「偉大なる暗闇」の系譜

―漱石とコンラッドの共鳴―

抄録

　Sōseki described Kurtz in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as ‘a great man’ in one of his fragmentary notes, just as Marlow declared that Kurtz was ‘a remarkable man’. Thus Sōseki showed his sympathy towards Kurtz, the incarnation of the darkness of human degradation. The image of Kurtz as such is strongly reflected in the description of Yassan in Sōseki's Kōfu (The Miner), who is likewise called ‘this respectable Yassan’ by his young follower. Yassan is a sinful man, working in the complete darkness of a copper mine.

　In the same way Professor Hirota, an English teacher, in Sōseki’Sanshirō is nicknamed ‘Great Darkness” by Yojirō, a university student. This epithet, as far as Yojirō is concerned, remains nothing but an ordinary, superficial simile, implying the scholar of ‘great’ knowledge leading a ‘dark’ way of life, unknown to the world. On the other hand Sanshirō, another university student, seems to find a symbolic meaning in the epithet: Professor Hirota is ‘great’ in that he embodies the fundamental, sinful ‘darkness’ of man in the midst of worldly light. Sōseki seems to have adopted the image of the remarkable Kurtz who was darkness itself.

　The combinations of Kurtz and Marlow, Yassan and a youth, Professor Hirota and Sanshirō, form a lineage both of spiritual masters and disciples and of human friends equally sharing darkness. Both writers sharply criticised modern Western civilization which ignores human darkness, and desperately quested for a spiritual lineage connected through the fundamental darkness common to all human beings.