Winter's Hut
The Tale of Genji: Selected Poems
A good few years back, when I had my first clash with anything Japanese I heard about a book called The Tale of Genji; if I remember correctly, what I knew at the time was the fact that it's supposedly epic, not only because of the fact that it's one of the pillars of Japanese art or that there are debates around it being the very first novel to be ever written (and by a lady on top of that!), but also because it's an absolutely breathtaking account of the Heian period in Japanese history. Written by Lady Murasaki Shikibu, it provides an unmatched insight not only in the day to day life of the Imperial court at the time but also a beautiful window into the traditions, religious belief and society as a whole as it was over a thousand years ago. Needless to say, my humble being was beyond impressed in the face of all this. It wasn't until almost a decade later, this year in particular, that I got to lay my hands on the Penguin's Deluxe Edition of the book, in a beautiful translation by Royall Tyler. The behemoth of a book is over 1,200 pages and weighs a whole kilo and a half! Way to get us nerds at the gym working out! That space is taken up by the unabridged version of the book and contains quite literally thousands of notes around the language, personas and hidden meaning of the poems. Reading The Tale of Genji took me a staggering 35 days to complete. And now, reading through my Goodreads review of it, I feel like the words I have spoken speak more about me rather than the book itself. The Tale of Genji is astonishing, heart-stirring and devastating in its detail and beauty. It transcends both time and language for even translated, it remains one of quite possibly the best books to ever be written. The Tale of Genji contains words for love and words for loss, words for admiration and words for friendship, words for nature and words for humans, all so beautifully put that even a thousand years later, they didn't fail to make my heart skip a beat. As I set out to collect my favourite poems from it, in a very poor imitation of The Tales of Ise, where I'll try to link each poem with some context, I realize that maybe I wasn't mature enough to read this book in go. Rereading the different paragraphs leading to and from each poem makes me appreciate it way more than I did my first time around. The book is very much a product of its time and it demands patience and understanding when reading it, it's no simple task and yet it contains some of the most astonishing poems to be ever written (yes, even in translation!!). By doing this little exercise, I get to appreciate not only the genius of the original poems and how much meaning they convey in Japanese but also the ultimate genius of Royall Tyler in translating them and maintaining their aesthetic beauty. The style of the poems, namely Waka, is very elaborate and hard to replicate in English, alongside the fact that basically each poem contains a play on words or references not only to older poems, books and songs, but also to the poem that was spoken directly before it. The poems written out here are true to the translation of Royall Tyler, the context I've added is my own since the ultimate goal of this little collection is my own pleasure. It is worth mentioning that I take away a lot of the poems beauty, for the setting of each poem builds up a breathtaking scenery, something that I can hardly replicate in here unless I write out a good half of the book. Also, please note this post only contains the chapters which trace the life of Genji himself and not the additional chapters focused on his son. Chapters: 1. The Paulownia Pavilion (Kiritsubo) 2. The Broom Tree (Hahakigi) 3. The Cicada Shell (Utsesumi) 4. The Twilight Beauty (Yugao) 5. Young Murasaki (Wakamurasaki) 6. The Safflower (Suetsumuhana) 7. Beneath the Autumn Leaves (Momiji No Ga) 8. Under the Cherry Blossoms (Hana No En) 9. Heart-To-Heart (Aoi) 10. The Green Branch (Sakaki) 11. Falling Flowers (Hanachirusato) 12. Suma (Suma) 13. Akashi (Akashi) 14. The Pilgrimage to Sumiyoshi (Miotsukushi) 15. A Waste of Weeds (Yomogiu) 16. At the Pass (Sekiya) 17. The Picture Contest (Eawase) 18. Wind in the Pines (Matsukaze) 19. Wisps of Cloud (Usugumo) 20. The Bluebell (Asagao) 21. The Maidens (Otome) 22. The Tendril Wreath (Tamakazura) 23. The Warbler's First Song (Hatsune) 24. Butterflies (Kocho) 25. The Fireflies (Hotaru) 26. The Pink (Tokonatsu) 27. The Cressets (Kagaribi) 28. The Typhoon (Nowaki) 29. The Imperial Progress (Miyuki) 30. Thoroughwort Flowers (Fujibakama) 31. The Handsome Pillar (Makibashira) 32. The Plum Tree Branch (Umegae) 33. New Wisteria Leaves (Fuji No Uraba) 34. Spring Shoots I (Wakana I) 35. Spring Shoots II (Wakana II) 36. The Oak Tree (Kashiwagi) 37. The Flute (Yokobue) 38. The Bell Cricket (Suzumushi) 39. Evening Mist (Yugiri) 40. The Law (Minori) 41. The Seer (Maboroshi) 42. Vanished into the Clouds (Kumogakure)

1. The Paulownia Pavilion

Kiritsubo

Upon learning that Genji's mother (who served the Emperor) is gravely ill, His Majesty visits her and says "You promised never to leave me, not even at the end and you cannot abandon me now! I will not let you!". Touched by his words, she managed to breathe: "Now the end has come, and I am filled with sorrow that our ways must part: the path I would rather take is the one that leads to life." When leaving Genji's mother, one of the Emperor's ladies in waiting says: "Bell crickets may cry until they can cry no more, but not so for me, for all through the endless night my tears will fall on and on." The Emperor, gazing out at the night sky after the moon has set, thinking of the lady he left earlier in the chapter, says: "When above the clouds tears in a veil of darkness hide the autumn moon, how could there be light below among the humble grasses?" [note 1]

