A Wonder-Bookと神話愛好時代

2006.5.20

水野眞理

1 アメリカ・・世紀前半における古典神話熱:引用(1)-(4), Fig.1
2 『ワンダー・ブック』『タングルウッド・テイルズ』と新古典主義彫刻:引用(5)-(6), Figs.2-5
3 裸身の子供―ホーソーンの特異性:引用(7)-(8), Figs.6-9＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿(1)In the present version they may have lost much of their classical aspect (or, at all events, the author has not been
careful to preserve it), and have, perhaps, assumed a Gothic or romantic guise. (“Preface” to A Wonder-Book for
Girls and Boys. iiii-iv)(2)I shall aim at substituting a tone in some degree Gothic or romantic, or any such tone as may best please myself,
instead of the classic coldness, which is as repellant as the touch of marble. (To J. T Fields. Lenox, May 23d 1851)(Letters 1843-53 436)
(3) Eustace Bright, who tells the stories, is Hawthorne as an eternally young father figure; Mr. Pringle, who has
his scholarly doubts about them, is Hawthorne as aging skeptic.( Harvey Pearce,. “Historical Introduction: TrueStories, A Wonder Book, Tanglewood Tales.” CE, 305)
(4) But Eustace told me that these myths were the most singular things in the world, and that he was invariably
astonished,whenever he began to relate one, by the readiness with which it adapted itself to the childish purity of hisauditors. The objectionable characteristics seem to be a parasitical growth having no essential connection with theoriginal fable. They fall away, and are thought of no more, the instant he puts his imagination in sympathywith theinnocent little circle, whose wide-open eyes are fixed so eagerly upon him. Thus the stories (not by any strained
effort of the narrator's, but in harmony with their inherent germ) transform themselves, and re-assume theshapes
which they might be supposed to possess in the pure childhood of the world. . . . Children are now the only
representatives of the men and women of that happy era; and therefore it is that we must raise the intellect andfancy to the level of childhood, in order to re-create the original myths. (“The Wayside,” Tantglewod Tales, CE,179)(5)“if you would only bring your mind into such a relation with these fables as is necessary in order to remodel
them, you would see at once that an old Greek had no more exclusive right to them than a modern Yankee has
They are the common property of the world, and of all time. The ancient poets remodeled them at pleasure, andheld them plastic in their hands; and why should they not be plastic in my hands as well?”( "After the Story [TheThree Golden Apples], " A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys, 171)(6) It was a large, handsome apartment, with a semicircular window at one end, in the recess of which stood amarble copy of Greenough’s Angel and Child ("Introduction to'The Three Golden Apples', " A Wonder-Book for Girlsand Boys, 133).
(7)It is thousands of years since Epimetheus and Pandora were alive; and the world, nowadays, is a very different
sort of thing from what it was in their time. Then, everybody was a child. There needed no fathers nor mothers
to take care of the children; because there was no danger, nor trouble of any kind, and no clothes to be mended,and there was always plenty to eat and drink. . . .It was a very pleasant life indeed. No labor to be done, no tasksto be studied; nothing but sports and dances, and sweet voices of children talking, or carolling like birds, orgushing out in merry laughter, throughout the livelong day. ("The Paradise of Children', " A Wonder-Book for Girlsand Boys, 99-100)(8)The children, moreover, who before seemed immortal in their childhood, now grew older, day by day, and camesoon to be youths and maidens, and men and women by and by, and aged people, before they dreamed of such athing.
("The Paradise of Children', " A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys, 117-18)

Fig.1 “Bacchus” from Tooke’s Pantheon,

Fig. 2 Greenough,(Baltimore, 1817)

Washington (1832-41)

Fig. 4 Raphaello Sanzio,

Fig.3 Phidias, Zeus (BC 5C)
Engraving byPhilippe Galle (1572)

Fig. 5 Greenough, The Ascension of a Child

Fig. 6 Jean Cousin the Elder,

Madonna del Baldacchino (1507-08)

Conducted by an Infant Angel (1833)

Fig. 7 Bernard Picart, (engraving)

Fig. 8 Dante Gabriel Rossetti, .

Fig. 9 Hammatt Billings,

Study for Pandora (1869)

The Paradise of Children (1852)

Pandora's Box (1730)

Eva Prima Pandora (c1550)