鶴見祐輔のバイロン熱

――『歐米大陸遊記』における『チャイルド・ハロルドの巡礼』受容――

抄録

　Tsurumi Yusuke (1885-1973), a politician and writer who actively engaged in public relations and diplomacy from the Taisho up to the Showa era, was also quite an avid reader of the works of Lord Byron (1788-1824), he even wrote Byron's biography. He started reading Byron's poetry around 1930 while on a tour in Europe and America. Inspired by Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812, 1816, 1818), he wrote a travel book entitled The Grand Tour of the West (Oubei Tairiku Yuki, 1933). In the chapter on Italian travel, Tsurumi quotes verses from the fourth canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and overlaps his own outlook towards Italy with that of Byron.

　However, there were differences between Tsurumi's view of Italy and that of Byron. While Byron likened his reduced circumstances to the fall of Venice at the beginning of the 19th century, and to the ruins of ancient Rome, Tsurumi observed the rise of Fascist Italy in the first half of the 20th century under Mussolini's rule, and there he witnessed the heroic spirit of the Italians that matched his ideals of a hero. Tsurumi ignores Byron's decadent ego, while quoting and interpreting the verses of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in a form that is convenient to his own heroism which leads to the causes of expansionism or imperialism.