Doppo and Wordsworth―

On “Koharu” (The Indian Summer)

Abstract

　It is well known that Kunikida Doppo was greatly influenced by William Wordsworth and that the influence can be identified in his various works. One of his short stories “Koharu” (“The Indian Summer”), written in 1900, is among them. In my article, I discuss how Doppo’s “Koharu” closely imitates the structure of “Tintern Abbey” (1798), namely, the contrast of the past and the present; he also establishes a close parallel between the two works with regard to their thematic content – the meaning of which he intimately grasps. Therefore, Doppo once more immerses himself in the Wordsworthian world and revives himself, be it though for a brief time. In the story, Doppo accompanies himself with a young painter on his trip to Musashino in a way similar to that in which Wordsworth accompanied himself with his sister Dorothy on his second visit to the Wye as “an incarnation of his earlier self,” ⁽¹⁾ for both of them well knew “[t]he still, sad music of humanity.”⁽²⁾

　In addition to discussing the comparison of the theme and structure of these two works, this article focuses on another intimate relation found in “Koharu” – its creative use of Miyazaki Koshoshi’s Wordsworth (1893), the first Wordsworthian biography written in Japanese, which is mostly based on F. W. H. Myers’s Wordsworth (1885), one of the greatest biographies ever composed on the poet. “Koharu” contains several passages from Koshoshi’s biography which invite Doppo to remember his old days in the country and one of which is taken significantly from Wordsworth’s Guide to the Lakes. Since no scholar to date has paid attention to this fact, its significance will be emphatically discussed in this article.

　Notes: (1) Harold Bloom, The Visionary Company (Faber, 1961), p. 133.

　 (2) Jack Stillinger, ed., William Wordsworth: Selected Poems and Prefaces,Riverside edition (1965), p. 110.