都会の少年が田舎に行くことになり、素朴な村娘と恋に落ちる。しかし環境の違いはいかんともしがたく……
ジイドだったかな、とにかく18世紀頃からヨーロッパで語り尽くされた話。ハーディの「テス」も似た感じかも。
しかし、しかし。その古典的なプロットが作者の天才的な手腕により、清新な物語に生まれ変わっています。
描写のしかた、多少小出しにする順番、意外なセリフの組み合わせ、時にまったく唐突に見える書き出し。
ものすごいテクニックです。翻訳も素晴らしいのだと思います。こんなテクニカルな恋愛小説は読んだことがありません。
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress: A Novel (英語) ペーパーバック – 2002/10/29
Dai Sijie
(著)
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お届け日: 2月12日 - 28日 詳細を見る
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本の長さ192ページ
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言語英語
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出版社Anchor
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発売日2002/10/29
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対象読者年齢14 - 18歳
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寸法13.21 x 1.27 x 20.32 cm
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ISBN-100385722206
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ISBN-13978-0385722209
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“An unexpected miracle–a delicate, and often hilarious, tale.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review
“A funny, touching, sly and altogether delightful novel . . . about the power of art to enlarge our imaginations.” —The Washington Post Book World
“Poetic and affecting. . . . The descriptions of life in this strangest of times and places are so riveting that the reader longs for more.” —The New York Times Book Review
“[A] thrilling and . . . truly great work. . . . [A] richly complex fable.” —San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
“Gives the rest of the world a glimpse into that dark place where the human spirit continues, against all odds, to shine its light.” —The Boston Globe
“A wonderful novel . . . formed by detailed layering and exquisite craftsmanship, like a beautifully tailored garment.” —The Chicago Tribune
“Poignant, humorous, and romantic.” —The New York Times
“Seduces readers into its world. . . . [A] very wise little story of love and illusion.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
“A funny, touching, sly and altogether delightful novel . . . about the power of art to enlarge our imaginations.” —The Washington Post Book World
“Poetic and affecting. . . . The descriptions of life in this strangest of times and places are so riveting that the reader longs for more.” —The New York Times Book Review
“[A] thrilling and . . . truly great work. . . . [A] richly complex fable.” —San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
“Gives the rest of the world a glimpse into that dark place where the human spirit continues, against all odds, to shine its light.” —The Boston Globe
“A wonderful novel . . . formed by detailed layering and exquisite craftsmanship, like a beautifully tailored garment.” —The Chicago Tribune
“Poignant, humorous, and romantic.” —The New York Times
“Seduces readers into its world. . . . [A] very wise little story of love and illusion.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
抜粋
PART I
The village headman, a man of about fifty, sat cross-legged in the centre of the room, close to the coals burning in a hearth that was hollowed out of the floor; he was inspecting my violin. Among the possessions brought to this mountain village by the two "city youths"-which was how they saw Luo and me-it was the sole item that exuded an air of foreignness, of civilisation, and therefore aroused suspicion.
One of the peasants came forward with an oil lamp to facilitate identification of the strange object. The headman held the violin upright and peered into the black interior of the body, like an officious customs officer searching for drugs. I noticed three blood spots in his left eye, one large and two small, all the same shade of bright red.
Raising the violin to eye level, he shook it, as though convinced something would drop out of the sound holes. His investigation was so enthusiastic I was afraid the strings would break.
Just about everyone in the village had come to the house on stilts way up on the mountain to witness the arrival of the city youths. Men, women and children swarmed inside the cramped room, clung to the windows, jostled each other by the door. When nothing fell out of my violin, the headman held his nose over the sound holes and sniffed long and hard. Several bristly hairs protruding from his left nostril vibrated gently.
Still no clues.
He ran his calloused fingertips over one string, then another . . . The strange resonance froze the crowd, as if the sound had won some sort of respect.
"It's a toy," said the headman solemnly.
This verdict left us speechless. Luo and I exchanged furtive, anxious glances. Things were not looking good.
One peasant took the "toy" from the headman's hands, drummed with his fists on its back, then passed it to the next man. For a while my violin circulated through the crowd and we-two frail, skinny, exhausted and risible city youths-were ignored. We had been tramping across the mountains all day, and our clothes, faces and hair were streaked with mud. We looked like pathetic little reactionary soldiers from a propaganda film after their capture by a horde of Communist farm workers.
"A stupid toy," a woman commented hoarsely.
"No," the village headman corrected her, "a bourgeois toy."
I felt chilled to the bone despite the fire blazing in the centre of the room.
"A toy from the city," the headman continued, "go on, burn it!"
His command galvanised the crowd. Everyone started talking at once, shouting and reaching out to grab the toy for the privilege of throwing it on the coals.
"Comrade, it's a musical instrument," Luo said as casually as he could, "and my friend here's a fine musician. Truly."
The headman called for the violin and looked it over once more. Then he held it out to me.
"Fogive me, comrade," I said, embarrassed, "but I'm not that good."
I saw Luo giving me a surreptitious wink. Puzzled, I took my violin and set about tuning it.
