「書物の達人」丸谷才一(まるやさいいち）（英語対訳）４　

（４）丸谷才一の文学活動・作品

    丸谷才一は一九五二年一月、篠田一士、菅野昭正、川村二郎らとともに季刊同人雑誌『秩序』（白林社）を創刊。その一月号に短編小説『ゆがんだ太陽』を掲載。同誌に『エホバの顔を避けて』を連載。五月、グレアム･グリーンの『不良少年』（士熊書房）を翻訳。以後英文学の翻訳をしました。
大学卒業後は英文学者として翻訳・研究を続ける一方で執筆活動にも取り組み、一九六〇年に処女作『エホバの顔を避けて』を発表。その後、作家活動に専念しました。小説家としては寡作です。長編小説に主力を注ぎ、本人も周囲も、長編小説家と見なすことが多いのです。かつて筒井康隆は「ディケンズ的退廃」と絶賛した。初期からモダニズム文学の影響を受け、英国風の風俗性とユーモア、知的な味わいを重視して、近代日本の従来の私小説的な文学風土に対するつよい批評意識を持って小説を書きました。
    前期の作品ではイギリス風の風俗小説と私小説の叙情性を混ぜあわせたようなところがあります。『エホバの顔を避けて』は本人も習作としている。神エホバ（ヤハウェ）との関係を通して、圧倒的な権威によって抑圧され、そこから逃れようとする魂の状況を描きました。また、ジョイスの影響によって取り入れられた内的独白の手法は、長編第二作『笹まくら』で花開く。『笹まくら』（一九六六年七月）は「十五年戦争中を徴兵忌避者として過ごした男が戦争後もその過去が彼にさまざまな影響を与えつづける」という精神の様相を描いたものです。
    丸谷才一の長編小説は少なくて七作しかありません。高等遊民ではなく、新聞の論説委員、企業の社長、元経団連会長も含めて社会で職業を持って働いている人物などを描いています。丸谷才一は「そもそも小説家の仕事は普通の意味の真実の探求ではない。嘘をついて人を楽しませ、いはゆる真実とは違ふ別の真実を差出すことである。」（「綾とりで天の川」文藝春秋）と述べています。
『横しぐれ』(一九七五年）は、主人公の「わたし」は、中世和歌や連歌を専門とする国文学研究室の助手。町医者である父親は、めったに思い出話などしない人だったが、ある時、四国旅行の際、道後温泉近くの茶店で大酒呑みの乞食坊主から酒をたかられた話を、面白おかしく話したことがあった。そのことが妙に心に残った「わたし」は、父の通夜の席で、ともに旅した父の友人である国文学の黒川先生にさらに詳しく聞いてみると、その乞食坊主は種田山頭火のように思えてきた。その日はちょうど雨で、それを黒川先生が「横しぐれ」と独言のように呟いたところ、それを聞いた乞食坊主がいたく感心してしまった。そして酒を立て続けに飲むと、そのまま雨の中をすたすたと立ち去った。一九九一年、『横しぐれ』（種田山頭火を扱った）の英訳（デニス・キーン訳、『RAIN IN THE WIND』）がイギリスのインデペンダント外国小説賞特別賞受賞しました。
『裏声で歌へ君が代』(一九八二年、長編）は、一九七〇年代東京、語り手は四十代の画商梨田。気に入っていた朝子と偶然地下鉄のエスカレーターで会いパーティーへ誘う。知り合いの洪圭樹が台湾独立派による「台湾民主共和国準備政府」大統領になった就任パーティー。台湾独立の話から国家論、恋愛論へと展開。東京裁判で東条英機の頭をたたいた同郷の大川周明は、丸谷才一『裏声で歌へ君が代』の右翼的な人物(大田黒周道)のモデルで登場します。
『年の残り』は丸谷才一の短編小説です。一九六八年（昭和三四）発表。 同年、第五十九回芥川賞受賞。四十三歳の頃、壮年期の作品です。一九六六年に『笹まくら』、一九七二年『たった一人の反乱』などを精力的に発表している時期です。主人公の病院長上原庸は、作者と三十歳近くも違う老年の六十九歳。しかも「やがてみんな死ぬ」、というのが主題となっています。不惑の作家が古希一年前の男を描いた小説です。それが出来るのは作家の持つ豊かな「想像力」です。よく読むと精緻(せいち)な構成になっていて、水彩画の話に始まり、昔、主人公と見合いをしたが、結婚せず他の男のところに嫁いだ美人の女性のセリフで終わるエンディングまで、前後して複雑に語られる時の流れが読者によく分かるのは筆力であろう。冒頭に、献詞のようなものか、和泉式部の「かぞふれば年の残りもなかりけり老いぬるばかりかなしき」が記されています。「年の残り」とは年末も押し詰まってという意味で、歳時記では「数え日」である。もちろん老年の老い先が短いこともかけています。この一首は、小説の主題を言い切っていると言うだろうが、和泉式部の方は、恋に明け暮れている間に年老いてしまってと嘆いている歌だろうから、少しばかり違うような気もします。小説の構想が先で後からこんな歌もあると載せたのか、この歌からこの小説を書こうとしたのか興味深いが、連句好きの丸谷才一のことだから、たぶん前者であると思われます。
