I pass my days here
without even knowing them
to be bitter ones,
and yet, it seems, I was thought
by others one who broods

Meaning

I pass my days without even knowing them to be bitter, and yet others, it seems, took me for one who broods.

Commentary

Part Three: Tenarai

　Ukifune's reply. She is not, she says, a person who broods, and so turns his address away outright. In fact the claim that she does not even feel her life to be hard is bravado: in the scene that follows she lies awake among the snoring of the old nuns and laments the life she was not allowed to lose.

　She takes his "one who broods" and gives it back in the negative: a well made answer. "Without even knowing them to be bitter" is a show of feeling nothing. Hito wa shirikeri is put as a discovery—so that is how she was seen—and holds the observation at arm's length. Refusing while letting no wound show is exactly her manner at this stage.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other

It is not that I single out the autumn dusk for sorrow, and yet upon these sleeves, as I gaze, the dew comes falling astray
Even the deep hour of an autumn night in these hills is understood by one who broods, and only by such a one as that is
Holding myself and all others to be no more, I have gone and cast away a second time the world I had cast away once
The world that I had settled it with myself was over and done with— from that same world I have turned away, and turned away again

I pass my days here without even knowing them to be bitter ones, and yet, it seems, I was thought by others one who broods

I pass my days here
without even knowing them
to be bitter ones,
and yet, it seems, I was thought
by others one who broods