"What you are about to hear, comrade, is a Mozart sonata," Luo announced, as coolly as before.
I was dumbfounded. Had he gone mad? All music by Mozart or indeed by any other Western composer had been banned years ago. In my sodden shoes my feet turned to ice. I shivered as the cold tightened its grip on me.
"What's a sonata?" the headman asked warily.
"I don't know," I faltered. "It's Western."
"Is it a song?"
"More or less," I replied evasively.
At that instant the glint of the vigilant Communist reappeared in the headman's eyes, and his voice turned hostile.
"What's the name of this song of yours?"
"Well, it's like a song, but actually it's a sonata."
"I'm asking you what it's called!" he snapped, fixing me with his gaze.
Again I was alarmed by the three spots of blood in his left eye.
";Mozart . . . ," I muttered.
"Mozart what?"
"Mozart Is Thinking of Chairman Mao," Luo broke in.
The audacity! But it worked: as if he had heard something miraculous, the headman's menacing look softened. He crinkled up his eyes in a wide, beatific smile.
"Mozart thinks of Mao all the time," he said.
"Indeed, all the time," agreed Luo.
As soon as I had tightened my bow there was a burst of applause, but I was still nervous. However, as I ran my swollen fingers over the strings, Mozart's phrases came flooding back to me like so many faithful friends. The peasants' faces, so grim a moment before, softened under the influence of Mozart's limpid music like parched earth under a shower, and then, in the dancing light of the oil lamp, they blurred into one.
I played for some time. Luo lit a cigarette and smoked quietly, like a man.
This was our first taste of re-education. Luo was eighteen years old, I was seventeen.
B
a few words about re-education: towards the end of 1968, the Great Helmsman of China's Revolution, Chairman Mao, launched a campaign that would leave the country profoundly altered. The universities were closed and all the "young intellectuals," meaning boys and girls who had graduated from high school, were sent to the countryside to be "re-educated by the poor peasants." (Some years later this unprecedented idea inspired another revolutionary leader in Asia, Cambodian this time, to undertake an even more ambitious and radical plan: he banished the entire population of the capital, old and young alike, "to the countryside.")
The real reason behind Mao Zedong's decision was unclear. Was it a ploy to get rid of the Red Guards, who were slipping out of his grasp? Or was it the fantasy of a great revolutionary dreamer, wishing to create a new generation? No one ever discovered his true motive. At the time, Luo and I often discussed it in secret, like a pair of conspirators. We decided that it all came down to Mao's hatred of intellectuals.
We were not the first to be used as guinea pigs in this grand human experiment, nor would we be the last. It was in early 1971 that we arrived at that village in a lost corner of the mountains, and that I played the violin for the headman. Compared with others we were not too badly off. Millions of young people had gone before us, and millions would follow. But there was a certain irony about our situation, as neither Luo nor I were high school graduates. We had not enjoyed the privilege of studying at an institution for advanced education. When we were sent off to the mountains as young intellectuals we had only had the statutory three years of lower middle school.
It was hard to see how the two of us could possibly qualify as intellectuals, given that the knowledge we had acquired at middle school was precisely nil. Between the ages of twelve and fourteen we had been obliged to wait for the Cultural Revolution to calm down before the school reopened. And when we were finally able to enroll we were in for a bitter disappointment: mathematics had been scrapped from the curriculum, as had physics and chemistry. From then on our lessons were restricted to the basics of industry and agriculture. Decorating the cover of our textbooks would be a picture of a worker with arms as thick as Sylvester Stallone's, wearing a cap and brandishing a huge hammer. Flanking him would be a peasant woman, or rather a Communist in the guise of a peasant woman, wearing a red headscarf (according to the vulgar joke that circulated among us schoolkids she had tied a sanitary towel round her head). For several years it was these textbooks and Mao's "Little Red Book" that constituted our only source of intellectual knowledge. All other books were forbidden.
First we were refused admission to high school, then the role of young intellectuals was foisted on us on account of our parents being labelled "enemies in the people."
My parents were doctors. My father was a lung specialist, and my mother a consultant in parasitic diseases. Both of them worked at the hospital in Chengdu, a city of four million inhabitants. Their crime was that they were "stinking scientific authorities" who enjoyed a modest reputation on a provincial scale, Chengdu being the capital of Szechuan, a province with a population of one hundred million. Far away from Beijing but very close to Tibet.
Compared with my parents, Luo's father, a famous dentist whose name was known all over China, was a real celebrity. One day-this was before the Cultural Revolution-he mentioned to his students that he had fixed Mao Zedong's teeth as well as those of Madame Mao and Jiang Jieshi, who had been president of the Republic prior to the Communist takeover. There were those who, having contemplated Mao's portrait every day for years, had indeed noted that his teeth looked remarkably stained, not to say yellow, but no one said so out loud. And yet here was an eminent dentist stating publicly that the Great Helmsman of the Revolution had been fitted with new teeth, just like that. It was beyond belief, an unpardonable, insane crime, worse than revealing a secret of national security. His crime was all the more grave because he dared to mention the names of Mao and his consort in the same breath as that of the worst scum of the earth: Jiang Jieshi.