2. The Broom Tree

Hahakigi

The morning has come for Genji, who spent the night with a lady who denied his advances, as the cocks raised their cry, he says: "Dawn may well have come, but when I could still complain of your cruelty, must the cock crow me awake before I have all I wish?" thinking of her husband, whom she usually dismissed with loathing and contempt, she trembled lest he glimpses this scene in a dream, and she says: "Now that dawn at last has broken on the misery that I still bewail, the cock himself lifts his voice to spread my lament abroad."

3. The Cicada Shell

Utsesumi

In this chapter Genji continues to pursue the lady from the previous chapter, alone at night he writes: "Underneath this tree, where the molting cicada shed her empty shell, my longing still goes to her, for all I knew her to be." receiving his letter and wishing she was a lady suitable for his status, she notes down an answer for herself: "Just as drops of dew settle on cicada wings, concealed in this tree, secretly, O secretly, these sleeves are wet with my tears."

4. The Twilight Beauty

Yugao

Genji is in the company of a lady in waiting for the woman he was after, when he notices her extraordinary beauty he says: "I would not be known for flitting lightheartedly to every flower but this bluebell this morning I would be sad not to pick." the page girl replies with quick wit and instead defers his poem to her mistress: "Your haste to be off before morning mists are gone makes it all too plain, so I should say, that your heart cares little for your flower." As the chapter develops we learn the lady in question and Genji had fallen for each other but disaster has struck and she has passed, Genji finds himself in the company of one of her page girls, looking out at the cloudy skies and says: "When the clouds to me seem always to be the smoke that rose from her pyre, how fondly I rest my gaze even on the evening sky." Later on, Genji restores communication with the lady from the previous chapter, as he kept one of her robes, he sends it back along with a letter saying: "This has been to me a mere token of yourself till we meet again, but my tears in all that time have crumbled the sleeves away."

5. Young Murasaki

Wakamurasaki

Genji comes across a young lady who resembles his love who passed in the previous chapter. Trying to convince her nun to let him take care of her, he sends them a letter: "That vision of you never, never leaves me now, O mountain cherry, even though I left behind in your care all of my heart." Later in the chapter, Genji is in the company of the Princess, the night is coming to a close and he has to leave: "This much we have shared, but nights when we meet again will be very rare, and now that we live this dream, O that it might swallow me!" she replies compassionately: "People soon enough will be passing on our tale, though I let our dream sweep me on till I forget what misfortune now is mine." Genji passes by the house where a lover of his is living one early morning, since no one opens the gate after his knocking, he has an attendant sing the following poem: "By the dawn's first light, while rising mists shroud the skies and confuse the gaze, I just cannot bring myself to pass by my darling's gate!"

6. The Safflower

Suetsumuhana

Genji is faced with the resolve of the Princess to give him the cold shoulder, agitated he says: "Ah, how many times have I found myself undone by such silences, and sustained by just one thought: you never say, Do not speak!"[note 2] he continues with another poem: "That you do not speak means far more than any words - that I know full well, yet your taciturnity has been a hard trial to bear."

7. Beneath the Autumn Leaves

Momiji No Ga

The Princess gives birth to a baby boy and Genji is denied audience, he weeps as he says: "What can be the tie that bound us two together a long time ago, that in this life she and I should be kept so far apart?" the princess' page girl replies: "Heartsick thoughts for her when beside him and, for you, sorrow not to be, ah, this, then, is what they mean by the darnkess of the heart!" Later on, the Princess is elevated to an Empress which puts her way beyond Genji's reach, he murmurs to himself: "There can be no end to a darkness in my heart that blots out all things, now that I must watch her go off to live among the clouds."

8. Under the Cherry Blossoms

Hana No En

After the blossoms viewing, Genji finds himself with an unknown gentlewoman. After spending the night together, he asks for her name, to which she replies: "If with my sad fate I were just now to vanish, would you really come- ah, I wonder!- seeking me over grassy wastes of moor?" to which he replies: "While I strove to learn in what quarter I should seek my dewdrop's dwelling, wind, I fear, would be blowing out across the rustling moors." Later in the chapter, Genji comes across a party of gentlewomen who are distinct in their dressing. One of them possibly gives him the hint that it's her he spent the night with, so leans through the curtain and says at a guess: "How sadly I haunt the slopes of Mount Irusa, where the crescent sets, yearning just to see again the faint moon that I saw then!" to which she replies: "Were it really so that your heart goes straight and true, would you lose your way even in the dark of night, when no moon is in the sky?"

