忘られぬ昔のことも笛竹の
つらきふしにも音ぞ泣かれける
つらきふしにも音ぞ泣かれける
- Roma-ji
-
Wasurarenu mukashi no koto mo fuetake no
tsuraki fushi ni mo ne zo nakarekeru - English Translation
-
Of things long ago
that will not be forgotten,
and at the hard joints
of the flute-bamboo as well,
I have wept aloud outright
- Meaning
- Over things long ago that will not be forgotten, and at the hard joints of the flute-bamboo as well, I have wept aloud.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Tenarai
The morning after he had stayed the night, the Captain sent this to the house. Taking as his pretext the flute he had played the evening before, he sets his memory of his dead wife beside the pain of a woman who will not answer him. The nun replied; Ukifune still would not speak. His visits went on after this, unbroken until she took vows in the Ninth Month.
Fuedake is the bamboo a flute is cut from, and fushi carries both the joint of the bamboo and a hard passage of one's life. Ne zo nakarekeru is to have wept aloud, with ne also the note of the flute. He takes the music of the night before straight into the poem, and does it well. That he pleads his dead wife while in fact pressing his suit is very much in character.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- Is it that you are not one to look with feeling at the late-night moon, that you will not stay the night in a house so near the ridge
- I will watch the moon until it enters the ridge, to see whether there is any sign of it in the boards of the sleeping room
- At the flute's voice, things long ago came back to me, and at the hour when you were turning home again my sleeves too were wet with tears
- Having passed my life so frailly, I will not go seeking out again those bitter shallows, nor the two cedars of the old stream