For many years Luo's family lived in the apartment next to ours, on the third and top floor of a brick building. He was the fifth son of his father, and the only child of his mother.
I am not exaggerating when I say that Luo was the best friend I ever had. We grew up together, we shared all sorts of experiences, often tough ones. We very rarely quarrelled.
I will never forget the one time we came to blows, or rather the time he hit me. It was in the summer of 1968. He was about fifteen, I had just turned fourteen. That afternoon a big political meeting was being held on the sports ground of the hospital where our parents worked. Both of us were aware that the butt of the rally would be Luo's father, that yet another public humiliation awaited him. When it was nearly five o'clock and no one had yet returned, Luo asked me to accompany him to the hospital.
"We'll note down everyone who denounces my father, or beats him," he said. "That way we can take our revenge when we're older."
The sports ground was a bobbing sea of dark heads. It was a very hot day. Loudspeakers blared. Luo's father was on his hands and knees in front of a grandstand. A great slab of cement hung round his neck from a wire so deeply embedded in the skin as to be invisible. Written on the slab were his name and his crime: reactionary.
Even from where I was standing, thirty metres away, I could make out a dark stain on the ground made by the sweat dripping from his brow.
A man's voice roared through the loudspeaker.
"Admit that you slept with the nurse!"
Luo's father hung his head, so low that his face seemed buried in the cement slab. A microphone was shoved under his mouth and a faint, tremulous "yes" was heard.
"Tell us what happened!" the inquisitor's voice barked from the loudspeaker. "Who started it?"
"I did."
"And then?"
A few seconds of silence ensued. Then the whole crowd screamed in unison: "And then?"
This cry, raised by two thousand voices, was like the rumble of thunder breaking over our heads.
"I started it . . . ," Luo's father confessed.
"Go on! The details!"
"But as soon as I touched her, I fell . . . into mist and clouds."
We left as the crowd of fanatics resumed their mass inquisition. On the way home I suddenly felt tears running down my cheeks, and I realised how fond I was of the dentist.
At that moment, without saying a word, Luo punched me. I was so taken aback that I nearly lost my balance.
In 1971 there was little to distinguish us two-one the son of a pulmonary specialist, the other the son of a notorious class enemy who had enjoyed the privilege of touching Mao's teeth-from the other hundred-odd "young intellectuals" who were banished to the mountain known as the Phoenix of the Sky. The name was a poetic way of suggesting its terrifying altitude; the poor sparrows and common birds of the plain could never soar to its peak, for that was the reserve of winged creatures allied to the sky: mighty, mythical and profoundly solitary.
There was no road to the mountain, only a narrow pathway threading steeply through great walls of craggy rock. For a glimpse of a car, the sound of a horn, a whiff of restaurant food, indeed for any sign of civilisation, you had to tramp across rugged mountain terrain for two days. A hundred kilometres later you would reach the banks of the River Ya and the small town of Yong Jing. The only Westerner ever to have set foot here was a French missionary, Father Michel, who tried to find a new route to Tibet in the 1940s.
"The district of Yong Jing is not lacking in interest," the Jesuit commented in his notebook. "One of the mountains, locally known as 'the Phoenix of the Sky,' is especially noteworthy. Famed for its copper, employed by the ancients for minting coins, the mountain is said to have been offered by an emperor of the Han dynasty as a gift to his favourite, who was one of the chief eunuchs in his palace. Looking up at the vertiginous slopes all around me, I could just make out a footpath rising from the shadowy fissures in the cliff towards the sky, where it seemed to melt into the misty air. I noted a small band of coolies making their way down this path, laden like beasts of burden with great panniers of copper tied to their backs. I am told that the production of copper has been in decline for many years, primarily due to the difficulty of transport. At present, the peculiar geographic conditions of the mountain have led the local population to grow opium. I have been advised against climbing it, as all the opium growers are armed. After harvesting their crop, they spend their time attacking anyone who happens to pass by. So I content myself with observing from afar this wild and lonely place, so thickly screened by giant trees, tangled creepers and lush vegetation as to make one expect to see a bandit leaping from the shadows at any moment."
The Phoenix of the Sky comprised some twenty villages scattered along the single serpentine footpath or hidden in the depths of gloomy valleys. Usually each village took in five or six young people from the city. But our village, perched on the summit and the poorest of them all, could only afford two: Luo and me. We were assigned quarters in the very house on stilts where the village headman had inspected my violin. This building was village property, and had not been constructed with habitation in mind. Underneath, in the space between the wooden props supporting the floor, was a pigsty occupied by a large, plump sow-likewise common property. The structure itself was made of rough wooden planks, the walls were unpainted and the beams exposed; it was more like a barn for the storage of maize, rice and tools in need of repair. It was also a perfect trysting place for adulterous lovers.
The village headman, a man of about fifty, sat cross-legged in the centre of the room, close to the coals burning in a hearth that was hollowed out of the floor; he was inspecting my violin. Among the possessions brought to this mountain village by the two "city youths"-which was how they saw Luo and me-it was the sole item that exuded an air of foreignness, of civilisation, and therefore aroused suspicion.
