2013年11月30日
創造的な不幸-9-
創造的な不幸－愛・罪・自然、および芸術・宗教・政治についての極論的エッセイ－
この作品について 目次
－９－ ＜アメリカ文学とキリスト教＞、その３、ドライサー＜アメリカの悲劇＞その他
＜アメリカ文学とキリスト教＞第五章で取り上げられるのは、外的環境と決定論の問題である。決定論的人間観のもたらす有害な結果が的確に説明されている。そして、なぜ人間はありのままであってはならないのかについても。
"Naturalism" in the modern novel is based upon "scientific determinism."Man, according to this view, is a product of forces over which he has no control. The forces may be biological or social; they may belong to one's heredity or one's environment. In any case, they reduce man to the status of a puppet. If man is a puppet, he is clearly not a moral agent, he is relieved of moral responsibility, he deserves neither blame nor praise, he is always doing the best---or the worst---he can. Amoralism is an inevitable corollary of naturalism.
・・・
Modern scientific determinism becomes more insidious all the while. Poverty breeds crime, say some. But how many of us have sprung from "poor but honest parents"? ・・・A glandular determinism is popular with many."If the thyroid doesn't get you, "they say," then the pituitary must. "The psychiatric patient feels that his emotional disturbance has got him licked, and it becomes the job of the psychiatrist to convince him that it hasn't. This is, or has been in time past, the office of religion. St. Paul said, "I can do all things through Christ, "which is a little different from our modern naturalistic version," I can do only those things which my psychological profile shows that I have an aptitude for, and I should be silly to try anything else."
それから彼は「自然主義作家」とされるゾラ、クレイン、ノリスを取り上げる。
Naturalism in literature began with the powerful novels of Emile Zola. Consider "Germinal", for example. Here we the story of the coal miners in northern France.・・・The author piles up such a tremendous mass of facts(or "documentation"),that the reader becomes thoroughly acquainted with the subject, and feels as if he had actually shared the life described. There is, one is almost constrained to feel after having read "Germinal", a connection between poverty and crime.
・・・Given certain people, living under certain conditions, how will they act? Zola thought of the craft of the novel as a controlled experiment, and of people as elements in a chemical reaction.
There is, then, a naturalistic theme in Crane. Man is overwhelmed, or in danger of being overwhelmed, by the forces: the mass movements of war, the immoral life of the slums, the elemental forces of the universe itself. Frank Noris also gave a large emphasis to the importance of external forces in determining man's life on this planet.・・・
それから彼はここで多くのページを割いてセオドア・ライサーの「アメリカの悲劇」を取り上げている。
・・・because I think "An American Tragedy" is an impressive book, and・・・it is probably the most completely naturalistic of all American novels. ・・・
This is the story of Clyde Griffith. It begins when he is twelve, and ends ten years later, when Clyde, at the age of twenty-two, is sent to the electric chair for the murder of Roberta Alden. It is told in three parts.
The story begins with a Salvation Army meeting conducted by Clyde's parents on a street corner in Kansas City. Clyde views the proceedings with distaste. His father is the weak, ineffectual sort; his mother, though resolute, has a mediocre mind. The older daughter, who plays the organ, later runs away with an actor, and still later, returns pregnant and unmarried. Clyde, when he is seventeen, gets a job in a big downtown hotel, where he is initiated into the life of the bellhop world. The bellhops have money to spend・・・Clyde goes with the others on a drinking party, and afterwards to a whore house.・・・The bellhops take their girl friends out into the country one afternoon in a borrowed car. On the way back, the car strikes a child, and the panicky driver speeds the car into the suburbs, and wrecks it in an open field. At the end of Part 1 Clyde is crawling on all fours across a snow-covered field in the semidarkness.
