Even the clouds in
that quarter where you are can
no longer be seen:
how forlorn a season, when
the very sky is darkening
- Meaning
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Even the clouds in the quarter where you are can no longer be seen: how forlorn a season, when the very sky is darkening.
- Commentary
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Part Three: Ukifune
In the Third Month, in a stretch of unbroken spring rain, Niou, recovered from his illness, sent this to Ukifune at Uji. A letter came from Kaoru the same day, so that she had to answer both men at once. About this time Kaoru was preparing the new house in the capital to which he meant to move her, and Niou too had begun saying that he would take her to himself before that; there was nowhere left for her to turn.
Nagameyaru is to look off into the distance, and carries the sense of brooding. "The clouds in that quarter" are the clouds over the place where she is, in the standard device by which two people apart look at the same sky. "Even the sky is darkening" says that the darkness of a mind has reached as far as the weather. With the season of long rains behind it, the closing-in of the story becomes the landscape itself.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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