Mi o ushi to omou kokoro no korineba ya hito o aware to omoisomuramu

English Translation

Is it that this heart
of mine, which finds itself hard
to bear, will not learn —
that I am beginning, once
again, to hold someone dear

Meaning

Is it that this heart of mine, which finds itself hard to bear, will not learn? I am beginning, once again, to hold someone dear.

Commentary

141 The Road We Came By Together

A brother of the Consultant Yoshiie held a third-rank post in the province of Yamato. He brought a woman from Tsukushi and installed her in the house where his wife lived. The first wife was a kindly person and the new one bore her no ill will, and the two talked together on good terms. The man was often away on business in other provinces, so that the two women lived alone. The Tsukushi wife met another man in secret, and when someone taxed her with it she composed "Yowa ni idete tsuki dani mizu wa au koto o shirazugao ni mo iwamashi mono o". The first wife, being kind, said nothing to her husband; but he heard from elsewhere that she had taken up with a man, and though he turned it over in his mind he did not trouble himself much and let it be. When next they met he asked which of the two she cared for, himself or the other, and she answered with "Hanasusuki kimi ga kata ni zo nabiku meru omowanu yama no kaze wa fukedomo". Another man courted her too. She had been saying that love was nothing but grief and that she would have no more of men; but she was drawn to him by degrees, answered his letters, and at length sent a folded note to the first wife, which read: "Mi o ushi to omou kokoro no korineba ya hito o aware to omoisomuramu". That she could speak so openly, with no reserve at all, the first wife found endearing. But the Tsukushi wife, finding that the husband's feeling had changed and that he no longer loved her as before, said she would go home to her parents and brothers in Tsukushi; and he, being changed towards her, did not keep her. The first wife, used to her company, grieved at her going. They went together as far as Yamazaki to put her on the boat, and the husband came too. The second wife and the first talked together a day and a night, and in the morning she boarded. Husband and first wife got into the carriage to go home. Both parties felt it keenly; and from the boat came a letter: "Futari koshi michi to mo mienu nami no ue o omoikakede mo kaesu meru kana". Husband and wife both wept. The boat had put out, and no answer could be written. The carriage did not start but stood watching the boat go, and the woman aboard leaned out to look at the carriage, and as the boat was rowed away and the distance grew she went on gazing until the face was truly small — and the sorrow of it was very great. That is the whole of the section.
Yoshiie was a Consultant, and it is his brother who is the man here; he held the third rank in the provincial administration of Yamato. Of the first wife and the Tsukushi woman the prose tells us nothing further. Yamazaki, in Yamashiro province, was a chief point on the Yodo river route.
The setting is the period when another man was courting her, just after she had declared that love was nothing but grief and she would have no more of men.
What prompted the poem was her being drawn to him while answering his letters. It went as a folded note to the first wife.
Reading it, the first wife found such openness endearing. From here the section moves to the Tsukushi woman's return to her province.

The heart that finds itself hard to bear is her weariness with what love has cost her.
The second line asks whether it will not learn its lesson, in the form of a question put to herself.
What follows supposes that she is beginning to care for someone; the verb means to make a start.
Having said she would have no more of men, she watches herself begin again as though watching another. That the poem goes not to a lover but to her husband's first wife is what marks it, and the candour between the two women is what gives the section its feeling.

Source

Yamato Monogatari

Other