9. Heart-to-Heart

Aoi

Genji is corresponding with a lady who is jealous over the lack of his presence, she sends him a letter: "I knew all too well that no sleeve goes unmoistened by the mire of love, yet in the slough of that field I labor in helpless pain." Later in the chapter, Genji's wife, Aoi, died shortly after childbirth. Genji is in the company of her father, the Emperor, when he says: "No, I cannot tell where my eyes should seek aloft the smoke I saw rise, but now all the skies above me move to sad thoughts of loss." Since mourning was displayed by wearing grey, Genji is now dressed in the colour, he thinks how she'd have to wear even deeper grey if he was the first to pass and he says: "I may do no more, and the mourning I now wear is a shallow gray, but my tears upon my sleeves have gathered in deep pools." The passing of the Emperor's daughter slowed the purification ritual of the Priestess of Ise, since Genji had not kept communication up with her, he sends her a letter to thank her for her condolences: "Those who linger and those all too swiftly gone live as dewdrops, all, and it is a foolish thing to set one's heart on their world." As Genji continues to mourn, one rainy afternoon, he's gazing out and he recites the following poems: "Among all these clouds that drift across the sodden skies, turning into rain, which am I to look upon with the gaze of one who mourns?" "The very heavens where she who so long was mine turned to cloud and rain, darken, and winter showers deepen the skies' heavy gloom." As gentians and pinks bloom among the grasses, Genji has some sent over to his son and the Empress, with a letter: "This dear little pink, lingering on after all in my wintry bedge, shall be to me a token of the autumn that is gone."[note 3] the Empress couldn't help but weep after reading his letter so she replied: "I need only see that most lovely little pink in his wasted hedge for those sleeves of mine again to melt in a rain of tears." Genji replies to her after reading her letter: "Never have such dews as this evening come to fall on my moistened sleeves, though I have known in my time many a somber autumn." the Empress, realizing she could not fail to answer him, sends a reply: "Ever since I heard that even as autumn mists rose you were left forlorn, my sorrowing thoughts have gone to the rains from wintry skies." Eventually, Genji has to leave the house he shared with his departed wife, as that happens, the father of his wife visits the room where Genji used to live and finds a stack of old poems. Where Genji had written "Who will now share with me our old pillow, our covers...", he added: "Her departed soul must feel yet deeper sorrow for this bed we shared, when it is beyond me still to leave it and go away" and beside "The frost flowers are white": "Now that you are gone, I have lain so many nights, brushing off the dew, on our gillyflower bed covered now only with dust!"

10. The Green Branch

Sakaki

In this chapter, Genji is reunited with Rokujo (the jealous lady from the earlier chapters), at dawn, Genji recites: "Many dews attend any reluctant parting at the break of day but no one has ever seen the like of this autumn sky." as he holds her hand, she replies: "There has never been a parting in the autumn untouched by sorrow, but oh, do not cry with me, pine crickets upon the moor!" At the shore of a frozen lake, Genji laments the dispersion of his clan, a gentlewoman of Her Majesty offers: "The year soon will end, the spring there among the rocks is caught fast in ice, and the forms we know so well vanish from before our eyes" After a night together with a particular lady, she says: "My own heart alone explains the many reasons why I wet my sleeves, when cockcrow warns me of dawn and of your drifting away" to which Genji replies: "Do you mean to say I must live my life this way amid endless sighs? There will never come a dawn when you do not have my heart." Genji is visiting Her Majesty the Empress, who is not feeling well. His self control leaves him and he shares his feelings only to be ashamed of himself later. Upon parting, he says: "If there is no end, today and forevermore, to what severs us, I wonder how many lives I shall spend in misery" to which she replies: "Leave me, if you will, burdened with your bitterness through all lives to come, but know your real enemy is your heart, and yours alone." Later in the chapter they are reunited and the Empress sends him a poem: "Perhaps ninefold mists cut me off from all the world, for my longing goes to the moon so far away, riding high above the clouds." Genji, feeling his heart stirred by her presence, replies: "The bright moon still shines as in autumns we once knew, all those years ago, but the mists that hide its light are a cruel trial to bear." News reach Genji that the Empress has decided to renounce the world, upon learning that he recites: "Though I, too, aspire to give my heart to those skies where a clear moon shines, I should only wander still in the darkness of this world." Genji and a close friend of his are observing the blossoms in spring when his friend shares a poem: "All have longed to see those first blossoms this morning burst into full bloom, yet I contemplate in you beauty just as great as theirs!" Genji smiling replies: "Those flowers in bloom this morning out of season, in the summer rain seem to have drooped and wilted before their beauty could show."

11. Falling Flowers

Hanachirusato

Genji passes by the home of a lover of his, as he leaves, he hears a cuckoo cry which encourages him to send her a poem: "He has come again in thrall to unquenched longing, the cuckoo of yore, to the fence where once he sang a moment of passing song." to which the lady replies: "Cuckoo, I know well the song that your visit brings, yet that memory leaves as clouded as before the will of these rainy skies." Later he called upon the old Emperor's consort when he heard a cuckoo's cry again: "Many fond yearnings for an orange tree's sweet scent draw the cuckoo on to come to find the village where such fragrant flowers fall." the consort only replied: "No one ever visits this shabby home of mine, and the flowers alone that grace the tree at my eaves inspire your longing to come."