One of the peasants came forward with an oil lamp to facilitate identification of the strange object. The headman held the violin upright and peered into the black interior of the body, like an officious customs officer searching for drugs. I noticed three blood spots in his left eye, one large and two small, all the same shade of bright red.
Raising the violin to eye level, he shook it, as though convinced something would drop out of the sound holes. His investigation was so enthusiastic I was afraid the strings would break.
Just about everyone in the village had come to the house on stilts way up on the mountain to witness the arrival of the city youths. Men, women and children swarmed inside the cramped room, clung to the windows, jostled each other by the door. When nothing fell out of my violin, the headman held his nose over the sound holes and sniffed long and hard. Several bristly hairs protruding from his left nostril vibrated gently.
Still no clues.
He ran his calloused fingertips over one string, then another . . . The strange resonance froze the crowd, as if the sound had won some sort of respect.
"It's a toy," said the headman solemnly.
This verdict left us speechless. Luo and I exchanged furtive, anxious glances. Things were not looking good.
One peasant took the "toy" from the headman's hands, drummed with his fists on its back, then passed it to the next man. For a while my violin circulated through the crowd and we-two frail, skinny, exhausted and risible city youths-were ignored. We had been tramping across the mountains all day, and our clothes, faces and hair were streaked with mud. We looked like pathetic little reactionary soldiers from a propaganda film after their capture by a horde of Communist farm workers.
"A stupid toy," a woman commented hoarsely.
"No," the village headman corrected her, "a bourgeois toy."
I felt chilled to the bone despite the fire blazing in the centre of the room.
"A toy from the city," the headman continued, "go on, burn it!"
His command galvanised the crowd. Everyone started talking at once, shouting and reaching out to grab the toy for the privilege of throwing it on the coals.
"Comrade, it's a musical instrument," Luo said as casually as he could, "and my friend here's a fine musician. Truly."
The headman called for the violin and looked it over once more. Then he held it out to me.
"Fogive me, comrade," I said, embarrassed, "but I'm not that good."
I saw Luo giving me a surreptitious wink. Puzzled, I took my violin and set about tuning it.
"What you are about to hear, comrade, is a Mozart sonata," Luo announced, as coolly as before.
I was dumbfounded. Had he gone mad? All music by Mozart or indeed by any other Western composer had been banned years ago. In my sodden shoes my feet turned to ice. I shivered as the cold tightened its grip on me.
"What's a sonata?" the headman asked warily.
"I don't know," I faltered. "It's Western."
"Is it a song?"
"More or less," I replied evasively.
At that instant the glint of the vigilant Communist reappeared in the headman's eyes, and his voice turned hostile.
"What's the name of this song of yours?"
"Well, it's like a song, but actually it's a sonata."
"I'm asking you what it's called!" he snapped, fixing me with his gaze.
Again I was alarmed by the three spots of blood in his left eye.
";Mozart . . . ," I muttered.
"Mozart what?"
"Mozart Is Thinking of Chairman Mao," Luo broke in.
The audacity! But it worked: as if he had heard something miraculous, the headman's menacing look softened. He crinkled up his eyes in a wide, beatific smile.
"Mozart thinks of Mao all the time," he said.
"Indeed, all the time," agreed Luo.
As soon as I had tightened my bow there was a burst of applause, but I was still nervous. However, as I ran my swollen fingers over the strings, Mozart's phrases came flooding back to me like so many faithful friends. The peasants' faces, so grim a moment before, softened under the influence of Mozart's limpid music like parched earth under a shower, and then, in the dancing light of the oil lamp, they blurred into one.
I played for some time. Luo lit a cigarette and smoked quietly, like a man.
This was our first taste of re-education. Luo was eighteen years old, I was seventeen.
B
a few words about re-education: towards the end of 1968, the Great Helmsman of China's Revolution, Chairman Mao, launched a campaign that would leave the country profoundly altered. The universities were closed and all the "young intellectuals," meaning boys and girls who had graduated from high school, were sent to the countryside to be "re-educated by the poor peasants." (Some years later this unprecedented idea inspired another revolutionary leader in Asia, Cambodian this time, to undertake an even more ambitious and radical plan: he banished the entire population of the capital, old and young alike, "to the countryside.")
The real reason behind Mao Zedong's decision was unclear. Was it a ploy to get rid of the Red Guards, who were slipping out of his grasp? Or was it the fantasy of a great revolutionary dreamer, wishing to create a new generation? No one ever discovered his true motive. At the time, Luo and I often discussed it in secret, like a pair of conspirators. We decided that it all came down to Mao's hatred of intellectuals.
We were not the first to be used as guinea pigs in this grand human experiment, nor would we be the last. It was in early 1971 that we arrived at that village in a lost corner of the mountains, and that I played the violin for the headman. Compared with others we were not too badly off. Millions of young people had gone before us, and millions would follow. But there was a certain irony about our situation, as neither Luo nor I were high school graduates. We had not enjoyed the privilege of studying at an institution for advanced education. When we were sent off to the mountains as young intellectuals we had only had the statutory three years of lower middle school.