それからここで著者はクライドとその立場をざっと総括する。
He was underprivileged. He had almost no schooling, though he was bright enough. He adopted the mores of his set, the bellhop set. He was very adaptable, quick to learn; he quickly took on the coloration of the group in which he found himself. He was in no way to blame for the accident, and he did not run away from the scene of the accident---the driver did that. But he run away from the crack-up in the field, and was never seen again in those parts. He was weak. His early religious training is not supposed to have been of any particular use to him. "Successful" people look down on street preachers. Clyde wanted to be a "success" like the rich people he saw at the big hotel. He was ambitious; he wanted to rise in the scale. He aspired to the "higher things" of his materialistic environment: money, cloths, good times, sexual excitement. Is a young man very much to blame, Dreiser asks in effect, for embracing the "ideals" of his surroundings, the "ideals" which on all sides stare him brazenly in the face?
第二部はライカーガスの社交界の描写から始まる。クライドの叔父はここで「成功」した人物として登場する。
・・・What a rich luxurious picture, what an impressive picture, the author paints of life on fashionable Wykeagy Avenue! ・・・the parties, the gaiety, the snobbery---how different all this from Clyde's world!
クライドは叔父のつてでこの地に仕事を得る。そこで彼は田舎娘のロバータ・オルデンに興味を持つようになる。
・・・After he had become involved with Roberta, he was taken up by the Wykeagy set, and found that he could not resist the attractions of high society. And so, Clyde faced a great problem. Roberta was with child, but Clyde aspired to Sondra, the rich society belle. Roberta would not release him, and Clyde was unwilling to give up Sondra. What a quandary for a young man to find himself in, who is, so far as the reader can discover, utterly without character!
Dreiser's portrait is sympathetically drawn, nevertheless, and reader is perforce sympathetically disposed, too, so compelling, are the forces, and so ill-prepared is Clyde to cope with them. Dreiser's depiction of Clyde's quandary is surely a masterpiece of American realism: the talk with the druggist, the visit to the country doctor,・・・Roberta's ignorance of sex, Clyde's ignorance too, the whole social attitude toward the unmarried mother, Clyde's shallow infatuation with a girl of much less real worth than Roberta---all this adds up to what is perhaps the most convincing "slice of life" to be found anywhere in the American novel.
それで結局クライドがどうしたかと言うと、彼はロバータの殺害を企てるのである。彼はロバータと二人でボート遊びに出掛け、取り乱しながらも事を成し遂げる。彼はボートを転覆させ、泳げないロバータを見殺しにして一人岸へ泳ぎ帰るのである。
At the end of Part 2 we see Clyde hurrying away from the lake through the darkening forest in the direction of the Finchley's summer lodge. We remember that at end of Part 1 the young man was running away, or crawling away, in the semidarkness. At that time, he was not to blame for what had happened, and the reader suspects that the author would like to imply that Clyde is again an unfortunate victim of circumstances.
最後の第三部は裁判の模様である。情状酌量の余地はほとんどなさそうだ。
Toward the end of the trial, Clyde's mother comes to the prison to pray with Clyde. After the verdict of guilty in the first degree, she writes pieces for the paper and gives public lectures on Clyde's history, to get money to pay for a new trial---which is never granted. A young minister, the Reverend Mr. McMillan, takes a great interest in Clyde. He writes a statement, and persuades him to sign it, in which Clyde warns young men against sinful ways, and professes to have found the peace of God. Part 3 ends with Clyde's death in the electric chair. In an epilogue, the book ends as it began: Clyde's parents, older and feebler, are conducting a Salvation Army meeting on a street corner in San Francisco.
Malcom Cowley has made the observation that the American naturalists believed that "Christianity was a shame." The statement seems to fit Dreiser pretty well.
I imagine Dreiser thought he was giving Christianity a thorough and fair trial in "An American Tragedy", that he was weighing it in the balance and finding it wanting. However underprivileged Clyde may have been, he at least had a Christian upbringing. This, however, did not save him from crime. Nor did Christianity bring him comfort in his last days. He had not found peace, as his ghostwriter said he had. He ended wretchedly. McMillan himself, moreover, was a phony. He knew that the statement was untrue. He wanted to use Clyde to advance his own professional interests, he wanted to be known as a great soul-saver.
