著者

菊池 有希

出版者

日本比較文学会

雑誌

比較文学 (ISSN:04408039)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.47, pp.34-48, 2005-03-31 (Released:2017-06-17)

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In the Meiji period, Byron was one of the most popular English poets in Japan. Byron or Byronism exerted an influence over many Japanese writers of the time, among whom was Izumi Kyôka. “Cain”, one of Byron’s most famous metaphysical dramas, was translated into Japanese by Kimura Yôtarô in 1907. Kimura was a chauvinist who reacted against Christianity. In his preface to the translation, he identified his own antipathy toward Christianity with Cain’s rejection of God, so much that this led to an overrepresentation of Cain’s sensibility toward beauty in his translation. Kimura believed that the problem of beauty in “Cain” should be concerned with the problem of anti-Christianity, one of the key aspects of Byronism. Hagoshi Akira, the hero of “Kusameikyû” [“The Glassy Labyrinth”] (1908), is a young man who is very sensitive to beauty. In several concrete ways Akira’s sensibility to beauty and his behavior resemble that of Cain as depicted by Kimura in his translation. There are also many similarities between “Cain” and “Kusameikyû” in terms of the beauty of supernatural images. From such evidence,I suppose that “Kusameikyû” was influenced by “Cain” via the medium of Kimura’s translation. In “Kusameikyû”,the theme of antipathy is conspicuously absent, suggesting that perhaps Kyôka is only interested in the problem of beauty in “Cain”,and not in the issue of anti-Christianity. Kyôka’s reception of Byron without Byronism, in which he simply enjoys the representations of beauty in Kimura’s translation of “Cain”,may well be unique among Japanese writers.

著者

菊池 有希

出版者

和洋女子大学英文学会

雑誌

和洋女子大学英文学会誌 (ISSN:02893940)

巻号頁・発行日

no.43, pp.121-137, 2009-03