It was hard to see how the two of us could possibly qualify as intellectuals, given that the knowledge we had acquired at middle school was precisely nil. Between the ages of twelve and fourteen we had been obliged to wait for the Cultural Revolution to calm down before the school reopened. And when we were finally able to enroll we were in for a bitter disappointment: mathematics had been scrapped from the curriculum, as had physics and chemistry. From then on our lessons were restricted to the basics of industry and agriculture. Decorating the cover of our textbooks would be a picture of a worker with arms as thick as Sylvester Stallone's, wearing a cap and brandishing a huge hammer. Flanking him would be a peasant woman, or rather a Communist in the guise of a peasant woman, wearing a red headscarf (according to the vulgar joke that circulated among us schoolkids she had tied a sanitary towel round her head). For several years it was these textbooks and Mao's "Little Red Book" that constituted our only source of intellectual knowledge. All other books were forbidden.
First we were refused admission to high school, then the role of young intellectuals was foisted on us on account of our parents being labelled "enemies in the people."
My parents were doctors. My father was a lung specialist, and my mother a consultant in parasitic diseases. Both of them worked at the hospital in Chengdu, a city of four million inhabitants. Their crime was that they were "stinking scientific authorities" who enjoyed a modest reputation on a provincial scale, Chengdu being the capital of Szechuan, a province with a population of one hundred million. Far away from Beijing but very close to Tibet.
Compared with my parents, Luo's father, a famous dentist whose name was known all over China, was a real celebrity. One day-this was before the Cultural Revolution-he mentioned to his students that he had fixed Mao Zedong's teeth as well as those of Madame Mao and Jiang Jieshi, who had been president of the Republic prior to the Communist takeover. There were those who, having contemplated Mao's portrait every day for years, had indeed noted that his teeth looked remarkably stained, not to say yellow, but no one said so out loud. And yet here was an eminent dentist stating publicly that the Great Helmsman of the Revolution had been fitted with new teeth, just like that. It was beyond belief, an unpardonable, insane crime, worse than revealing a secret of national security. His crime was all the more grave because he dared to mention the names of Mao and his consort in the same breath as that of the worst scum of the earth: Jiang Jieshi.
For many years Luo's family lived in the apartment next to ours, on the third and top floor of a brick building. He was the fifth son of his father, and the only child of his mother.
I am not exaggerating when I say that Luo was the best friend I ever had. We grew up together, we shared all sorts of experiences, often tough ones. We very rarely quarrelled.
I will never forget the one time we came to blows, or rather the time he hit me. It was in the summer of 1968. He was about fifteen, I had just turned fourteen. That afternoon a big political meeting was being held on the sports ground of the hospital where our parents worked. Both of us were aware that the butt of the rally would be Luo's father, that yet another public humiliation awaited him. When it was nearly five o'clock and no one had yet returned, Luo asked me to accompany him to the hospital.
"We'll note down everyone who denounces my father, or beats him," he said. "That way we can take our revenge when we're older."
The sports ground was a bobbing sea of dark heads. It was a very hot day. Loudspeakers blared. Luo's father was on his hands and knees in front of a grandstand. A great slab of cement hung round his neck from a wire so deeply embedded in the skin as to be invisible. Written on the slab were his name and his crime: reactionary.
Even from where I was standing, thirty metres away, I could make out a dark stain on the ground made by the sweat dripping from his brow.
A man's voice roared through the loudspeaker.
"Admit that you slept with the nurse!"
Luo's father hung his head, so low that his face seemed buried in the cement slab. A microphone was shoved under his mouth and a faint, tremulous "yes" was heard.
"Tell us what happened!" the inquisitor's voice barked from the loudspeaker. "Who started it?"
"I did."
"And then?"
A few seconds of silence ensued. Then the whole crowd screamed in unison: "And then?"
This cry, raised by two thousand voices, was like the rumble of thunder breaking over our heads.
"I started it . . . ," Luo's father confessed.
"Go on! The details!"
"But as soon as I touched her, I fell . . . into mist and clouds."
We left as the crowd of fanatics resumed their mass inquisition. On the way home I suddenly felt tears running down my cheeks, and I realised how fond I was of the dentist.
At that moment, without saying a word, Luo punched me. I was so taken aback that I nearly lost my balance.
In 1971 there was little to distinguish us two-one the son of a pulmonary specialist, the other the son of a notorious class enemy who had enjoyed the privilege of touching Mao's teeth-from the other hundred-odd "young intellectuals" who were banished to the mountain known as the Phoenix of the Sky. The name was a poetic way of suggesting its terrifying altitude; the poor sparrows and common birds of the plain could never soar to its peak, for that was the reserve of winged creatures allied to the sky: mighty, mythical and profoundly solitary.