That leaves Clyde's mother to be accounted for. Dreiser could hardly denigrate her Christian character. He may not have known it, but she was a saint, and the Christian reader knows she was a saint. The Christian reader knows also that her great strength and endurance came from her religious faith. Well, even if Dreiser will allow this, his attitude toward her is still one, not of admiration, but pity; and pity not so much because of the unhappiness inflicted upon her by a wayward son, as because of her failure to follow a more "profitable" course in life. She as not brilliant, to be sure, but she had a certain practical talent. Her lecturing and work for the newspaper showed she could make money---she made over a thousand dollars, in a fairly short time. Why did she keep on with her street preaching and mission work? What did she get out of it? The author seems to ask, incredulous, bewildered. She was---Dreiser believes, and would have us believe---a poor, misguided creature.
Our author is, I fear, spiritually benighted. He is addicted to the same materialism of which poor Clyde is the bounden slave. One has only to compare Dreiser's treatment of Clyde's mother with Faulkner's treatment of Dilsey・・・to see the difference---and it is an abysmal one---between the naturalistic and the religious attitude.
"An American Tragedy" illustrates perfectly the complete amoralism of the naturalistic philosophy. Clyde Griffiths was not responsible, he was not to blame. Before you judge Clyde, Dreiser says in effect, don't forget the child's uneasiness at those sidewalk meetings; the accident on the way back from the bellhop party; the shabby treatment he received the Lycuergus Griffiths; his excitable sexual nature; his dreams of wealth and position; his innate weakness. One of Clyde's lawyers, in a speech before the court, called his client "a mental and moral coward," and added, "You didn't make yourself, did you, Clyde?" Clyde is not responsible, in the last analysis, because he didn't make himself. And this, I fear, is the gospel according to Theodore Dreiser.
・・・Dreiser, when confronted by human troubles, is overwhelmed by pity and perplexity. He doesn't know what to do with life. The tears run down his cheeks, and he folds and refolds his pocket handkerchief, and shakes his head.
Compassion is a great virtue, but it is not necessary to surrender individual responsibility is order to be compassionate. There is such a thing as Christian forgiveness and Christian pity. Jesus was compassionate toward the thief on the cross, and the woman taken in adultery."The Scarlet letter" is compassionate, without surrendering the responsible individual."There but for the grace of God go I" is a better basis for compassion than the general denial of responsibility.
それゆえ彼は主張するのである－－人間は責任を負っていると、いかに生まれや環境などの外的状況に形造られまた翻弄されようと、人間は自分の行動に関して責任を負っているのだと。
＊ ＊
追補。
"Portage" におけるヒトラーの自己弁護の、第四ポイントのテーマ－－－苦しめられた者に苦しめる権利はあるか。
あるいは外的状況と精神の自由をめぐる更なる考察。
・・・Examine the question fairly. Would Palestine have become Israel, would the Jews have come to that barren patch in the Levant, would the United States and the Soviet Union, Stalin's Soviet Union have given you recognition and guaranteed your survival, had it not been for the Holocaust? It was the Holocaust that gave you the courage of injustice, that made you drive the Arab out of his home, out of his friend, because he was lice-eaten and without resource, because he was in your divinely ordered way. That made you endure knowing that those whom you had driven out were rotting in refugee camps, not ten miles away, buried alive in despair and lunatic dreams of vengeance. Perhaps I am the Messiah, the true Messiah, the new Sabbatai, ・・・
ユダヤ人はナチの迫害を耐え忍ぶことによって、その後自分たちの国家を回復するために、自ら他者を踏みつけにする権利を得た。ナチは彼らに、そのための口実を与えたのだ。そうした見方は正しいのか？ そうした見方が正しいとすれば、彼らは自分たちが被った悪を、何がしかの補償が可能であるもの、何かしらによって埋め合わせのつくものであると見做していた、ということになるのか？ 実際にはどうだったのか？
Amsel: I want vengeance, just the same as you.
Gideon: Vengeance? There can be no vengeance. Why should history apologize to the Jews? Don't stare at me, Amsel, as if you knew what I was trying to say. You don't. You think the dead will sit up just because we've got Hitler? They won't. You can dip him in boiling oil six million times. What's that going to mean to a man who's seen his six-years-old daughter so terrified she dirtied herself before they killed her? You think that can be made good?
