降り乱れみぎはに凍る雪よりも
中空にてぞ我は消ぬべき
中空にてぞ我は消ぬべき
- Roma-ji
-
Furimidare migiwa ni kōru yuki yori mo
nakazora nite zo ware wa kenubeki - English Translation
-
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
- Meaning
- More surely than the snow that falls in confusion and freezes at the water's edge, it is I who shall melt away in mid-air.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Ukifune
Ukifune's reply to his poem on the snow. Sooner than the snow that freezes at the water's edge, she says, she will melt away in mid-air. Her position, fixed to neither Kaoru nor Niou, is put as snow that vanishes without ever reaching the ground, and it anticipates the woman who will later set her mind on drowning. After these two days events move quickly toward the break.
Furimidare is snow falling in disorder. Nakazora is the middle of the sky, the state of hanging between with nothing settled. Kenu beki is likely to vanish, laying the melting of snow over her own death. Taking up his migiwa, she sets snow that settles against snow that does not, and the whole of her homelessness is gathered into one word.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- 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
- 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
- Even the clouds in that quarter where you are can no longer be seen: how forlorn a season, when the very sky is darkening
- How must it fare with the one who lives in that far village where the stream is rising, in a season of unclearing endless rain