There was no road to the mountain, only a narrow pathway threading steeply through great walls of craggy rock. For a glimpse of a car, the sound of a horn, a whiff of restaurant food, indeed for any sign of civilisation, you had to tramp across rugged mountain terrain for two days. A hundred kilometres later you would reach the banks of the River Ya and the small town of Yong Jing. The only Westerner ever to have set foot here was a French missionary, Father Michel, who tried to find a new route to Tibet in the 1940s.
"The district of Yong Jing is not lacking in interest," the Jesuit commented in his notebook. "One of the mountains, locally known as 'the Phoenix of the Sky,' is especially noteworthy. Famed for its copper, employed by the ancients for minting coins, the mountain is said to have been offered by an emperor of the Han dynasty as a gift to his favourite, who was one of the chief eunuchs in his palace. Looking up at the vertiginous slopes all around me, I could just make out a footpath rising from the shadowy fissures in the cliff towards the sky, where it seemed to melt into the misty air. I noted a small band of coolies making their way down this path, laden like beasts of burden with great panniers of copper tied to their backs. I am told that the production of copper has been in decline for many years, primarily due to the difficulty of transport. At present, the peculiar geographic conditions of the mountain have led the local population to grow opium. I have been advised against climbing it, as all the opium growers are armed. After harvesting their crop, they spend their time attacking anyone who happens to pass by. So I content myself with observing from afar this wild and lonely place, so thickly screened by giant trees, tangled creepers and lush vegetation as to make one expect to see a bandit leaping from the shadows at any moment."
The Phoenix of the Sky comprised some twenty villages scattered along the single serpentine footpath or hidden in the depths of gloomy valleys. Usually each village took in five or six young people from the city. But our village, perched on the summit and the poorest of them all, could only afford two: Luo and me. We were assigned quarters in the very house on stilts where the village headman had inspected my violin. This building was village property, and had not been constructed with habitation in mind. Underneath, in the space between the wooden props supporting the floor, was a pigsty occupied by a large, plump sow-likewise common property. The structure itself was made of rough wooden planks, the walls were unpainted and the beams exposed; it was more like a barn for the storage of maize, rice and tools in need of repair. It was also a perfect trysting place for adulterous lovers.
著者について
Born in China in 1954, Dai Sijie is a filmmaker who was himself “re-educated” between 1971 and 1974.
He left China in 1984 for France, where he has lived and worked ever since. This, his first novel, was an overnight sensation when it appeared in France in 2000, becoming an immediate best-seller and winning five prizes. Rights to the novel have been sold in nineteen countries, and it is soon to be made into a film.
He left China in 1984 for France, where he has lived and worked ever since. This, his first novel, was an overnight sensation when it appeared in France in 2000, becoming an immediate best-seller and winning five prizes. Rights to the novel have been sold in nineteen countries, and it is soon to be made into a film.
登録情報
- 出版社 : Anchor; Reprint版 (2002/10/29)
- 発売日 : 2002/10/29
