『ビーチャムの生涯』と漱石

―『草枕』の「西洋の本」

抄録

　In Chap.9 of Sôseki’s Kusamakura, the painter reads to Nami some pages of an English novel in his own translation into Japanese. The source book has been identified as Meredith’s Beauchamp’s Career. Close reading of the two texts reveals that Sôseki was largely indebted, though in a subtle way, to this Victorian novel in the overall planning of his own writing as well as in the characterisation of the heroine.

　The translated passage is an excerpt from ‘A Night on the Adriatic’， a chapter which focuses on Beauchamp’s blighted first love in Venice with Renée, the 17-year-old daughter of a French count. In a previous chapter Beauchamp reads an English book for Renée in his translation into French; the situation is almost identical with that in Kusamakura. The two heroines also present remarkable affinity: both of them are forced by their father to marry a man of wealth against their will, and turn out to be a failure in marriage and a fatal attraction to men.

　What is more significant, however, is the resemblance of the leitmotif of the translated passage of Beauchamp’s Career to that of the ending of Kusamakura. In both cases, the emphasis is on the heroine’s‘sudden exquisite transition’ in betraying her tenderness. Sôseki’s margin note in his own copy of Beauchamp’s Career shows that he was not only impressed by Renée’s transition but also was inspired to depict ‘an opposite change’, which probably resulted in describing Nami’s expression of pity, or 'aware', for her divorced hus- band, in striking contrast to Renée’s tenderness for her lover Beauchamp. Comparative study of the quality of their transition will clarify differences, as well as similarities, of the two writers.