『たった一人の反乱』は、物語の語り手兼主人公の〈ぼく〉は中年男性で、元々は通産省の官僚をしていたエリート。今は天下りをして、民間会社に勤め、最近妻を亡くしたばかりの〈ぼく〉が、ひょんなことから、若いモデルのユカリと結婚。それから、次から次へと思いもよらぬ出来事が〈ぼく〉の身に降りかかる。中年男と若いモデルを軸にし、ちょっと裕福な「インテリ」の生活をコミカルに描いた小説。最も特徴的な所は、主人公が「インテリ」で「なぜ殴られたか」を冷静に分析し合理的な考えを積み上げ、自分自身を説得して納得してしまう。その対処の仕方がユーモラス。単なる泣き寝入りだが、論理的に考えているので、悲壮感はなく、むしろ堂々としたものです。
『女ざかり』は華麗で自由奔放な女性一族の物語。最後まで飽きさせない展開で、映画化されるのも納得の作品です。一九九四年に吉永小百合主演で映画化されました。主人公・南弓子(大手新聞社論説委員)の愛人の知り合いが与党幹事長で、叔母・南雅子(元女優)の元同棲相手が首相、娘・南千枝(大学院生)は前首相、現首相の師匠に言い寄られます。つまり日本は南家の女三代によって牛耳られているといって過言ではありません。主人公の美人新聞論説委員の弓子や彼女を取り巻く人々がそれぞれ魅力的に描かれていて、特に男性の打算的な心情描写は楽しめます。例えば、弓子に片思いをする同僚浦野とのやりとりはほほえましく楽しめるシーンが満載。弓子の恋人の豊崎とのやりとりは、豊崎の学者らしい社会感覚のなさやちょっとケチな雰囲気の妙なアンバランスさが現実味を帯びています。「人生といふのは、何が何だかわからないうちに、とつぜんもらふ贈り物だから」（八十二ページ）という名言があります。オーソドックスな技法と構成の長編小説であるため『笹まくら』より少し見劣りするが、物語の本筋を外れた所々にコメディや日本文化論、哲学論を盛り込んでいるので楽しみながら読むことができます。　
    翻訳も手掛けたジェイムズ・ジョイス、グレアム・グリーンの欧米文学についての専門的な知識と、源氏物語、古今和歌集以来の古典文学への深い造詣(ぞうけい)をともに備えた教養は、戦後の小説の実作者の中でも群を抜いています。その意味で、丸谷才一は、夏目漱石、森鷗外や石川淳といった教養派の文豪の正統的な後継者といってよいでしょう。丸谷才一の独自性は、教養派の一言には収まりません。趣向や仕掛けを凝らしたその小説は、常に既成の文壇を挑発し、読者に読む楽しみを提供し続けました。普通の市民を主人公に据えながら、その俗物ぶりを際立たせるなどして、暗くてじめじめとした日本の私小説や家庭小説を優雅に笑いのめしました。自我にこだわった生真面目な近代日本文学に反逆を唱えたのです。代表作『たった一人の反乱』の書名は、戦後の日本文学に対する丸谷才一の立ち位置を象徴的に示しています。
 

“A Master of Books” Maruya Saiichi (Japanese-English Translation)　４

(4) Maruya Saiichi's Literary Activities and Works

            In January 1952, Maruya Saiichi founded the quarterly doujin magazine Keiji (Hakurinsha) with Kazushi Shinoda, Akimasa Kanno, Jiro Kawamura, and others. In that January issue he published a short story, ``Warped Sun.'' He serialized ``Avoiding Jehovah's Face'' in the same magazine. In May, he translated Graham Greene's The Bad Boy (Shikuma Shobo). He later translated English literature.
