2011 年 5 月 21 日（土） シンポジウム第二部門 「詩のことばと散文のことば」'luxuriant' な想像力をいかに制御するか（またはしないか）― Dryden の韻律に関する理論と実践
阿部曜子（津田塾大学）
Rhyme is a deception all the more suspect because it gives us pleasure. (Donald Wesling)

1. イントロダクション
2. 'luxuriant' な散文／韻文
3. ピンダロス風頌歌(1)―'To Rochester' とホラティウス的達観
4. ピンダロス風頌歌(2)―'Alexander's Feast' における力の連鎖反応
5. 結び① Dedication to The Rival Ladies (1664) より
But that benefit which I consider most in it [. . .] is that it Bounds and Circumscribes the Fancy.
For Imagination is a faculty so Wild and Lawless, that, like an High-ranging Spaniel it must have
Cloggs tied to it, least it out-run the Judgment. The greatest easiness of Blanck Verse, renders
the Poet too Luxuriant; He is tempted to say many things, which might better be Omitted, or atleast shut up in fewer Words: But when the difficulty of Artfull Rhyming is interpos'd, where thePoet commonly confines his Sence to his Couplet, and must contrive that Sence into such
Words, that the Rhyme shall naturally follow them, not they the Rhyme; the Fancy then gives
leisure to the Judgment to come in; which seeing so heavy a Tax impos'd, is ready to cut off all
unnecessary Expences. (WJD VIII, 101)
② Dedication and Preface to Fables Ancient and Modern (1700)より
What judgement I had increases rather than diminishes, and thoughts, such as they are, comecrowding in so fast upon me that my only difficulty is to choose or to reject, to run them into
verse or to give them the other harmony of prose; I have so long studied and practised both thatthey are grown into a habit and become familiar to me. (PJW V, 53)③ OED, 'luxuriant' （抜粋）
2. Of plants, etc.: Growing profusely, exuberant, rank.
3. In immaterial applications. a. Of invention, genius, fancy, etc.: Exuberantly productive. Of
speech, action, etc.: Abundant, profuse, excessive. Of ornamentation: Excessively rich or
florid.
¶ 4. Misused for: luxurious.
cf. 'luxurious'† 1. Lascivious, lecherous, unchaste. Obs.
† 2. Outrageous, extravagant, excessive. Obs.
¶ 4. = luxuriant 2. Now rare.
④ Dedication to Eleonora (1692) より
Let me add, and hope to be believed, that the excellency of the subject contributed much to thehappiness of the execution; and that the weight of thirty years was taken off me while I was
writing. I swam with the tide, and the water under me was buoyant. The reader will easily
observe that I was transported by the multitude and variety of my similitudes, which are
generally the product of a luxuriant fancy, and the wantonness of wit. Had I called in myjudgment to my assistance, I had certainly retrenched many of the. But I defend them not; letthem pass for beautiful faults amongst the better sort of critics; for the whole poem, thoughwritten in that which they call heroic verse, is of the Pindaric nature, as well in thought as theexpression; and as such requires the same grains of allowance for it. (PJW III, 274)

⑤ An Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668) より[. . .] and this [the quick and poynant brevity of repartee] joyn'd with the cadency and sweetnessof the Rhyme, leaves nothing in the soul of the hearer to desire. 'Tis an Art which appears; but it
appears onely like the shadowings of Painture, which being to cause the rounding of it, cannot
be absent; but while that is consider'd they are lost: so while we attend to the other beauties ofthe matter, the care and labour of the Rhyme is carry'd from us, or at least drown'd in its own
sweetness, as Bees are sometimes bury'd in their Honey. (WJD XVII, 77)⑥ Preface to Sylvae (1685) より
One ode which infinitely pleased me in the reading I have attempted to translate in pindaricverse: 'tis that which is inscribed to the present Earl of Rochester [. . .]. 'Tis his darling in the
Latin, and I have taken some pains to make it my masterpiece in English, for which reason I
took this kind of verse, which allows more latitude than any other. Everyone knows it was
introduced into our language in this age by the happy genius of Mr Cowley. The seeming
easiness of it has made it spread, but it has not been considered well enough to be so wellcultivated. [. . .] As for the soul of it, which consists in the warmth and vigour of fancy, themasterly figures, and the copiousness of imagination, he has excelled all other in this kind. [. . .]Since Pindar was the prince of lyric poets, let me have leave to say that in imitating him ournumbers should for the most part be lyrical; for variety, or rather where the majesty of thought
requires it, they may be stretched to the English heroic of five feet, and to the French
Alexandrine of six. But the ear must preside, and direct the judgement to the choice of numbers.
(PJW II, 255-6)⑦ 'Horat. Ode 29. Book 3. Paraphrased in Pindaric Verse, and Inscribed to the Right Honourable
Laurence Earl of Rochester' よりVII
Enjoy the present smiling hour,
And put it out of Fortune's power.
The tide of business, like a running stream,
Is sometimes high, and sometimes low,
A quiet ebb, or a tempestuous flow,
And always in extreme:
Now with a noiseless, gentle course
It keeps within the middle bed;
Anon it lifts aloft the head,
And bears down all before it with impetuous force,
And trunks of trees come rolling down,
Sheep and their folds together drown;
Both house and homestead into seas are borne,
And rocks are from their old foundations torn,
And woods made thin with winds their scattered honours mourn.
VIII
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own:
He who secure within can say,'Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine,
The joys I have possessed, in spite of Fate, are mine:
Not heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been has been, and I have had my hour.' (PJW II, 373-4)