・・・
(continuing Gideon) That's why I don't want any of us to touch him. If we hang him, we'll be pretending what he did can be made good. History will draw a line and forget even faster. That's exactly what they want. They want us to do the job for them. Let the Jews hang him. We nailed up Christ, now they want us to finish Hitler.・・・
実際には、復讐なんてことはできはしない。そんなことは不可能なのだ。それゆえ彼は復讐しようとしなかったのである。
それでは、もしそれが本当に可能だとしたら－－－実際に復讐することができたとしたら－－－彼らにその権利はあったのか？
ここで我々が思い出すのは、＜夜と霧＞終章における、収容所からの解放のすぐあとでの心を打つ一挿話である。
「特にいくらか原始的な性質の人間においてはこの解放後の時期に、彼等が依然としてその倫理的態度において権力と暴力とのカテゴリーに固執しているのが認められることがあった。そして彼等は解放された者として、今度は自分がその力と自由を恣意的に抑制なく利用できる人間だと思いこむことがあった。彼等は権力や暴力、恣意、不正の客体からその主体になったのである。さらに彼等はまた彼等が経験したことになお固執しているのである。このことはしばしばとるにたらない些細なことの中に現れるのであった。たとえば、一人の仲間と私とは、われわれが少し前に解放された収容所に向って、野原を横切って行った。すると突然われわれの前に麦の芽の出たばかりの畑があった。無意識的に私はそれを避けた。しかし彼は私の腕を捉え、自分と一緒にその真中を突切った。私は口ごもりながら若い芽を踏みにじるべきではないと彼に言った。すると彼は気を悪くした。彼の眼からは怒りのまなざしが燃え上った。そして私にどなりつけた。『何を言うのだ！ われわれの奪われたものは僅かなものだったのか？ 他人はともかく・・・俺の妻も子供もガスで殺されたのだ！ それなのにお前は俺がほんの少し麦藁を踏みつけるのを禁ずるのか！・・・』何人も不正をする権利はないということ、たとえ不正に苦しんだ者でも不正をする権利はないということ、かかる平凡な真理をこういう人間に再発見させるには長い時間がかかったのである。そしてまたわれわれはこの人間をこの真理へ立ち帰らせるよう努めねばならないのである。なぜならばこの真理の取り違えは、ある未知の百姓が幾粒かの穀物を失うのよりは遙かに悪い結果になりかねないからである。なぜならば私はシャツの袖をまくり上げ、私の鼻先にむきだしの右手をつき出して『もし俺が家に帰ったその日に、この手が血で染まらないならば俺の手を切り落としてもいいぞ。』と叫んだ収容所の一人の囚人を思い出すのである。そして私はこう言った男は元来少しも悪い男ではなくて、収容所でもその後においても常に最もよい仲間であったことを強調したいと思う。」
そう、我々は彼の危惧がまさに現実になったのを、ヒトラ－の論説の中に見たのではないだろうか？
しかし、フランクルの信念によれば、誰にも悪に悪を返す権利はないのである。その代わりに我々は、我々に対してなされた悪を試練として受けとめ、これを人間の尊厳を表明する機会と見做し、それによって一層成長してゆかなければならない。彼はこれをもまた内的自由の一要素として考えたことであろう。悪に対して悪を返すのは容易なことであり、最も自然な道である。しかし、その最も自然な道に従うとき、人は悪という外的状況の奴隷であり、それに対して何の力も持たない操り人形、非人格的なチェスの駒の一つに過ぎないのである。人が意志能力を持った主体として現れることができるのは、ただ悪の循環をどこかで断ち切ろうとする人間的な努力によってのみである。
そしてまた、さらに我々は、悪に悪を返すことが間違っているだけでなく、無駄であることをも知るのである。というのは、どんなにそうしても地上から悪を一掃することはできず、却ってますますひどくそれをはびこらせることになるばかりだからだ。"Portage" のヒトラーが指摘するとおり－－－
・・・In a world that tortures prisoners and pours napalm on naked villagers. That continues to do these things quite without my help.