            After graduating from university, he continued to translate and research as an English literature scholar, while also writing, and in 1960 published his first work, ``Avoiding the Face of Jehovah.'' After that, he devoted himself to writing. He is a prolific novelist. He focused his efforts on long novels and is often considered by himself and those around him to be a full-length novelist. Yasutaka Tsutsui once praised it as ``Dickensian decadence.'' From his early days, he was influenced by modernist literature, emphasizing British manners, humor, and intellectual flavor, and wrote novels with a keen sense of criticism against the traditional personal novel literary style of modern Japan. 
            His early works seem to be a mixture of British genre novels and the lyricism of personal novels. He used ``Avoiding the Face of Jehovah'' as a study. It depicts the situation of a soul that is oppressed by overwhelming authority and tries to escape from it through its relationship with God, Jehovah (Yahweh). In addition, the technique of internal monologue adopted by Joyce flourished in his second full-length novel, Sasamakura. Sasamakura (July 1966) depicts the mentality of a man who spent the 15 Years' War as a draft evader, and even after the war, his past continues to influence him in various ways. It's something.
            Maruya Saiichi has only seven full-length novels. He does not depict high-class nomads, but people who work in a society with their professions, including newspaper editorial writers, company presidents, and the former chairman of the Japan Business Federation. Maruya Saiichi says, ``In the first place, a novelist's job is not to search for truth in the ordinary sense of the word. It is to entertain people by telling lies, or in other words, to present a different truth to the ordinary truth.'' ( ``The Milky Way in Ayatori'' (Bungei Shunju).
　　　　In ``Yokoshigure'' (1975), the main character, ``I,'' is an assistant at the Japanese Literature Laboratory, which specializes in medieval waka and renga. His father, a town doctor, rarely talked about his memories, but one day, during a trip to Shikoku, he told a funny story about how he was tricked into drinking by a beggar priest who was a heavy drinker at a tea shop near Dogo Onsen. I've done it before. This strangely stuck in my mind, so at my father's wake, I asked Mr. Kurokawa, a Japanese literature professor who was a friend of my father's who had traveled with him, for more details. That's what I started to think. It was raining that day, and Mr. Kurokawa muttered to himself, ``Yokoshigure,'' which made the beggar priest very impressed. Then he drank the alcohol in rapid succession and walked away into the rain. In 1991, the English translation of ``Yokoshigure'' (about Taneda Santoka) (translated by Dennis Keene, ``RAIN IN THE WIND'') won the special prize at the British Independent Foreign Novel Award.
　　　　``Kimigayo to Sing in False Voice'' (1982, full length) is set in Tokyo in the 1970s, and the narrator is Nashida, an art dealer in his forties. He happens to meet Asako, whom he likes, on a subway escalator and invites her to a party. An inauguration party where my friend Hong Kei-shu became the president of the Taiwanese independence group's "Preparatory Government for the Democratic Republic of Taiwan." From the story of Taiwanese independence to the theory of the nation and love. Shumei Okawa, a fellow countryman who hit Hideki Tojo on the head during the Tokyo trial, appears as the model for a right-wing character (Shumichi Otaguro) in Maruya Saiichi's ``False Voice to Uta e Kimigayo.''