- 言語 : 英語
- ペーパーバック : 192ページ
- ISBN-10 : 0385722206
- ISBN-13 : 978-0385722209
- 対象読者年齢 : 14 - 18歳
- 寸法 : 13.21 x 1.27 x 20.32 cm
-
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- 222,003位洋書 (の売れ筋ランキングを見る洋書)
- - 284位Censorship & Politics
- - 2,428位Historical Fiction
- - 6,187位Literary Fiction
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5つ星のうち4.4
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293 件のグローバル評価
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トップレビュー
上位レビュー、対象国: 日本
レビューのフィルタリング中に問題が発生しました。後でもう一度試してください。
2012年2月21日に日本でレビュー済み
Amazonで購入
文革の間にも、当たり前の生活があり、こんな愉快なことが日々行われていたのですね。「大地の子」や、陳凱歌の「私の紅衛兵時代」で、下放というものの様子、過ごし方をほぼ理解したつもりになり、ずっしり重みを抱え込んで居た私を、これはどんでん返しにしました。しかし何んとも痛快で、嬉しいどんでん返しです。彼らが秘境の崖を走る時、産院の前で戸惑う時、メガネのバルザックを狙うとき、私も若さが甦り、何の不都合もなく彼らの後を追っていました。このようなスタンスの若者もいて、中国を背負う人々の多様さに羨ましい気もします。これは青春小説なのでしょうが、私にとっては「ニーチェの読書の法則」の条件にピッタリ該当するものでした。
今、あんなに好きだった陳凱歌から、ダイ・シージエに心変わりをしてしまいそうです。
今、あんなに好きだった陳凱歌から、ダイ・シージエに心変わりをしてしまいそうです。
2003年7月7日に日本でレビュー済み
Amazonで購入
「本を読みたい」!当然の権利すら剥奪された中国の文化革命時代。俗にいう「インテリ」の青年達が田舎に送られ、貧しい農民と暮らすことで高等教育を受けたアタマを「再教育」する。そしてそれは「故郷に帰れずその地で朽ち果てる」ことすら意味する。そんな環境での青年達の読書への渇望、生への執着、性への目覚め。それらを美しい田舎の少女との複雑な関係を芯にして描きだしていく。結末には予想さえしなかったことが起こる。彼らのその後の人生が気になって仕方がないのは私だけではないであろう。まさに絵画のような文学だ。受け止め方は読者にフルにまかされている。読むたびに違う発見がありそうな一冊だ。
殿堂入りベスト10レビュアー
"この本がなぜ選ばれたのかは不明だったが、それは僕たちの人生を、少なくとも鳳凰山での再教育の日々を大きく揺るがすことになった"2000年に発刊、フランス在住の中国人映画監督の著者が自らの体験を下敷きにフランス語で書いた本書は、文革時代の中国を舞台にした少女と本を巡る瑞々しいベストセラー青春小説。
個人的には、中国人作家の作品を探していた時に『ゴリオ爺さん』等でお馴染みバルザックの名前がタイトルに使われていた事で興味を、また表紙イラスト自体もお洒落に感じて本書を手にとりました。
さて、そんな本書は1970年代の文化大革命下の中国においてインテリの両親を持った二人の青年が再教育のためと山奥の文化とは隔絶した農村に送り込まれた所から始まり、そこで出会った村一番の美しい少女、小さなお針子に共に惹かれる中、一人が禁書であるバルザックの物語を読み聞かせ彼女を【垢抜けた教養のある女性】に仕立てようとしていくのですが。。いわゆる文革時代を舞台にしながらも、こうも【古典的なプロットを纏った】美しくロマンティックな小説が存在したのか!と驚かされました。(翻訳もとても読みやすいです)
一方で、本書は2002年に『小さな中国のお針子』という名前で著者自身により映画化もされているらしいのですが。青年たちの置かれていた状況こそディストピア的に感じられる一方、小さなお針子とのやりとりや描写が対象的にとても映像的な美しさを感じさせ、映画の方もちょっと観てみたい。そんな気持ちにさせてくれました。
本が禁止された世界を舞台にした中国版『華氏451度』の様な作品を探す誰か、フランス文学と中国の歴史的要素がハイブリッドした様な読書体験をしたい誰かにもオススメ。
個人的には、中国人作家の作品を探していた時に『ゴリオ爺さん』等でお馴染みバルザックの名前がタイトルに使われていた事で興味を、また表紙イラスト自体もお洒落に感じて本書を手にとりました。
さて、そんな本書は1970年代の文化大革命下の中国においてインテリの両親を持った二人の青年が再教育のためと山奥の文化とは隔絶した農村に送り込まれた所から始まり、そこで出会った村一番の美しい少女、小さなお針子に共に惹かれる中、一人が禁書であるバルザックの物語を読み聞かせ彼女を【垢抜けた教養のある女性】に仕立てようとしていくのですが。。いわゆる文革時代を舞台にしながらも、こうも【古典的なプロットを纏った】美しくロマンティックな小説が存在したのか!と驚かされました。(翻訳もとても読みやすいです)
一方で、本書は2002年に『小さな中国のお針子』という名前で著者自身により映画化もされているらしいのですが。青年たちの置かれていた状況こそディストピア的に感じられる一方、小さなお針子とのやりとりや描写が対象的にとても映像的な美しさを感じさせ、映画の方もちょっと観てみたい。そんな気持ちにさせてくれました。
本が禁止された世界を舞台にした中国版『華氏451度』の様な作品を探す誰か、フランス文学と中国の歴史的要素がハイブリッドした様な読書体験をしたい誰かにもオススメ。
2020年1月27日に日本でレビュー済み
中国出身の作家が、フランス語で書いて、フランスで出版した小説とのことです。
フランスで評判になったそうですが、フランス人から見れば、文革の閉鎖的で知識階級が否定された時代の中国を舞台に、フランスの小説を読んで文化に触れ影響を受けるという、コンセプトの本作はフランスの知識人たちの自尊心を満たしたのではないでしょうか。
短い小説なので読み終えましたが、正直、学のある人が無い人に対してもっている優越感が垣間見えるようで、心に訴えるものがありませんでした。
物語を語ること、本を読むことのすばらしさを訴える小説なら、ダイアン・セッターフィールドの「13番目の物語」やサンティアーゴ パハーレスの「螺旋」といった作品のほうが遥かにすばらしいできたと思います。
フランスで評判になったそうですが、フランス人から見れば、文革の閉鎖的で知識階級が否定された時代の中国を舞台に、フランスの小説を読んで文化に触れ影響を受けるという、コンセプトの本作はフランスの知識人たちの自尊心を満たしたのではないでしょうか。
短い小説なので読み終えましたが、正直、学のある人が無い人に対してもっている優越感が垣間見えるようで、心に訴えるものがありませんでした。
物語を語ること、本を読むことのすばらしさを訴える小説なら、ダイアン・セッターフィールドの「13番目の物語」やサンティアーゴ パハーレスの「螺旋」といった作品のほうが遥かにすばらしいできたと思います。
2017年8月20日に日本でレビュー済み
これは読むべき一冊。中国が好きか嫌いかは一旦脇に置いてでも。
文化大革命という大きな激しい波に翻弄される小さな人々。インテリの子に再教育を受けさせるという名目で山奥に送られた都会育ちの二人の少年と、山しか知らない小さな女の子の出会い。最初は都会から来た主人公たちを胡散臭いインテリめ、という目で見ていた村人や村長が、バルザックが書いた物語、あるいは面白おかしく作っただけの話を楽しみに待つようになる姿。
都会と辺境、近代と伝統、友情と孤独、恋の喜びと苦味、喜劇と悲劇。常に光と影が寄り添う。本や教養というよりは、人が常に求めるものは物語ではないか。どこの地であっても、神話や祖先の物語が語られている。
小さな女の子が、広い世界と物語を求めた時… この本がフランス語で書かれたというのがまた興味深い。