12. Suma

Suma

Genji visits the lady from the last chapter for a night, as dawn breaks and he takes his leave, she says weeping: "Narrow they may be, these sleeves of mine that welcome the face of the moon, yet I so long to detain the light I shall always love!" The strength of her feelings moves Genji and he replies: "There will come a time when as this life turns and turns the moon will shine forth: for a while avert your eyes from an all too cloudy sky." Since he haven't heard of another close lady of his for a while, Genji sends her a poem: "Did the way I drowned in a sad river of tears that we could not meet set running the mighty flood that has now swept me away?" [note 4] He pays a visit to the Empress and says he will visit the tomb of her father, asking if she has a message for him. After managing to master her emotions, she says: "The man I once knew is gone now, and he who lives bears many sorrows: all in vain I left this world to live out my life in tears." [note 5] Genji replies: "When he went away, I discovered just how far grief and pain may go, yet the sorrows of this life only rise and rise anew." Before leaving the city, he also sends a letter to his son, to which his gentlewoman replies: "It is very sad that the flowers quickly fall, yet, O passing spring, come again to smile upon the City your blossoms grace!" At home at night, he talks to his darling for the last time before parting, afraid to upset her more, he recites: "Even while alive, people may yet be parted: that I never knew, even as I swore to you to stay by you till the end." she replies: "I would soon give up this unhappy life of mine if that might just stay a little while the farewell now suddenly upon us." While traveling, he looks at the mountains behind them slowly disappearing into the mists and recites: "Mist over the hills may conceal my home from me, yet perhaps that sky my eyes turn to in longing is hers, too, beyond the clouds." Genji and his closest companions are watching the geese fly in the evening sky and each recites a poem: "Are the first wild geese fellows of all those I love, that their cries aloft on their flight across the sky should stir in me such sorrow?" Genji said and then Yoshikiyo: "How all in a line one memory on the next streams across the mind, though the wild geese never were friends of mine in that far world." The Commissioner of Civil Affairs: "The wild geese that cry, abandoning of their own will their eternal home, must find their thoughts returning to that world beyond the clouds." The Aide of the Right Palace Guards: "The wild geese that leave their eternal home to fly high across the sky surely find it comforting at least not to lag behind." One winter night, while gazing at the night sky, Genji recites: "Where am I to go, wandering what unknown lands down what cloudy ways? Coming under the moon's gaze, I find myself filled with shame." In spring, at dawn as the geese fly through the sky, Genji says: "O when will I go, in what spring, to look upon the place I was born? What envy consumes me now, watching the geese flying home!" Upon parting, his friend, who visited from the city, recites: "Forlorn in the clouds, I lift in solitude cries of loneliness, longing for that old, old friend I once flew with wing to wing."

13. Akashi

Akashi

Genji meets a man who does his best to serve him, at some point the man tries to convince Genji to marry his daughter as that's all he and his wife has wished for. To convince Genji of the dire situation his daughter is in, he recites a poem: "Do you know as well what it is to sleep alone? Think, then, how she feels, wakeful through the long, long nights by herself upon this shore!" Genji receives an imperial pardon and is called back to the city. As he leaves her in the early morning, he says: "Alas that the wave is to rise now and withdraw, leaving you behind to what sorrows of your own I imagine all too well." she answers: "This house of rushes, where I have lived all these years, will be desolate- ah, how I long to follow after the withdrawing wave!" As he says goodbye to her father, he recites: "Was that sorrow worse, setting out to go that spring far from the City, than this one, when in autumn I leave a familiar shore?" Once he has returned to the city, Genji finds time to send a letter to his love in Akashi saying: "My thoughts go to you, imagining morning mists rising down the shore while you at Akashi spend sleepless nights lost in sorrow."

14. The Pilgrimage to Sumiyoshi

Miotsukushi

After Genji's return to the capital, his lady back home learns of his new love found by the Akashi shore. Heartbroken, she sighs: "Not as fond lovers' languid plumes follow the wind toward reunion, no, but as smoke myself I wish I were long since gone!" Genji, surprised by her poem, replies: "Just who is it, then, for whom I suffered so much, roaming hills and seas, often enough near drowning in an endless stream of tears?" During his pilgrimage, Genji learns the lady of the Akashi has undertaken the same endeavour, he sends her a letter: "I who give my all for your love have my reward, for to find you here, where so deep a channel runs, proves the power of our bond." His letter touched her deeply and she replies: "Lacking any worth, I have no title to claim any happiness, what can have possessed me, then, so to give my all for love?" Genji maintains contact with the Priestess of Ise, an old sweetheart of his, and during the winter, he sends a poem: "Now the skies are filled with such swirling flakes of snow, I mourn to imagine the departed roaming still the heavens above your home." She sent back a reply: "Like unmelted snow I linger reluctantly, and in my darkness find that I cannot be sure who I am or where I go."

