片山廣子の初期短歌にみられる「死」への憧れ

――クリスティーナ・ロセッティとの比較――

抄録

This study examines the influence of Christina Rossetti's works on the early poems of Japanese tanka poet and translator Hiroko Katayama (1878–1957). Particularly, it focuses on the poems of Hiroko that depict the longing for death as a form of rest.

When she was around 30, Hiroko wrote tanka poems that expressed a desire for death. It is thought that she considered death as a perfect state of peace or rest that contrasted with the difficult situation of the world. This is also the leading theme in Christina Rossetti's works. In Hiroko's series of 10 tanka poems titled Yume-no-kuni (Dream Land), there are a few lines that associate sleep or dreams with death and suggest that death is a form of rest in the afterlife. It is believed that these tanka poems were inspired by Rossetti's works, such as ‘Dream Land' and ‘Ghost Petition'.

Rossetti was a devout Christian, and she contemplated the intermediate state of the soul̶also called ‘Soul Sleep'̶after death. Conversely, she also displayed an interest in the supernatural and wrote poems related to spectrality. Although Hiroko was educated in a mission school and knew about the spiritual insights of the Christian religion, she was never baptised. She had wide-ranging interests in the spiritual world―for instance, she wrote tanka poems related to reincarnation and ghosts and translated Irish fairy tales into Japanese. Hiroko was attracted to and inspired by Rossetti's work that contained both devotional and supernatural aspects.