Five Lines Before Dogura Magura Starts

I opened Dogura Magura (『ドグラ・マグラ』) by Yumeno Kyusaku (夢野久作) tonight and read only the verse that comes before the story starts. Five short lines. I’ve been on them for an hour.

胎児よ
胎児よ
何故躍る
母親の心がわかって
おそろしいのか

My version for now: Fetus, fetus, why do you leap? Have you understood your mother’s heart, and are you afraid?

The fourth line is the problem. 母親の心がわかって is a te-form, and a te-form doesn’t say how the two halves connect. The fetus might leap because it understands. It might be afraid because it understands. Or the voice asking is only guessing. Japanese lets all of that stay. My English has to choose, and “understood” plus “and” chooses an order and nothing else. When I tried “because,” it said far too much.

The other thing was 躍る. I had been reading it as 踊る, to dance, because that’s the picture my head supplies. I looked it up. 躍る is to leap, to jump, to throb, the verb in 胸が躍る where the heart jumps. So nobody is dancing in there. Something is kicking, or pulsing, inside another person’s body.

The next page opens with a sound, ブウウ――ンンン, like bees, and then the narrator wakes up. I stopped before that. I still don’t know what “mother’s heart” means here.