15. A Waste of Weeds

Yomogiu

This chapter is about a past affair of Genji with a woman who has fallen on hard times. Regardless of that, she keeps to her home, now in ruin, in the hopes that Genji will come back. She has a dream of her father which prompts her to tidy up the house, as she does that, she murmurs to herself: "When these sleeves of mine are forever wet with tears shed over my loss, new drops from these ruined eaves must now flood them yet again!" Genji does eventually notice the house and pays her a visit. When he leaves, a touching image of the pine tree that has now grown since he last saw her moves him to recite: "What so caught my eye, when the rich wisteria tempted me to stop, was your pine that seemed to speak of someone pinning nearby." He promises to tell her all about the years he's been gone and she replies: "Year after long year I have pined, always in vain - are those flowers, then, all that make you look this way and at last notice my home?"

16. At the Pass

Sekiya

This chapter is pretty short and none of the poems really captured my heart. Sorry y'all!

17. The Picture Contest

Eawase

This chapter is pretty short and none of the poems really captured my heart. Sorry y'all!

18. Wind in the Pines

Matsukaze

In this chapter we learn that Genji has sent people for his daughter by the lady from Akashi. He wants to bring her (the daughter) to the city and have her educated among the court. On the morning, when it's time to leave, her grandfather said: "I can hardly bear that for her bright future's sake she must go away, and it is beyond my strength to stop these tears of old age!" His wife replied: "You were with me once, when we came from the City - am I then this time to make my way all alone along the pathways through the moors?" His daughter, the lady from Akashi, begged him to come to the city as well: "What have I to hope from a world that keeps from me when I may expect in this life, once I have gone, ever to see you again?" Once they arrive at Genji's mansion, the lady from Akashi says: "In lonely longing for the friends I used to know at the home I loved, I stammer a country tune that no one can understand."

19. Wisps of Cloud

Usugumo

In this chapter, the Empress passes away, being one of Genji's dearest, he's deeply hurt and as he's alone with his thoughts, overlooking the mountains' rim with gray wisps of clouds trailing across the sky, he says: "Those thin wisps of cloud trailing there over mountains caught in the sunset light seem to wish to match their hue to the sleeves of the bereaved." Later, reunited with the old Priestess of Ise, they gaze out the garden, the cressets of the fishermen mingling with the fireflies, Genji points out how she's used to it to which she says: "Cressets that recall scenes I can never forget, of lights out at sea, perhaps only mean my cares have come sailing after me." Genji chided her back: "You do not yet know what flames of true devotion burn deep in my heart: that may be why your cressets shed so unsteady a light."

20. The Bluebell

Asagao

Genji visits an old love of his, namely a Priestess, as he's waiting for the old rusty gate to be open, he hums to himself: "All too soon, I see, the house has nearly vanished among wastes of weeds, and the snows of many years weigh upon the garden fence." After having a nightmare of the Priestess being angry with him, he commissions rites for her in different temples and as he prayed to be reborn along her in the Lotus Throne, he thought: "Should I let my heart follow this longing to seek the love I have lost, I might, if she is not there, wander myself the Three Fords" [note 6]

21. The Maidens

Otome

The New Year has arrived and it's the Day of Purification and the former Kamo Priestess, mentioned in the last chapter, is gazing out her garden with sadness. A note arrives from Genji: "Can you have believed that the Kamo River waves would wash this day back while you purify yourself only from your mourning gray?" [note 7] touched by the timelessness of his letter, she replies: "It seems yesterday that the only robes I wore were of mourning gray, and for me such purity today means that all things pass." In the spring, the retired emperor is having a blossoms viewing party. The emperor remembers the same sort of party from years past. After a song is played, Genji offers him a cup of wine and says: "The warbler still sings as sweetly as ever then in those bygone days, but the blossoms he once loved do not look at all the same." the emperor replies: "Even at a home veiled from the Ninefold Palace by thick banks of mist I still hear the warbler's voice proclaiming that it is spring!" the former Viceroy Prince offers the cup of wine to His Majesty, the current emperor, and adds: "The hollow bamboo that calls such sweet music forth out of the old days now rouses the spring warbler to carolings ever new." the Emperor replies with grace: "When the bird of spring carols on and on so long fondly for the past, does he mean that the blossoms now lack the beauty they had then?" [note 8]

22. The Tendril Wreath

Tamakazura

During the moment of parting of two sisters, the older one realizes she may never see her sister again so she says as she's leaving: "On and on we row, in our way Ukishima and our troubles past, yet we are still sick at heart, for we know not where we go." the young lady replies: "Down endless wave lanes our ship speeds on to a goal still invisible, while I drift at the wind's will through a broad sea of sorrows."

23. The Warbler's First Song

Hatsune

After the New Year has arrived, Genji visits his lady, he recites a celebratory poem: "A thin sheet of ice has melted from the mirror of the garden lake, and I see reflected there two incomparable forms." they must have made a truly beautiful couple for his lady replies: "Plain as plain can be, I see there in the mirror of the pristine lake two forms destined to endure, spotless for ten thousand years." The lady from Akashi, who's had her daughter moved to the city to live with Genji, sends her a poem: "One who through the years has clung to a single hope, O let her today pine no more and hear at least the little warbler's first song!" Genji, deeply moved by her motherly love insists that the child replies back by herself: "Many years have passed since she was taken from you, yet the warbler still knows that she will not forget the pine whence she first took flight!"

