カテゴリー
2 小泉八雲(ラフカディオ・ハーン) 2-2 小泉八雲の作品

ハーンが書かなかった作品(Lafcadio Hearn’s Unwritten Works)

アラン・ローゼン(Alan Rosen)(熊本大学准教授)

2009年(第11期)市民講座「ラフカディオ・ハーンとアイルランド文化」(5回シリーズの第4回)

熊本大学五高記念館

本講座を音声(mp3)でお聴きになれます。 

 

IN THE UNITED STATES
1. Collection of musical legends.
“I have been thinking that we might some day, together, work up a charming collection of musical legends: each legend followed by a specimen-melody, with learned discussion by H. Edward Krehbiel. But that will be for the days when we shall be ‘well-known and highly esteemed authors.’” (New Orleans 1883)

2. Financial novel.
The houses eleven stories high, that seem trying to climb into the moon, -the tremendous streets and roads, -the cascading thunder of the awful torrent of life, the sense of wealth-force and mind-power that oppresses the stranger here, -all these form so colossal a contrast with the inert and warmly colored Southern life that I know not how to express my impression. I can only think that I have found superb material for a future story, in which the influence of New York on a Southern mind may be described. … (Letters from the Raven 85-6; my emphasis)
But he eventually gave up this idea. Why?
But in such great cities [New York, London] I do not think a literary man can write any literature. …. Society withers him up–unless he have been born into the manner of it; and the complexities of the vast life about him he never could learn. Fancy a good romance about Wall Street-so written that the public could understand it! There is. of course, a tremendous romance there; but only a financier can really know the machinely, and his knowledge is technical. (XIV 292-93; my emphasis)

3. Medical novel.
Apropos of a medical novel, again-have you had occasion to remark the fact that among the French, every startling discovery in medicine or those sciences akin to medicine, is almost immediately popularized by a capital story? (XIV 22)
 I don’t like your plot for a medical novel at all. It involves ugliness…. Then your plot is too thin. It has not the beauty nor depth of that simple narrative about a famous painter, or writer-I forget which-whose imagination rendered it impossible for him to complete his medical studies…. He had to abandon medicine for art. A very powerful short sketch might be made of this fact.
 I believe in a medical novel-a wonderful medical novel. We must chat about it. Why not use a fantastic element-anticipate discoveries hoped for-anticipate them so powerfully as to make the reader believe you are enunciating realities? (XIV 62-63)

 

IN JAPAN
1. Article on drinking sake.
I have become what they call a jogo-and find that a love of sake creates a total change in all one’s eating habits and tastes. All the sweet things the geko likes. I cannot bear when taking sake. By the way, what a huge world of etiquette, art, taste, custom, has been developed by sake. An article upon sake-its social rules-its vessels-its physiologlcal effects-in short the whole romance and charm of a Japanese banquet, ought to be written by somebody. I hope to write one some day, but I am still learning. (XIV 160)

2. Article on words.
You recommend me to write an article on words some day. I would like to – from my own limited point of knowledge only; ignorance of philology would here be a great drawback. But it would be infinitely painful, laborious work. Because really the art of placing words is with most of us instinctive. It would be analyzing one’s own sensations and tendencies of imagination; it would be nearly as hard as to write another “Alice in Wonderland.” (XV 441-42)

3. Book on Japanese folklore.
“Professor Chamberlain and I have a secret project in hand-a book on Japanese folk-lore.” (Ellwood Hendrick, July 1893, XIV 236)

4. Article on the disappearance of the gods.
There are no ghosts, no angels and demons and gods: all are dead. The world of electricity, steam, mathematics, is blank and cold and void. No man can even write about it. Who can find a speck of romance in it? … The Protestant world has become bald and cold as a meeting-house. The ghosts are gone. Sometimes I think of writing a paper to be called “The Vanishing of the Gods.” (Chamberlain, December 1893, XVI 84)

5. Article on Japan’s “open ports.”
Coming out of my solitude of nearly five years to stand on the deck of the Kobe Maru on the 10th, I felt afraid, I saw myself again among giants. Everything seemed huge, full of force, dignity, massive potentialities divined but vaguely. A sudden sense of the meaning of that civilization I had been so long decrying and arguing against … came upon me crushingly. … How small suddenly my little Japan became!-how lonesome! What a joy to feel the West! (Yokohama, 15 July 1894, to Chamberlain, reprinted in Allen, 277)
I have received from the gods inspiration for a paper-the Romance of the Open Ports-or, perhaps, the morality of the open ports. … I could startle the world with a paper on the ideas that came to me the other day.
… In the brief time since I got on the Kobe Maru I have learned so many astonishing things … . My imaginary hard-fisted and cold-hearted businessmen of the colonies vanish away-phantoms only; and in their places what warm human realities appear! Really there is a vast romance to be written here in a few words-with help of thoughts and illustrations from evolutional philosophy. Really, I must try later to get into this exiled Western life, and love it, and study it, and tell all the beautiful things there are in it … . (Tokyo, 17 July 1894 to Chamberlain, reprinted in Allen. 278)

