橘の小島の色は変はらじを
この浮舟ぞ行方知られぬ
この浮舟ぞ行方知られぬ
- Roma-ji
-
Tachibana no Kojima no iro wa kawaraji o
kono ukifune zo yukue shirarenu - English Translation
-
The colour of the
little isle of orange will
not change—but this boat
adrift upon the water,
and where it goes none can know
- Meaning
- The colour of the little orange isle will not change; but this boat adrift upon the water—where it goes, no one can know.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Ukifune
Ukifune's reply to Niou's poem on the orange isle. His heart may not change, she says, but where her own life is going she cannot tell; and it is from this poem that the chapter takes its name, Ukifune, the drifting boat. The two crossed to the hideaway on the far bank and spent two days there. In time Kaoru learned of the meeting, and from then on she had nowhere left to go.
"The colour of the little orange isle" takes over the evergreen of his poem. Ukifune is a small boat floating on water, the figure of a life with nothing to hold to. Sitting in a boat, she makes herself the boat: the conceit comes straight out of the scene. The name by which the heroine of the Uji chapters is known is taken from this poem, and it is famous as the one line that states her whole situation.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- The bridge of Uji, which is broken and unsafe so much of the time— would you have me trust it still as a thing that will not rot
- Though the years go by, is this a heart that will change— the heart that I pledge to you at the headland of the little isle of orange
- I have come pushing through snow on the peak, through ice along the water: on the road I do not lose my way; for you I lose it
- More surely than snow that falls in confusion and freezes at the shore, it is I who shall melt out of the middle of the sky