What is there to hold
against you for shaving off
your hair? Neither yours
nor my own is now a heart
that could be drawn back again
- Meaning
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What is there to hold against you for shaving your head? Neither heart is one that could be drawn back now.
- Commentary
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Volume Ten: Yokobue
This is Yokobue's reply to Takiguchi.
Not long after taking vows she died at the Hokke-ji in Nara, a short life. Hearing of it, Takiguchi is said to have hardened in his resolve.
She takes up his words exactly: soru, and the catalpa bow. But the epithet now introduces hiku, "to draw," instead. Between the two poems the bow's two properties—bending and being drawn—are used up.
"Not a heart that could be drawn back": whose heart is meant changes the sense. It can be read as saying that his heart was never one that could be held back, or that her own can no longer be turned around. It is built to be read either way.
She says she bears no grudge, which is not the same as having none. The rhetorical question counts up the reasons for a grudge and then declines it. A woman turned away at a gate tells the man who turned her away that she does not resent him.
He wrote "glad"; she wrote "grudge." One word of feeling apiece, and the two poems end. They never speak again.
soru to te mo……even though you have shaved your head.
nani ka uramin……what should I resent? nothing.
azusayumi……the catalpa bow; here introducing "to draw."
hikitodomu……to hold back, to detain.
kokoro naraneba……since it is not such a heart.
Hokke-ji……a convent at Nara.
ama……a woman who has taken vows.
dōshin……the aspiration toward the Buddha's way.
hango……a rhetorical question used as strong negation.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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