6. Article on Japanese drama.
Father used to express his desire to write on Japanese ‘No’ (a type of drama) and the theatre. At the time when Dr. Tsubouchi was praising ‘Ten-no-Amishima’ of Chikamatsu, father was asked about translating them, with the view to introducing them to foreign countries. But the plot of the story, where a man leaves his wife and child to elope with another woman, was against his belief, so he declined to undertake it (Father and I, 10)

7. Article on inter-racial marriage.
Father, one day, remarked to mother about the bad results from marriage of close relatives. But inter-racial marriage produced bad results too, he thought He was thinking of writing on the subject to a foreign paper. When he consulted his wife, she replied. ‘You are a product of inter-racial marriage-but are you a poor product?’ He replied, ‘At times I think I am a very poor result, almost a waste. This is a result of a very distant inter-racial marriage, I think. So, I just thought that I would write about.’ ‘But,’ mother said, ‘you write about such a thing, but you and I are two different races and what about our children? Is it right to acclaim to the world the poor product of such a marriage?’ He said to her, ‘Do you think so?’ and he tore up his manuscript. I think of that manuscript now and imagine all sorts of things. (Father and I, 13)

There is abundant proof, alike furnished by the intermarriages of human races and by the interbreeding of animals, that when the varieties mingled diverge beyond a certain slight degree the result is inevitably a bad one in the long run. . . . -there arise an incalculable mixture of traits, and what may be called a chaotic constitution. (Letter from Herbert Spencer to Baron Kaneko Kentaro, August 1892, XII 461)

カテゴリー
2 小泉八雲(ラフカディオ・ハーン) 2-2 小泉八雲の作品

Mimi-nashi-Hoichi-耳といれずみの話

小野友道(熊本保健科学大学学長)
2009年熊本アイルランド協会総会卓話
鶴屋百貨店東館7Fカーネーションサロン

 私どもが耳と呼んでいる部分は医学的には「耳介」といいます。耳介は耳輪・耳垂とか13箇所にも分けて解剖学的名称が付けられております。ヒトにおいては音の集音効果は余りありませんが、動物においては耳介を動かして、つまり耳をそばだてて音を聞くことはきわめて重要なことです。この耳介を気にして、耳介それも左耳ばかり造り続けた彫刻家がいます。三木富雄です。耳の何処に魅せられたのでしょうか。耳といえば、鎌倉の高僧明恵やゴッホが浮かびますが、どちらも自分で右の耳をそぎ落としています。明恵は修行のために、ある夜、仏眼仏母の前で、耳を切ってしまうのです。一方、ゴッホも右の耳を切り落とし、娼婦ラシェルに届けた話がありますが、今年5月の新聞記事は口論の末ゴーギャンが剣を振りかざし、ゴッホの耳を切ってしまったという説が新たに出てきました。
 さて、Hoichiは両側の耳です。阿弥陀寺の住職により全身に“Hannya Shin-kyo”を書き込まれました。それは平家の亡霊から逃れるためでした。私はこの書き込みをいれずみと捉えております。
 白川静によると文身には瘢痕いれずみ、針で刺すいれずみ(入墨)、そして一時的に文様を描き加える絵身の3つがあると指摘しています。それに従えばHoichiのそれはまさに絵身ではないでしょうか。白川の文身の定義は「何らかの儀礼的な目的をもって加えられる身体装飾」とし、「屍体を聖霊化するにはもとより絵身の方法がとられたであろうと述べています。古くから亡霊、怨霊などに対して陀羅尼などを唱えると同様に、身体にそれらを書き込むことはなされていたでしょう。いわゆる入墨にも信念や護符の目的で「南無阿弥陀仏」などを彫る者が少なくありませんでした。
 西成彦先生は、Hoichiのは「ただ文字を皮膚に書き込んだものではない。皮膚をなぞる筆が薄皮で蔽うようにしてむきだしの芳一の全身に衣をかけるように筆をあやつり、盲目の琵琶法師は、般若心経という闇を衣のように身に纏う」と述べておられます。それはまさに宗教的儀式であり、絵身いれずみに他ならないのではないでしょうか。
 上海の国際的芸術家Ziang Huanが2007年ニューヨークでの個展で、自身の顔・額そして坊主頭に「家系図」をびっしりと書き込むパフォーマンスをしましたが、やはり耳だけには書き込みがみられません。まさに現代のMimi-nashi-Hoichiです。彼がなぜ耳だけ残したか、やはり耳には特別の何かがあるのでしょうか。
 ピアスを飾り、めがねを支え、そしてインフルエンザ予防のマスクがかかる場としての耳、熱いものに触った時、思わず指を持ってゆく冷たい耳は、それほど複雑でもない構築をした身体のごく一部なのですが。
 本日は拙い卓話に耳を傾けてくださいましてありがとうございました。