　　　”`The Rest of the Year'' is a short story by Maruya Saiichi. Published in 1968 (Showa 34). In the same year, he won the 59th Akutagawa Prize. This is a work from when I was 43 years old, in the prime of my life. This was the period when he energetically released works such as ``Sasamakura'' in 1966 and ``One Man's Rebellion'' in 1972. The main character, hospital director Tsune Uehara, is 69 years old, almost 30 years older than the author. Moreover, the theme is that "we will all die eventually." This is a novel written by a famous writer about a man who lived a year ago. What makes this possible is the artist's rich imagination. If you read it carefully, you'll see that it has an elaborate structure, starting with a story about a watercolor painting, and ending with a line from a beautiful woman who once had an arranged marriage with the protagonist, but instead of marrying him, she married another man. The reader's ability to clearly understand the flow of time, which is narrated in a complicated way back and forth, is probably due to the author's ability to write. At the beginning, there is a line written by Izumi Shikibu, which may be a kind of dedication, ``If you live in peace, there will be no more years left, and you will grow old.'' ``The rest of the year'' means that the end of the year is also full, and in the Saijiki it is ``counting days''. Of course, this is also because we only have a short time to grow old. You could say that this one poem clearly expresses the theme of the novel, but Izumi Shikibu is probably writing a song lamenting the fact that he has grown old while he is devoted to love, so it seems a little different. I feel like it. It would be interesting to know whether he came up with the idea for the novel first and then announced that there was a song like this, or whether he tried to write the novel based on this song, but since it is about Maruya Saiichi, who loves couplets, I think it's probably the former.
　　　　In ``One Man's Rebellion,'' the story's narrator and main character, ``I'', is a middle-aged man, an elite man who originally worked as a bureaucrat at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. I have now moved to Amakudari, am working at a private company, and have recently lost my boyfriend's wife.　By chance, I marry Yukari, a young model. Then, unexpected events happened to me one after another. A novel that comically depicts the life of a somewhat wealthy "intellectual," centering on a middle-aged man and a young model. The most characteristic feature is that the main character is an ``intellectual'' who calmly analyzes ``why he was beaten'', accumulates rational ideas, and convinces himself. The way you deal with it is humorous. It's just a cry, but because he thinks logically, it doesn't feel tragic, but rather dignified.
　　　　``Onnazakari'' is a story about a family of gorgeous and free-spirited women. It's a story that will keep you entertained until the end, so it's no wonder it was made into a movie. It was made into a movie in 1994 starring Sayuri Yoshinaga. An acquaintance of the mistress of the main character Yumiko Minami (an editorial writer for a major newspaper) is the secretary general of the ruling party, her aunt Masako Minami (former actress) and her former live-in partner are the prime minister, and her daughter Chie Minami (a graduate student) is a former prime minister and current prime minister. I am approached by my master. In other words, it is no exaggeration to say that Japan is ruled by three female generations of the Minami family. The main character, Yumiko, a beautiful newspaper editorial writer, and the people surrounding her are all charmingly portrayed, and I especially enjoy the depiction of the men's calculated feelings. For example, Yumiko's interactions with her colleague Urano, who has an unrequited love for Yumiko, are full of heart-warming and enjoyable scenes. Yumiko's interactions with her boyfriend Toyosaki give a sense of reality to the strange imbalance between Toyosaki's lack of social sense as a scholar and his slightly miserly atmosphere. There is a famous quote that goes, ``Life is a gift that suddenly comes to us before we know what it is.'' (page 82). It's a full-length novel with an orthodox technique and structure, so it's a little inferior to Sasamakura, but it does include comedy, Japanese culture, and philosophy in places that deviate from the main story, so you can enjoy reading it. 　
            James Joyce and Graham Greene, who also worked on translations, have specialized knowledge of Western literature and a deep knowledge of classical literature since The Tale of Genji and the Kokin Wakashu. He stands out among the actual authors. In that sense, Maruya Saiichi can be said to be the legitimate successor to such culturally literate literary greats as Natsume Soseki, Mori Ogai, and Ishikawa Jun. Maruya Saiichi's uniqueness cannot be summed up in the words "cultured." His novels, with elaborate ideas and tricks, always provoked the established literary world and continued to provide readers with the pleasure of reading. He gracefully poked fun at Japan's dark and dank personal novels and family novels by placing ordinary citizens as the main characters and highlighting their snobbery. He opposed modern Japanese literature, which was self-centered and serious. The title of his masterpiece, ``Only One Rebellion,'' symbolically indicates Maruya Saiichi's position in postwar Japanese literature. (To be continued)
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