文化大革命という大きな激しい波に翻弄される小さな人々。インテリの子に再教育を受けさせるという名目で山奥に送られた都会育ちの二人の少年と、山しか知らない小さな女の子の出会い。最初は都会から来た主人公たちを胡散臭いインテリめ、という目で見ていた村人や村長が、バルザックが書いた物語、あるいは面白おかしく作っただけの話を楽しみに待つようになる姿。
都会と辺境、近代と伝統、友情と孤独、恋の喜びと苦味、喜劇と悲劇。常に光と影が寄り添う。本や教養というよりは、人が常に求めるものは物語ではないか。どこの地であっても、神話や祖先の物語が語られている。
小さな女の子が、広い世界と物語を求めた時… この本がフランス語で書かれたというのがまた興味深い。
殿堂入りベスト500レビュアー
原作(小説や漫画など)が映画化される
たいていはどちらかが良くて、どちらかはがっかり。
どちらも素晴らしいという例は、かなり少ない(『赤毛のアン』などはその一例)
『小さな中国のお針子』も幸福な例外。
まず映画から見たけれど、フランスで暮らしている中国人が中国を舞台にした映画で、
『青いパパイヤの香り』のような、センスの良い名作。
小説の方も、また違った角度から魅力をつくりだしている。
語り口が軽妙で、小説を読む楽しみを満喫させてくれる。映画を見た後だと、両者の違いがまた興味深い
小説の方は、ジャケットも白地に可愛いイラストがあしらわれチャーミング。
訳文のこなれ具合も絶妙で特筆もの。
たいていはどちらかが良くて、どちらかはがっかり。
どちらも素晴らしいという例は、かなり少ない(『赤毛のアン』などはその一例)
『小さな中国のお針子』も幸福な例外。
まず映画から見たけれど、フランスで暮らしている中国人が中国を舞台にした映画で、
『青いパパイヤの香り』のような、センスの良い名作。
小説の方も、また違った角度から魅力をつくりだしている。
語り口が軽妙で、小説を読む楽しみを満喫させてくれる。映画を見た後だと、両者の違いがまた興味深い
小説の方は、ジャケットも白地に可愛いイラストがあしらわれチャーミング。
訳文のこなれ具合も絶妙で特筆もの。
他の国からのトップレビュー

Chaya
5つ星のうち5.0
Wonderful story about 2 young boys sent to work in ...
2018年8月14日に英国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Wonderful story about 2 young boys sent to work in harsh countryside of China during the Revolution. The wit, storytelling skills including the descriptions are marvellous!

ElenaJ
5つ星のうち4.0
Huckleberry Finn in communist China
2011年7月5日に英国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Enjoyed every minute of this tale of two boys struggling through their re-education period in communist China. I appreciated that their adventures were presented as a sort of "Huckleberry Finn" story, with various episodes, rather than a political piece. My sensation was that boys will be boys.
They got into all sorts of tricky situations, and got themselves out of them, all part of growing up in spite of their restrictive environment. The last two chapters were a bit disconnected with the rest, but not disturbingly so. I enjoyed the writing style as well, the descriptions of the various characters were very well detailed. The ending left me a bit up in the air, wondering about their futures, but also trying to understand if this was a message. All in all, I would recommend it and I would re-read it.
They got into all sorts of tricky situations, and got themselves out of them, all part of growing up in spite of their restrictive environment. The last two chapters were a bit disconnected with the rest, but not disturbingly so. I enjoyed the writing style as well, the descriptions of the various characters were very well detailed. The ending left me a bit up in the air, wondering about their futures, but also trying to understand if this was a message. All in all, I would recommend it and I would re-read it.

Jan Lloyd
5つ星のうち5.0
Worth reading
2019年7月13日に英国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
I bought this book as a pre owned copy which was in good condition. It is worth reading.

CocoB
5つ星のうち4.0
Read it! You’ll like it
2019年3月20日に英国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Quite a good book. Very sweet, funny and tragic.

JoleneJolene
5つ星のうち5.0
Magnifique
2010年2月16日に英国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
I admit that I groaned when this book was selected for our book group. But I was more than surprised by this perfect example of the writing craft. Given the massive translation, this beautiful book uses symbolism and contrasts to tell its moving story. It is about hope and intellectual freedom overcoming rigid communist ideology. It was uplifting, full of suspense and at the same time tragic and revealing.
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