参考文献
小野 友道:いれずみ物語, 大塚薬報, NO.634, 2008
西 成彦:盲者と文芸/ハーンからアルトーへ, 国文学, 49(11), 1994

カテゴリー
2 小泉八雲(ラフカディオ・ハーン) 2-2 小泉八雲の作品

Lafcadio Hearn and the Clifton Waller Barrett Collection

Alan Rosen(アラン・ローゼン 熊本大学助教授)
2006年(第8期)市民講座「ハーンを育んだアイルランドの風土と文化」(7回シリーズの第5回)
熊本大学五高記念館

1.General Introduction to the Barrett Collection

The Clifton Waller Barrett Collection is one of the largest and best collections of American Literature in the world. Formerly housed in the Alderman Library of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville (Thomas Jefferson’s University), it is now housed in the university’s new Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. The collection was opened to the public in 1960. Over 1000 authors are represented, and nearly 500 authors have been collected in depth. In total there are over 250,000 individual pieces by and about American writers from 1775 to 1950. Although the Hearn Collection is only a small part of the whole, it forms the most complete collection of original Hearn and Hearn-related materials in the world. Since some of these materials are still unpublished, or published only in part, this collection has become a kind of mecca for Hearn students and scholars. We can see and touch the actual paper Hearn wrote on, letters, manuscripts, and notebooks, and we can have photocopies made from any material that is not too fragile to be handled. Much of the collection has been recorded on microfilm, but much has not. In Japan there are only three places which have microfilm sets of the collection purchased from the Alderman Library: Kobe Shoin Joshidaigaku, Kumamoto Daigaku, and Shimane Daigaku. However, in order to see the real material and the many items not yet microfilmed, you must visit the University of Virginia Library. Once you are there, it is not difficult to see the materials in the Hearn Collection. In fact, the regulations are rather simple and straightforward. There are only three basic rules: 1. Researchers are asked to fill out a brief form and show a photo I.D. (such as a driver’s license, a passport). 2. Only loose paper, pencils, and a laptop computer are permitted in the reading room. No bags, envelopes, folders, notebooks, tablets, or containers of any type are permitted.

Lockers are provided to secure your belongings. 3. Paper is provided by the department for researchers. Laptop computers and other mechanical research tools are permissible provided that their use does not disturb other researchers (from Special Collections Library home page). Before you go into the special reading room with your laptop computer, you simply give your request to the librarian stationed at the desk outside the room. The request is simply a piece of paper stating the name and number of the box of materials that you wish to examine. You can leave the materials in the room when you go for lunch or a break, but at the end of the day all materials must be returned and checked.

When I visited the library several years ago in the summer of 2002, I especially enjoyed looking at Hearn’s manuscript letters and comparing them with the published versions edited by Elizabeth Bisland Wetmore to find the parts that she had omitted. From those manuscripts I was able to find a hidden side of Hearn’s personality that had been cut out from the public portrait of him.

For example, his bad-mouthing of important people and publishers, and his complaints about health or money. Today I would like to introduce the collection and take a closer look at the man who collected it and the story of why and how the collection came into being. In doing this, I hope to give a deeper impression of Hearn’s place in American literature.

2. What is in the Hearn collection?

The Hearn collection includes a wide range of materials by or about Lafcadio Hearn and his writings, both published and unpublished, partly preserved on microfilm, all housed in the same Special Collections Library. The types of materials are:
a. Manuscripts of published works, unpublished essays, and articles
b. Notebooks
c. Letters
d. Newspaper articles by Hearn (Japan Chronicle)
e. Newspaper articles and letters about Hearn and his writings
f. Photos, Fragments, etc.

The Homepage for the Special Collections Library calls it the “Finest Hearn collection ever assembled.” Joan Crane, the Curator of American Literature Collections when the collection was opened, writes:
In the Barrett Hearn collection are the original manuscripts of The Temptation of St. Anthony [Sento Antoni no yuuwaku], Exotics and Retrospectives [Ikoku joucho to kaiko], Kwaidan, and Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan [Shirarenu nihon no omokage]; fragments of Two Years in the French West Indies [Futsu ryou Nishi indo shotou no ni-nen kan], Youma, Shadowings [Kage], In Ghostly Japan [Reiteki Nippon], Kotto, and Out of the East [Higashi no Kuni Kara]; forty unpublished essays and articles, seventeen notebooks ranging from the New Orleans period to the West Indies to Japan [Internet page says over 30 notebooks], more than 450 letters [Internet page says “nearly three hundred letters&rdquo], and Hearn’s holograph drafts of published articles. Five of the nine numbers of Ye Giglampz, described by Mr. Barrett as a Hearn rarissimum, are present (the only complete set known is in the holdings of the Cincinnati Public Library). The collection of printed works represents every publication: Hearn variant bindings, later editions, periodical printings, translations, inscribed association copies. This part of the Barrett Library devoted to Lafcadio Hearn’s works reflects one facet of Mr. Barrett’s extraordinary accomplishment as a scholarly collector.

