うちいてゝもありにし物を中々に
苦しきまても歎くけふ哉
苦しきまても歎くけふ哉
- Roma-ji
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Uchiidede mo arinishi mono o nakanaka ni kurushiki made mo nageku kyō kana
- English Translation
-
Better had I kept
my feelings unspoken, yet
having spoken them,
today I grieve, to my own pain,
more deeply than before
- Meaning
- It would have been better never to have spoken; having spoken after all, today I grieve until it hurts.
- Commentary
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2 The First Letters
After the exchange over the orange blossom, letters began to arrive from the prince. Izumi Shikibu was not by nature one to brood deeply, but she was finding her unaccustomed idleness hard to bear, and so, trifling though it was, the correspondence caught her heart and she began to reply. The prince wrote often, she answered now and then, and she felt her loneliness eased a little.
The woman is Izumi Shikibu, daughter of Ōe no Masamune and, as the wife of Tachibana no Michisada, Governor of Izumi, mother of Koshikibu no Naishi. The Prince of the Dazaifu is Prince Atsumichi, fourth son of Emperor Reizei, so called because he served as Governor-General of the Dazaifu. His elder brother Prince Tametaka had been Izumi Shikibu's lover and had died in the sixth month of Chōhō 4 (1002).
The day after their first exchange, with no reply from her, the prince sent this poem on his own.
Though it was a slight thing, the poem stayed with her, and she answered with "Kyō no ma no kokoro ni kaete omoiyare nagametsutsu nomi sugusu tsukihi o." With this, letters began to pass steadily between them.
The opening lines mean "I might have stayed without speaking," built from a negative connective, auxiliaries of completion and past, and an adversative ending. The third line means "all the more, having done so."
The lower verses mean "today I grieve to the point of pain," closing in an exclamation. By confiding his feelings through the orange blossom, he says, he has only deepened the anguish of love, and so he tries to move the woman who has not replied.
- Author
- Prince Atsumichi
- Source
- Izumi Shikibu Nikki
- Prev Poem
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Onaji e ni nakitsutsu orishi hototogisu koe wa kawaranu mono to shiranan
- Next Poem
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Kyō no ma no kokoro ni kaete omoiyare nagametsutsu nomi sugusu tsukihi o