50

55

60

65

70

⑧ Abraham Cowley, 'On the Death of Mrs. Katherine Philips' より
4.
But Wit's like a Luxurian[t] Vine;
Unless to Virtue's prop it joyn,
Firm and Erect towards Heaven bound;Though it with beauteous Leaves and pleasant Fruit be crown'd,
It lies deform'd, and rotting on the Ground. (Cowley 443)
⑨ Abraham Cowley, Notes to 'The 34. Chapter of the Prophet Isaiah' より
The manner of the Prophets writing, especially of Isaiah, seems to me very like that of Pindar;
they pass from one thing to another with almost Invisible connexions, and are full of words andexpressions of the highest and boldest flights of Poetry, as may be seen in this Chapter, where
there are as extraordinary Figures as can be found in any Poet whatsoever [. . .]. (Cowley 214)
⑩ S. T. Coleridge, The Table Talk and Ominiana より
Dryden's genius was of that sort which catches fire by its own motion; his chariot wheels get hot
by driving fast. (Brinkley 630)

Selected Bibliography
Cowley, Abraham. Poems. Ed. A. R. Waller. Cambridge: University Press, 1905.
Dryden, John. The Poems of John Dryden. Ed. Paul Hammond and David Hopkins. 5 vols. Harlow:
Longman, 1995-2005. (PJD)
Dryden, John. The Works of John Dryden. Gen. Ed. H. T. Swedenberg, Jr and Edward Niles Hooker.
20 vols. Berkeley: U of California P, 1956-2000. (WJD)
Brinkley, Roberta Florence. Coleridge on the Seventeenth Century. London: Duke UP, 1955
Fry, Paul H. The Poet's Calling in the English Ode. New Haven: Yale UP, 1980.
Gelber, Michael Werth. The Just and the Lively: The Literary Criticism of John Dryden. Manchester
UP, 2002.
Hagstrum, Jean H. Sex and Sensibility: Ideal and Erotic Love from Milton to Mozart. Chicago: U of
Chicago P, 1980.
Hume, Robert D. 'Dryden on Creation: "Imagination" in the Later Criticism.' RES, n.s. 21 (1970):
295-314.
Mason, Tom, and Adam Rounce. 'Alexander's Feast; Or the Power of Musique: The Poem and Its
Readers.' John Dryden: Tercentenary Essays. Ed. Paul Hammond and David Hopkins. Oxford:
Oxford UP, 2000. 140-73.
Revard, Stella P. Politics, Poetics, and the Pindaric Ode: 1450-1700. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols,
2009.
Turner, James Grantham. "'Thy Lovers Were All Untrue": Sexual Overreaching in the Heroic Playsand Alexander's Feast.' Enchanted Ground: Reimagining John Dryden. Ed. and introd. Jayne
Lewis and Maximillian E. Novak. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2004. 318-35.
Wesling, Donald. The Chances of Rhyme: Device and Modernity. Berkeley: U of California P, 1980.
Winn, James Anderson. John Dryden and His World. New Haven: Yale UP, 1987.
Winn, James Anderson. 'When Beauty Fires the Blood': Love and the Arts in the Age of Dryden. Ann
Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1992.

