ありと見て手にはとられず見ればまた
行方も知らず消えし蜻蛉
行方も知らず消えし蜻蛉
- Roma-ji
-
Ari to mite te ni wa torarezu mireba mata
yukue mo shirazu kieshi kagerō - English Translation
-
I saw it was there,
and it was not to be caught;
I looked, and again
it had vanished, with no trace
of where it went—the mayfly
- Meaning
- I saw that it was there, and it was not to be caught; I looked again, and it had gone, with no trace of where—the mayfly.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Kagero
On an autumn evening Kaoru sat alone in thought and went back over what had become of the three daughters of the Eighth Prince whom he had met at Uji: Oigimi, whom he loved and let die without ever having her; Naka no Kimi, whom he gave to Niou; and Ukifune, gone without a trace. Watching a mayfly in the air before him, he spoke this to himself, and from it the chapter takes its name, Kagero. From here the tale turns to Tenarai, and to Ukifune alive.
The kagero is the mayfly, the standard image of what does not last. "I saw that it was there, and it was not to be caught" states the whole of Kaoru's life, spent following after women he could not hold. Kieshi carries death as well. The way this character has been made is concentrated in the one poem, which is among the best known of the Uji sequence.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
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- Stay the night and put it to the proof: whether the maiden flower will change the colour it wears at its height, or whether it will not
- If you lend me a lodging, I will sleep one night— even though my heart is not one that turns aside to the common run of flowers
- Who was it that set a weir across the swift shoals of that river of tears into which I threw myself, and held me back there
- Though I go on thus, circling through a bitter world, who in the city of the moon will ever know that I am living at all