彫像師の悲恋物語と仏師の悲恋物語

－内田魯庵訳コンウェイ「彫像師」と幸田露伴「風流佛」－

抄録

　In the magazine Taiyo published in 1896, Uchida Roan (1868-1929) offers his translation of Cho-Zo-Shi, a tragic love story of unknown origin. The author of this paper has discovered that the original can be traced back to The Story of the Sculptor written in 1885 by Hugh Conway (1847-1885), a popular English novelist of the same period.

　This paper attempts to clarify Uchida’s motivation for translating The Story of the Sculptor. Although he never specified his reasons, his motives may be rooted in his early criticism of Koda Rohan’s Fu-Ryu-Butsu (1889). That is, in spite of his constant praise of Fu-Ryu-Butsu, Uchida was actually dissatisfied with one aspect of the epilogue. By referring to this criticism, this paper aims to clarify the incentive of Uchida’s translation.

　The protagonists in both Conway’s The Story of the Sculptor and Koda’s Fu- Ryu-Butsu share many similarities. For example, in both novels the protagonist, a sculptor, carves a statue of the woman who left him due to his socially low status as a sculptor. However, the epilogue in each tale has clearly a different outcome. Unlike Fu-Ryu-Butsu, Conway's The Story of the Sculptor does not depict illusory descriptions in the epilogue, but realistically describes the depravity of the sculptor who lost his love.

　One accepted interpretation of this translation is that Conway’s The Story of the Sculptor is a western realistic version of Fu-Ryu-Butsu seen through Uchida’s critical eye.