⑪ 'Alexander's Feast, or The Power of Music: An Ode in Honour of St Cecilia's Day'
I
'Twas at the royal feast, for Persia won
By Philip's warlike son:
Aloft in awful state
The godlike hero sate
On his imperial throne;
His valiant peers were placed around,
Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound(So should desert in arms be crowned);
The lovely Thais, by his side,
Sate like a blooming eastern brideIn flower of youth and beauty's pride.
Happy, happy, happy pair!
None but the brave,
None but the brave,
None but the brave deserves the fair.
CHORUSHappy, happy, happy pair!
None but the brave,
None but the brave,
None but the brave deserves the fair.
II
Timotheus, placed on highAmid the tuneful choir,With flying fingers touched the lyre:
The trembling notes ascend the sky,And heavenly joys inspire.
The song began from Jove,
Who left his blissful seats above(Such is the power of mighty love).
A dragon's fiery form belied the god;
Sublime on radiant spires he rode,
When he to fair Olympia pressed,
And while he sought her snowy breast;
Then round her slender waist he curled,
And stamped an image of himself, a sovereign of the world.
The listening crowd admire the lofty sound,'A present deity,' they shout around;'A present deity,' the vaulted roofs rebound.
With ravished ears
The monarch hears,
Assumes the god,

Affects to nod,And seems to shake the spheres.
CHORUSWith ravished ears, etc.
III
The praise of Bacchus then the sweet musician sung,
Of Bacchus ever fair and ever young:
The jolly god in triumph comes;
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums;
Flushed with a purple grace
He shows his honest face;
Now give the hautboys breath; he comes, he comes.
Bacchus, ever fair and young
Drinking joys did first ordain;
Bacchus' blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldier's pleasure;Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure,
Sweet is pleasure after pain.
CHORUS
Bacchus' blessings are a treasure, etc.
IV
Soothed with the sound, the king grew vain;
Fought all his battles o'er again;
And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the slain.
The master saw the madness rise,His glowing cheeks, his ardent eyes;
And while he heaven and earth defied,
Changed his hand, and checked his pride.
He chose a mournful MuseSoft pity to infuse;
He sung Darius great and good,
By too severe a fate,
Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from his high estate
And weltering in his blood;
Deserted at his utmost need,
By those his former bounty fed;
On the bare earth exposed he lies,

With not a friend to close his eyes.
With downcast looks the joyless victor sate,
Revolving in his altered soul
The various turns of chance below;
And now and then, a sigh he stole,
And tears began to flow.
CHORUS
Revolving in his altered soul, etc.
V
The mighty master smiled to see
That love was in the next degree:'Twas but a kindred sound to move,
For pity melts the mind to love.
Softly sweet, in Lydian measures,
Soon he soothed his soul to pleasures:
War, he sung, is toil and trouble;
Honour, but an empty bubble;
Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying;
If the world be worth thy winning,
Think, O think, it worth enjoying;
Lovely Thais sits beside thee,
Take the good the gods provide thee.
The many rend the skies with loud applause;
So love was crowned, but music won the cause.
The prince, unable to conceal his pain,
Gazed on the fair
Who caused his care,
And sighed and looked, sighed and looked,
Sighed and looked, and sighed again:
At length, with love and wine at once oppressed,
The vanquished victor sunk upon her breast.
CHORUS
The prince, unable to conceal his pain, etc.
VI
Now strike the golden lyre again:
A louder yet, and yet a louder strain.
Break his bands of sleep asunder,
And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder.
Hark, hark, the horrid soundHas raised up his head,
As awaked from the dead,And amazed, he stares around.
'Revenge, revenge!' Timotheus cries,'See the Furies arise!
See the snakes that they rear,
How they hiss in their hair,
And the sparkles that flash from their eyes!
Behold a ghastly band,
Each a torch in his hand!
Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain,
And unburied remain
Inglorious on the plain:
Give the vengeance due
To the valiant crew.
Behold how they toss their torches on high,How they point to the Persian abodes,
And glittering temples of their hostile gods!'
The princes applaud, with a furious joy,
And the king seized a flambeau, with zeal to destroy;
Thais led the way,
To light him to his prey,
And, like another Helen, fired another Troy.
CHORUS
And the king seized a flambeau, with zeal to destroy; etc.
VII
Thus, long ago,
Ere heaving bellows learned to blow,
While organs yet were mute,
Timotheus, to his breathing flute
And sounding lyre,
Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.
At last divine Cecilia came,
Inventress of the vocal frame;
The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store,
Enlarged the former narrow bounds,
And added length to solemn sounds,
With nature's mother wit, and arts unknown before.
Let old Timotheus yield the prize,
Or both divide the crown;
He raised a mortal to the skies;
She drew an angel down.
GRAND CHORUS
At last divine Cecilia came, etc.