Taking as my guide
the road by which I went to
seek a teacher of
the Law, I have lost my way
in hills I never thought of

Meaning

Taking as my guide the road by which I went to seek a teacher of the Law, I have lost my way in hills I never thought of.

Commentary

Part Three: Yume no Ukihashi

　In the summer of Kaoru's twenty-eighth year, hearing the Bishop of Yokawa's story from Kozaisho no Kimi in the Akashi Empress's presence, Kaoru learned that Ukifune was alive and went up to Yokawa to see the Bishop. When he explained matters and asked him to arrange a meeting, the Bishop, regretting that he had let her take vows, wrote a letter to her. Kaoru came down from the mountain with Ukifune's half brother, the boy Kogimi, and from the house at Ono she watched the party go by. The next day he sent Kogimi to Ono with the Bishop's letter and his own, and this poem stood in his. Ukifune wrote no answer in the end, and Kogimi went back empty-handed.

　"A teacher of the Law" is a master in religion, here the Bishop of Yokawa. He went into the hills, he says, seeking the way of the Buddha, and has lost himself in hills he never expected. "Hills I never thought of" are the hills of Ono and at the same time the straying of love. Fumi, to tread, carries fumi, a letter, and so answers to the scene of the letter being delivered. In one last poem it states the man whose search for the way and whose attachment cannot be told apart. The tale of fifty-four chapters breaks off where Kaoru begins to suspect that someone may be keeping her hidden, as he himself once did.

Author

Murasaki Shikibu

Source

Genji Monogatari

Other