著者

大場 厚志

出版者

東海学園大学

雑誌

研究紀要 (ISSN:13421514)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.5, pp.125-136, 2000-03-31

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In Hawthorne s "The Artist of the Beautiful, " Owen Warland completes the butterfly which is organic as well as mechanical. The process of creation correlates with the unconscious, the operation of which is inseparable from the creativity of an artist. Owen comes to know that not the product, the butterfly, but the process of creation and the instinctive content matter for him. The narrator describes him as grown spiritually as an artist. Nevertheless Owen does not evoke our keen sympathy. And the unconscious seems to concern one of the causes. The relation between Owen and the antagonists-Peter Hovenden and Robert Danforth-proves to be correlative rather than contrary. In spite of Owen's hostility, Danforth is friendly to Owen though he has little imagination and despises Owen's spirituality and fragility. Hovenden displays his hostility only when he suspects that Owen is engaging himself in an imaginative work. In view of these circumstances, Hovenden and Danforth severally function as the "shadow" in Jungian theory. The "shadow" Is what is denied by the ego, the center of consciousness, in conscious personality. Owen projects his personal "shadow" upon the two antagonists, which, it seems to us, indicates the conflict between an artist and a society. In fact, like Owen, they are also left behind in the society with a new system for mass production. Therefore the conflict between Owen and the antagonists proves to remain the personal one (or the one in an old community) rather than the generalized one between an artist and a society. In addition, Owen's alternate repetitions of artistic desire and lethargy remind us of a puer aeternus (child archetype). Without the betterment of his relation to the "shadow " we cannot expect Owen's true independence and maturity.