the withered field the crickets’ noise has gone faint. The flower lies open to the wind, the gazers pass on to madness, this flower-heart of the grass is blown on by a wind-like madness, until at last she is but emptiness.
The wife dies. Enter the husband, returning.
| Husband |
Pitiful hate, for my three years’ delay, working within her has turned our long-drawn play of separation to separation indeed. |
| Chorus |
The time of regret comes not before the deed,
This we have heard from the eight thousand shadows.
This is their chorus—the shadowy blades of grass.
Sorrow! to be exchanging words
At the string-tip—
Sorrow! that we can but speak
With the bow-tip of the adzusa!
The way that a ghost returns
From the shadow of the grass—
We have heard the stories,
It is eight thousand times, they say,
Before regret runs in a smooth-worn groove,
Forestalls itself.
|
| Ghost of the Wife |
Aoi! for fate, fading, alas, and unformed, all sunk into the river of three currents, gone from the light of the plum flowers that reveal spring in the world! |
| Chorus |
She has but kindling flame to light her track … |
| Ghost of the Wife |
… and show her autumns of a lasting moon.39 And yet, who had not fallen into desire? It was easy, in the rising and falling of the smoke and the fire of thought, to sink so deep in desires. O heart, you were entangled in the threads. “Suffering” and “the Price” are their names. There is no end to the lashes of Aborasetsu, the jailor of this prison. O heart, in your utter extremity you beat the silks of remorse; to the end of all false desire Karma shows her hate. |
| Chorus |
Ah false desire and fate!
Her tears are shed on the silk-board,
Tears fall and turn into flame,
The smoke has stifled her cries,
She cannot reach us at all,
Nor yet the beating of the silk-board
Nor even the voice of the pines,
But only the voice of that sorrowful punishment.
Aoi! Aoi!
Slow as the pace of sleep,
Swift as the steeds of time,
By the six roads of changing and passing
We do not escape from the wheel,
Nor from the flaming of Karma,
Though we wander through life and death;
This woman fled from his horses
To a world without taste or breath.
|
| Ghost of the Wife |
Even the leaves of the katsu-grass show their hate of this underworld by the turning away of their leaves. |
| Chorus |
The leaves of the katsu show their hate by bending aside; and neither can they unbend nor can the face of o’ershadowed desire. O face of eagerness, though you had loved him truly through both worlds, and hope had clung a thousand generations, ’twere little avail. The cliffs of Matsuyama, with stiff pines, stand in the end of time; your useless speech is but false mocking, like the elfish waves. Aoi! Aoi! Is this the heart of man? |
| Ghost of the Wife |
It is the great, false bird called “Taking-care.” |
| Chorus |
Who will call him a true man—the wandering husband—when even the plants know their season, the feathered and furred have their hearts? It seems that our story has set a fact beyond fable. Even Sobu, afar, gave to the flying wild-duck a message to be borne through the southern country, over a thousand leagues, so deep was his heart’s current—not shallow the love in his heart. Kimi, you have no drowsy thought of me, and no dream of yours reaches toward me. Hateful, and why? O hateful! |
| Chorus |
She recites the Flower of Law; the ghost is received into Butsu; the road has become enlightened. Her constant beating of silk has opened the flower, even so lightly she has entered the seedpod of Butsu. |
Suma Genji
Characters
-
Shite, an old woodcutter, who is an apparition of the hero, Genji, as a sort of place-spirit, the spirit of the seashore at Suma.
-
Waki, Fujiwara, a priest with a hobby for folklore, who is visiting sacred places.
-
Second Shite, or the Shite in his second manner or apparition, Genji’s spirit appearing in a sort of glory of waves and moonlight.
Scene I
| Waki |
Announcing himself.
I, Fujiwara no Okinori,
Am come over the sea from Hiuga;
I am a priest from the shinto temple at Miyazaki,
And, as I lived far afield,
I could not see the temple of the great god at Ise;
And now I am a-mind to go thither,
And am come to Suma, the seaboard.
Here Genji lived, and here I shall see the young cherry,
The tree that is so set in the tales—
|
| Shite |
And I am a woodcutter of Suma.
I fish in the twilight;
By day I pack wood and make salt.
Here is the mount of Suma.
There is the tree, the young cherry.40
And you may be quite right about Genji’s having lived here. That blossom will flare in a moment.41
|
| Waki |
I must find out what that old man knows. To Shite. Sir, you seem very poor, and yet you neglect your road; you stop on your way home, just to look at a flower. Is that the tree of the stories? |
| Shite |
I dare say I’m poor enough; but you don’t know much if you’re asking about that tree, “Is it the fine tree of Suma?” |
| Waki |
Well, is it the tree? I’ve come on purpose to see it. |
| Shite |
What! you really have come to see the cherry-blossom, and not to look at Mount Suma? |
| Waki |
Yes; this is where Genji lived, and you are so old that you ought to know a lot of stories about him. |
| Chorus |
Telling out Genji’s thoughts.
If I tell over the days that are gone,
My sleeves will wither.42
The past was at Kiritsubo;
I went to the lovely cottage, my mother’s,
But the emperor loved me.
I was made esquire at twelve, with the hat. The soothsayers unrolled my glories.43 I was called Hikaru Genji. I was chujo in Hahakigi province. I was chujo in the land of
|