24. Butterflies

Kocho

None of the poems in this chapter really captured my heart. Sorry y'all!

25. The Fireflies

Hotaru

Trying to get intimate with a woman he's adopted, with the sole idea of marrying her when mature, Genji gets repelled by her, to which he says: "Though excess of care turns me to seek far and wide old stories like ours, I find none of any child so set against her father!" very upset, she replies: "Yes, search as you please through the tales told of the past: you will never find in all the world a father with feelings resembling yours!"

26. The Pink

Tokonatsu

This chapter is pretty short and none of the poems really captured my heart. Sorry y'all!

27. The Cressets

Kagaribi

In this chapter, Genji and the young lady he's "adopted" share a view of the garden in the summer, it's a moonless night which Genji describes as foreboding and mysterious, insisting the cressets should be lit up: "With these cressets' smoke another rises, of desire, from such inner flames as I know now will burn on for as long as this world lasts." [note 9] defiant to his courting, she replies: "Let it then dissolve in the vastness of the sky, if the cressets' smoke sets your own to smoldering from such other, unseen fires."

28. The Typhoon

Nowaki

After a stormy night, Genji visits the lady from Akashi but abruptly leaves to her disappointment. She murmurs to herself: "The sound of the wind passing as the wind will do, rustling the reeds, seems, unhappy as I am, to bring a new touch of chill." Genji's son, the Captain writes a poem for his love: "Let the wild winds blow this evening, and lowering clouds wander the heavens, there is no forgetting you, no, not even when I try!"

29. The Imperial Progress

Miyuki

None of the poems in this chapter really captured my heart. Sorry y'all!

30. Thoroughwort Flowers

Fujibakama

The young lady who was adopted by Genji receives letters from admirers, one of them has realized the lack of reciprocation and sends her a bitter letter: "I want nothing more than to forget you at last, yet in my distress I know neither what to do nor even how to begin."

31. The Handsome Pillar

Makibashira

The young lady mentioned in the previous chapter has married now, when Genji visits her, he feels sorrow over not marrying her himself: "I who never drank all I craved of your waters withheld the promise to let you with another cross the River of the Fords." [note 10] she hides her face and replies: "If only somehow, before my time comes to cross the River of Three Fords, I might melt away like foam on a flowing stream of tears!" A gentlewoman in the service of a lady scolds her husband for preferring his new wife over her: "That fire to my mind flamed up from the agony of a heart that burns with ceaseless, searing pain of one left always alone." As his old wife prepares to move out she writes a poem on a scrap of paper and pushes it into the cracks of the pillar: "I am leaving now a home that has long been mine. O handsome pillar you whom I have loved so well, please do not forget me yet!" The Emperor, whom the young lady now serves, recites a poem upon their departure: "Now that ninefold mists must keep you and me apart, lovely plus blossom, shall I never have from you the least breath of your perfume?" feeling very small she replies: "Send me on the breeze just a breath of scent, I pray, though my own perfume be unworthy there among the flowers on other boughs." Genji, lamenting letting go of her, sends her a letter: "All through these long days, quiet as they are and empty in the endless spring rain, say, what are your memories of that man at your old home?" restrained, even while wishing to see him, for he's her father even with his trying behaviour, she replies: "Wet as my sleeves are with drops falling from the eaves in these long, long rains, how could not my fondest thoughts dwell on someone I miss so?" A daughter of His Excellency, the Palace Minister, approaches the Consultant Captain with a poem: "Boat upon the sea, if you know not where to go, lost among the waves, let me then row out to you, but tell me what port is yours!" "You always row your boat back to the same girl! It isn't fair!", she continued, [note 11] "The boatman you see, though uncertain where to go, plaything of the winds, disdains to approach a shore where he has no wish to go." he replied.

32. The Plum Tree Branch

Umegae

At Genji's house, there's a gathering long into the night, the moon appears after the rain and the light breeze fills the air with the fragrance of the blossoms. Songs are sung and music is played, Genji's brother passes him the cup and says: "Ah, this heart of mine could rise forever higher on the warbler's song, now those delicious blossoms so pervate it with their charm-" Genji replies: "I would not have you come this spring to this home of mine where such flowers bloom, till their color and their scent make themselves wholly your own!" he passes the cup to the Secretary Captain who in turn offers it to the Consultant Captain; latter says: "When the very breeze seems resolved with tactful stealth to avoid this tree, would you really have me play till the bird must simply leave? everyone laughs and the Controller Lieutenant says: "As long as no mist drifts between the moon aloft and the blossoms here, surely the bird on his perch will still lift his voice in song." [note 12]

33. New Wisteria Leaves

Fuji No Uraba

After a night spent together, the Captain sends his darling a letter: "Spare me your reproach, when my hands have lost the strength to wring secret tears, if I come to you today with too plainly dripping sleeves."

