笛の音に昔のことも偲ばれて
帰りしほども袖ぞ濡れにし
帰りしほども袖ぞ濡れにし
- Roma-ji
-
Fue no ne ni mukashi no koto mo shinobarete
kaerishi hodo mo sode zo nurenishi - English Translation
-
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
- Meaning
- At the flute's voice things long ago came back to me, and at the hour of your going home my sleeves too were wet.
- Commentary
-
Part Three: Tenarai
The nun's reply. She speaks plainly of missing her daughter and says that her own sleeves were wet. To her the Captain was her dead daughter's husband, and his coming was itself a way of remembering the girl. It is this warmth of hers that keeps him coming to the house, and adds to the weight on Ukifune.
She takes his fuedake as fue no ne and repeats his "things long ago": a well made answer. Shinobaru is to be brought to mind of itself. Kaerishi hodo is the hour of his going, and the tears that came after he had gone. His poem carries an appeal to Ukifune; hers takes the whole of it as talk of her daughter, and the crossing of purposes may well be deliberate.
- Author
- Murasaki Shikibu
- Source
- Genji Monogatari
- Other
-
- 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
- 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
- Having passed my life so frailly, I will not go seeking out again those bitter shallows, nor the two cedars of the old stream
- I do not know how the cedars by the old stream grew to what they are, and yet I look at you as the likeness of one now gone