憂き世にはあらぬ所を求めても
君が盛りを見るよしもがな
君が盛りを見るよしもがな
- Roma-ji
-
Ukiyo ni wa aranu tokoro o motomete mo
kimi ga sakari o miru yoshi mogana - English Translation
-
Even if I must
look for a place that is not
in this bitter world,
I would find some way to see
you in the height of your bloom
- Meaning
- Even if I must look for a place outside this bitter world, I would find some way to see you in the height of your bloom.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Azumaya
Chujo no Kimi's reply to her daughter. Anywhere at all, she says, if only she may see the girl happy; the feeling of a mother is stated without disguise. She had herself been a gentlewoman whom the Eighth Prince never acknowledged, and that old bitterness has become her attachment to her daughter. Soon after this, with Ben the nun as go-between, Kaoru comes to the house at Sanjo and Ukifune's fate begins to move.
Uki yo is this bitter world, taking up her daughter's "a place not in the world." "The height of your bloom" is the girl's flowering, her time of prosperity. Yoshi mo gana is a wish that some means might exist. Where the daughter's poem wishes for escape from the present world, the mother's wishes for success within it, and the difference in what the two of them are facing comes through exactly.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Had I known that it was rooted in the hagi of Miyagi Field, the dew would not have made a division in its own heart
- How wholly glad I would be, if I could believe that this were a place somewhere apart from the world, and not a part of it all
- Why did this water, which has never once run dry, not keep for me at least the shadow of the face of those who are here no more
- Is the goosegrass thick that stops the doorway up? At the eaves of this east country hut I have waited so long in the falling rain