34. Spring Shoots I

Wakana I

In this chapter, Genji turns forty. He feels regret over visiting the daughter of the retired emperor as his love is suffering over his absence. He feels split between serving the retired emperor and being with her, unable to advise him, she writes down a poem among some other old ones: "Ah, how trustingly I believed that what we had would last on and on, when your feelings in this world shift and change before my eyes." upon reading it, he replies: "Life, it is too true, must end when that moment comes, but this shifting world never has known such a bond as the one between us two." Genji visits the daughter of the retired emperor and finds a poem of hers: "Is autumn for me coming nearer every day? Here before my eyes all the green leaves on the hills have turned the colors of fall." The Intendant, suffering for the Princess, who's well beyond his reach, writes to her gentlewoman: "From afar I spied but could never pluck that branch, source of all my sighs, so that I long for it still, blooming in the evening light."

35. Spring Shoots II

Wakana II

The Intendant spends a night with the Princess, against her will, and upon leaving he recites: "I rise and go forth by the first, dim light of dawn, under unknown skies, and I find my sleeves are wet with dews from I know not where." now that he was finally leaving, she felt better to reply: "In my misery, O that I might melt away into the dawn sky and believe forever more that it was only a dream!" The Intendant's actions have their long lasting effect on the Princess who falls ill over time. Genji visits her and overlooking the garden he exclaims about the lotuses in the lake. As she feels a moment of relief from her condition and Genji remarks how he feels he'd soon be gone too, she says: "Will I last as long as those swiftly vanished drops? The time I have still can hardly outlast the life dew has on a lotus leaf." he replies: "Let us promise, then, that not in this life alone but beyond it, too, we both shall still share as one the lotus leaves' pearls of dew" [note 13]

36. The Oak Tree

Kashiwagi

Following his actions with the Princess in the earlier chapters, the Intendant falls ill, on his deathbed he sends the Princess a letter: "When the end has come, and from my smoldering pyre smoke rises at last, I know this undying flame even then will burn for you. Her Highness replies to his letter: "I would rise with you, yes, and vanish forever, that your smoke and mine might decide which one of us burns with the greater sorrows." "do you suppose that I could survive you?" she had added. Through tears he writes a reply: "Though I turn to smoke and forever melt away into the wide sky, I shall never leave your side, who remain all my desire." After his passing, the Commander visits His Excellency, the father of the Intedentant. His Excellency laments for his son as he notices the branches bare of flowers: "Wet with falling drops that rain from the trees above, it is upside down, that this spring has clothed me in a cheerless garment of mist!" [note 14] the Commander replies: "He whom we have lost surely never imagined leaving you behind as though to say you should wear a garment of evening mist." and the Right Grand Controller: "Ah, it is too cruel! when that blossom fluttered down before his own spring, who is it he meant to wear such garments of misty gray?"

37. The Flute

Yokobue

Mourning the passing of the Intendant, the retired Emperor, who has renounced the world, sends his daughter the Princess, who's also done the same, a letter: "You come after me in leaving the world behind to follow this path, yet seek that same root of peace as I do with all my heart!" she replies back: "Longing for the peace of a place beyond this world and all its sorrows, I dwell on the mountain where you have renounced it all."

38. The Bell Cricket

Suzumushi

The Princess is performing the rites necessary to move on to the path of the monk, Genji, observing her, writes down a poem: "In our future life we will share one lotus throne, that I promise you, yet how sad it is today that we part as dewdrops do." she writes in reply: "Promise as you please a single throne for us both on one lotus flower, surely you do not at heart wish to be with me at all." At dusk, the Princess is listening to the songs of the crickets as Genji enters. She shares how the pine crickets were the favourite of Her Majesty, but they only sing in the mountains, which suggests they prefer solitude, however she likes the bell crickets' gentle freshness: "I have long since learned how very cruel a time autumn often brings, yet I would not wish to lose the bell cricket's lovely song." Genji replies: "You may, for yourself, have no wish but to be free of this poor abode, yet your sweet bell cricket song for me never will grow old."

39. Evening Mist

Yugiri

The Commander writes a letter to the Princess: "I have helplessly left my soul all entangled in your cruel sleeves, all through no fault but my own I remain vacant and lost" His wife grows uncertain of what happens between him and the Princess and she sends him a note: "How am I to take the sorrow I see you feel, that I may soothe you: is it the living you love, or is it the dead you mourn?" he replies casually: "Why should either one rouse me to a partial grief, when the fleeting dew, so swiftly gone, speaks of more than the lives of fragile leaves?"

40. The Law

Minori

Genji's love, Lady Murasaki, doesn't recover well after an illness and is considered on her deathbed. During a visit from Her Majesty, she livens up a notch which makes Genji happy. He notes of that and she replies: "Alas, not for long will you see what you do now: any breath of wind may spill from a hagi frond the last trembling drop of dew." the unbearable thought prompts Genji to reply: "When all life is dew and at any touch may go, one drop then the next, how I pray that you and I may leave nearly together!" Her Majesty adds: "In this fleeting world where no dewdrop can linger in the autumn wind, why imagine us to be unlike the bending grasses?" After her passing, Genji's son sends him a letter: "That autumn for me retains the living presence it had long ago, and the sleeves I moistened then are wet again with fresh dew." Genji answers: "Dews of long ago and dews that settle lately to me are all one, for alas each autumn night brings the same bitter sorrow."