In the display of these books and manuscripts at the Alderman Library of the University of Virginia, it is our purpose to draw back the attention of students, scholars, teachers, and readers to a figure in the literary history of this country whose importance has become obscured.

3. Who was Clifton Waller Barrett?

Clifton Waller Barrett was born in the US in 1901. Barrett graduated from the University of Virginia, Class of 1920 at 19 years old. He became chief executive of the North Atlantic and Gulf Steamship Company, Inc. During WWII he was Director of Sugar Transportation for the War Shipping Administration. He was a great reader and book-lover, but he started collecting books rather late [at 38 years old in 1939]. Even so, by 1950 he had a personal library that was considered outstanding among book-lovers in the US. Throughout his life he continued to spend a large part of his fortune on literary materials, slowly building up an outstanding collection of American literary material, including lesser-known writers along with the works of those who were already famous. He gave his entire collection to the university he loved, his alma mater, the University of Virginia.

He continued to support the library’s acquisition of rare American literary materials until he died.[From “A Brief Account of The Clifton Waller Barrett Library” Charlottesville, The University of Virginia, 1960, by Herbert Cahoon, Curator of Autograph Manuscripts, The Pierpont Morgan Library]

4. Why and how did the collection come into being?

We have the words of Mr. Barrett himself to tell us the details. “In 1939 … I [Clifton Waller Barrett] decided to amass a comprehensive collection of American literature-first editions and original manuscripts of American writers from the beginning of the Republic in 1776 to the present day. … Acquiring these milestone’s of a nation’s literary life became a full-time occupation. I retired from business to carry it forward….

At first, my efforts were devoted to forming collections of the great figures of American literature: Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain, Poe, Longfellow, Emerson…. Early on, however, I began to realize the importance of so-called minor writers who fleshed out and formed the underpinnings of the nation’s literature….One writer who stood out in this group was Lafcadio Hearn.

His amazing originality, combined with the unusual beauty and quality of his writing had won praise from discriminating critics; however, in the years of World WarII and the decade following he was neglected. When I started to collect his works they were in modest demand, though prices of available material were quite high-due perhaps to his emergence as a cult figure and to the paucity of items on the market. My first purchase was … Some Chinese Ghosts (Boston 1887). I read these tales with increasing pleasure and immediately decided to collect more of Hearn. Soon, a respectable assemblage of his printed works was gathered, but little manuscript material was available aside from the occasional letter at auction which I added to my hoard. Influenced by accounts of this strange romantic life, I resolved to build a representative collection of Hearn’s printed works and original manuscripts most particularly.

My quest took me to Cincinnati and later to Japan, but the first rich strike came on a trip to New Orleans in 1954…. I visited many bookshops on Royal Street and lingered in an old print shop where the proprietor, learning of my interest in Lafcadio Hearn, advised me to call on a lady in the city who was the great-niece of Miss Leona Queyrouze, a Creole poet of New Orleans with whom Hearn enjoyed a platonic affair. [Barrett met her and purchased a signed copy of Some Chinese Ghosts, an inscribed-by-Hearn photo, etc.] When I returned to New York with these exciting documents and memorabilia, I quickly let it be known to various book sellers that I was definitely in the market for Hearn material. John Fleming, bless him, came to my office with a list of original Hearn manuscripts that had languished in Dr. Rosenbach’s vault for years. [Dr. ASW Rosenbach of Phila., whose house is now a modest but well-known museum in Phila.. It houses, eg., manuscripts for such outstanding literary works as James Joyce’s Ulysses, Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers, and Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim.] These were principally manuscripts of Hearn’s Japanese books…. Needless to say, they were a major acquisition.

Some years passed before other important material was forthcoming. [Through the James F. Drake bookshop in NYC, Barrett purchased a large collection from Mr. Leon Godchaux (the Sugar King of Louisiana), a New Orleans native working for the Illinois Railroad who had spent many years collecting Hearn.]

The extent of the collection overwhelmed me as box after box arrived. More space would clearly be required to house it. [He rented an entire floor of a building on 46th St. New York City to keep the new books and materials.] … By serendipity and a series of fortunate coincidences, it had been possible to acquire a great collection of printed works and original manuscripts left by an extraordinary literary and artistic genius, Lafcadio Hearn.”
(From “On Collecting Lafcadio Hearn” by Clifton Waller Barrett, 1983)