著者

鳥越 輝昭

出版者

神奈川大学

雑誌

人文学研究所報 (ISSN:02877082)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.33, pp.31-46, 2000-03

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In this essay I have tried to shed some light on the meaning that the city of Venice had for passatisti, i.e. anti-modernists or dropouts of modern society, such as Henry James, Henri de Regnier, Evelyn Waugh and Joseph Brodsky. To clarify the distinctive quality of their response to the city that has retained a great deal of premodernity in the modern world, I have touched upon other types of response by (mostly) earlier writers : criticisms on the city's moral degradation by Montesquieu and Joseph Addison, an amused report on its immorality by Charles de Brosses in the eighteenth century, and, after the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797,nostalgic dirges for its glorious past by Byron and August von Platen, as well as searchs for causes of the city's decline by Comte Daru and John Ruskin. I have also cast a glance, for a better clarification of the passatisti's attitude toward Venice, at similar responses by slightly earlier writers, George Sand and William Dean Howells, and also at the way Kafu Nagai, a Japanese passatista writer, was attracted to the premodern aspect of Kyoto. The following are the points that have been brought out in the essay : (1) Venice has been appreciated for its premodern quality from about the 1830's to the present; (2) such appreciation has been particularly remarkable among passatisti who experienced living in modernized big cities; and (3) in such appreciation, the premodern Venice has often been equated to a paradise on earth. The premodern paradise that the passatisti saw in Venice has probably been contrary to the desire of many Venetians, since efforts for the city's modernization have never been abandoned. In a way, the passatisti saw only what they wanted to see. The need they felt, however, was real, because modernity, which emphasized rationality, progress, clarity, order, and machine mentality, has realized only half of the human potentiality, and because the modern metropolis incorporating modernity has been a place repellent to many sensitive people. The passatisti, who felt alienated in modernized big cities, satisfied their need in the premodernity of Venice.