41. The Seer

Maboroshi

Genji deeply mourns the loss of his love and in spring, as people gather at his estate for the blossoms viewing, he claims illness and only sees his brother privately. Genji says: "This house is my home, and yet there is no one here to love the blossoms: what can have drawn spring again to come round as it did then?" through tears his brother replies: "I came for their scent: that alone - was it in vain? And do you suggest nothing more drew me this way than common taste for flowers?" [note 15] At dawn, upon hearing one of Lady Murasaki's gentlewomen exclaim about the snow outside, he feels unbearable pain: "When I only long to melt from this sorry world as this snow will soon, how strange still to linger on once again to watch it fall!" In the second month, as the mist prettily veils her favourite plum tree, a warbler sings splendidly and Genji goes to watch it: "How the warbler sings, just as though nothing had changed, there among the flowers, in the tree she planted then, even when she is no more" Looking into her room, quiet and empty, he recites: "Now the time has come, must I consign to ruin what she who is gone specially loved with all her heart, her hedge bright with spring flowers?" After visiting the Princess, Genji returns to his own bed, against expectations. In the morning of the next day, he sends her a letter: "Crying as geese cry, I made my way home again in a fleeting world where no creature ever finds a last haven beyond time." [note 16] Genji, still heartbroken over his loss, laments the fact that Lady Murasaki never gave him children. Aware of his own weakness at the moment, he hears a cuckoo cry. He says "How did you know?" [note 17] "Have you come hither with your wings wet with showers, O mountain cuckoo, from so many memories this evening of one now gone?" Genji keeps his gaze at the heavens and his son replies: "Hear me, O cuckoo, and this message to her: You have gone away, but at home your orange tree now blooms in perfect glory." In the height of summer, Genji observes the pond and listens to the cicadas' loud song, sad to be alone he sighs: "How their voices cry, as though all reproaching me on a summer's day for spending my idleness on sighs and on ceaseless tears." as the fireflies take their flight through the garden, Genji goes on to recite a poem: "Fireflies rule the night, and it is sad to see them when at every hour one burns with the searing flame of love now forever lost." On the seventh night of the seventh month [note 18], Genji spends the day in blank monotony. No one watched the meeting of the stars, very late at night he got up by himself and went out in the garden: "Far above the clouds the Tanabata stars meet in another world, while below, gathering dews water the garden she left." On the day when the period for mourning is officially over, a gentlewoman passes her fan to Genji, on it is written: "When there is no end to the tears I shed for you after all this time, who could ever call today the day when we cease to mourn?" Genji writes besides her words: "I, who mourn her so, soon enough will find my life reaching its own term, but I still have even now many tears as yet unshed." During the ninth month, contemplating chrysanthemums, Genji recites: "Chrysanthemum dew from the mornings we both knew in life together moistens for me this autumn sleeves that I must wear alone." In the tenth month, deep in melancholy at dusk, he envies the geese flying above: "O seer who roams the vastness of the heavens, go and find for me a soul I now seek in vain even when I chance to dream." At the end of the year, observing the young Prince and realizing he can't bear the thought of losing him, Genji recites: "Lost in my sorrows I never knew months and days were still passing by- is the year really over, and my time, too, in the world?"

42. Vanished into the Clouds

Kumogakure

This chapter is blank. The title evokes Genji's death.

Notes

1. "Above the clouds" refers to the palace. The Emperor's poem also hints at the meaning "How can I go on living?". 2. Genji proceeds to finish by saying "Tell me to go away, if you must. This uncertainty is very painful" which is a paraphrase for the narrative meaning of tamadasuki kurushi - "Will you not just tell me that you do not love me? Why should love be so vacillating?" 3. The pink flower refers to Genji's son by the Empress. 4. He is being sent into an exile for his affair with a concubine of the emperor. 5. The Empress renounced the world in one of the earlier chapters. 6. The River of Three Fords which encircles the afterworld. Those who crossed it did so via one of the three fords - shallow, middling or deep, according to their sins. 7. The period of official mourning for the Empress ended. 8. A modest reply to the praise expressed in the previous poem, that the current emperor's reign is less brilliant than his predecessor's. 9. Genji's poem plays on the word "smoke" being connected to "desire". The smoke is rising from his smouldering heart. 10. See note 7 for The River of the Fords. A woman's first man carried her across the river. Genji implies that even though he never made love to her, he meant to marry her and be her man. 11. The Consultant Captain already has a lady he loves. 12. The bird will mistake the moon for dawn. 13. According to Buddhism, when in heaven, the dead are reborn on the lotus throne. 14. "Upside down" refers to the reversal of natural order where a father dies before his son. "Garment of mist" refers to the gray of mourning. 15. "Spring" in Genji's poem suggests his brother; "scent" in his brother's poem suggests Genji. 16. Wordplay in the poem evokes both Genji's mourning of Murasaki and the geese returning North for the spring. Crying refers to both his weeping and geese and "last haven" signifies the resting place of the geese and "marriage bed". 17. Reference to another poem: "I talk about the past, and, cuckoo, how did you know, that you should sing in the voice I heard long ago?" 18. The Tanabata Festival, when the celestial lovers on either side of the Milky Way were said to come together for their one night a year. [back to Chapters]