常なしとここら世を見る憂き身だに
人の知るまで嘆きやはする
人の知るまで嘆きやはする
- Roma-ji
-
Tsune nashi to kokora yo o miru uki mi dani
hito no shiru made nageki ya wa suru - English Translation
-
Even this wretched
self, that has watched so much of
the world's impermanence,
does not go so far as to
grieve where others can see it
- Meaning
- Even this wretched self, who has watched so much of the world's impermanence, does not grieve so far that others can see it.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Kagero
Kaoru's reply. Even he, he says, who has seen impermanence so often, does not grieve where it can be noticed, and so states his way of keeping sorrow out of sight. In fact he went on thinking of Ukifune, and the gap between what he feels and what he says is what makes him the man he is. After this exchange the Eight Lectures on the Lotus Sutra were held at Rokujo in memory of Murasaki.
Tsune nashi is that nothing lasts. Kokora is so much, over so long a time. Uki mi is a wretched self, said in self-deprecation. Nageki ya wa suru is a rhetorical question: he does not grieve so. He receives her sympathy without acknowledging it directly, and the habit of never showing feeling holds here too.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- If I too should go, and this bitter old place fall wholly into ruin, who is there to remember the shade of the lodging tree
- My heart, which knows how to feel, falls behind no one's, and yet, being of no account at all, I pass my days as one going out
- The autumn wind that blows and sets the dew upon the leaves of the reeds— it is at evening above all that it goes to the bone
- Though I should mingle in fields where the maiden flowers are in disorder, would I let a name for being light with the dew fall on me