, a paper figure rubbed over the body to take away defilement and then floated down a river; nademono is the same object. Seze is the shallows of a river, and carries oriori, the occasions, so that it belongs with the figure. The idea of treating a person as such a figure is set out here for the first time, and by fixing Ukifune's place in the tale from the start it gives the poem its weight.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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