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
- Meaning
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Who set a weir across the swift shallows of that river of tears into which I threw myself, and held me back?
- Commentary
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Part Three: Tenarai
At the end of the Third Month the Bishop of Yokawa and his party, returning from a pilgrimage to Hatsuse, stopped at the Uji villa, and there beneath a great tree a young woman was found unconscious. The Bishop's sister, a nun, took her for the likeness of her own dead daughter and nursed her, and the party carried her back to Ono at the foot of Mount Hiei. At the end of summer the spirit was driven out by prayer and Ukifune came to herself at last. Telling nothing of who she was, she sat sunk in thought and set this down in the idle practice of her brush.
Mi o nageshi is to have thrown oneself into water. "The river of tears" is a poetic figure, laid here over the real Uji river. Shigarami is a weir of stakes that checks a current, and kakete and todomeshi carry on the words of the river. That she was not allowed to die is stated in something close to reproach, and the bewilderment of one kept alive against her will is plain. The form of writing it out as brush practice, tenarai, gives the chapter its name.
- Author
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Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
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Genji Monogatari
- Other
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