しかしながら、実際にはこれが精神衛生上の大問題であることは言うまでもない。我々はだれしも身に覚えがあるに違いない。
上司からいわれのない非難を受けたとき、我々は罪もない机を蹴っとばしてせいせいしたりするし、いやなことがあったときには海に向かって怒鳴ってすっきりしたりする。かくして代償がなされるのである。
悪の力に対して内的自由を保つのは難しい。それは何らの代償行為をも伴わずに悪を耐え忍ぶということであり、実質的に、押しつけられたストレスを捌け口なしにため込むことを意味するからである。それが人の精神を歪めないですむものだろうか？ そして、結局のところそれは我々の、正義の感覚と公正を求める本能－－－＜神の像＞を構成する要素の一つ－－－に反するのではないか？ ノアの日に神は宣言しなかっただろうか、「凡そ人の血を流す者は人其血を流さん其は神の像のごとくに人を造り給ひたればなり」（Ｇｅ９：６）それゆえ、悪に対して悪が返されることは、道徳的要請なのではないか？
＊ ＊
ホーソンの＜緋文字＞。
若く美しい娘と結婚した年配の医師チリングワース。
そのいきさつを振り返って彼は語る－－－
“It was my folly! I have said it. But, up to that epoch of my life, I have lived in vain. The world had been so cheerless! My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire. I longed to kindle one! It seemed not so wild a dream,---old as I was, and sombre as I was, and misshapen as I was,---that the simple bliss, which is scattered far and wide, for all mankind to gather up, might yet be mine. And so, Hester, I drew thee into my heart, into its innermost chamber, and sought to warm thee by the warmth which thy presence made there!"
ところが、妻に遅れること二年、大陸からマサチューセッツのボストンへやってきた彼の目に最初に映ったのは、処刑台の上の彼女、胸に燃えるＡの文字をつけ、公衆の前にさらしものになっている他ならぬ彼女の姿だった。姦婦－－－adulteress －－－のA。
その日の後刻、極度のストレスと緊張のあまり神経発作を起こしたヘスタのために、彼は薬を調合して与える。
“・・・Drink it! It may be less soothing than a sinless conscience. That I cannot give thee. But it will calm the swell and heaving of thy passion, like oil thrown on the waves of a tempestuous sea."
その口調から分かるように、この時点で彼はまだ、人間的な優しさと良心とを失っていない。
"Therefore, as a man who has not thought and philosophized in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot no evil against thee. Between thee and me, the scale hangs fairly balanced. But, Hester, the man lives who has wronged us both! Who is he?"
彼はさんざん問い詰めるが、ヘスタはとうとう最後まで口を割らない。
彼は名を変えて素性を隠し、この罪深い女との関係も伏せてその町に身を落ちつける。そうしてついに秘密を嗅ぎつけ、妻の姦淫の相手である若き牧師アーサー・ディムズデールに近づいて、彼と居を共にするようになるのである。ディムズデールは良心の呵責のために青白くやせ衰え、かといって罪を告白する勇気も持てぬまま、苦しみつづけて幽霊みたいになっている。そういう彼をチリングワースは親切を装って診察し、何とか命を支えてやろうとするのである。
・・・So Roger Chillingworth---the man of skill, the kind and friendly physician---strove to go deep into his patient's bosom, delving among his principles, prying into his recollections, and probing everything with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a dark cavern. Few secrets can escape an investigator, who has opportunity and license to undertake such a quest, and skill to follow it up.
しかし実際には、彼はその医学的哲学的知識を総動員してディムズデールの心の奥底までを掘り下げ、相手が最も触れられたくない部分をわざと突いてはサディスティックな喜びを味わうためだけに、彼を生かし続けていたのである。
しだいに悪の力に屈してゆくにつれ、それは彼の外見にはっきりと現れるようになる。
・・・At first, his expression had been calm, meditative, scholar-like. Now, there was something ugly evil in his face, which they had not previously noticed, and which grew still the more obvious to sight, the oftener they looked upon him.
・・・
Old Roger Chillingworth, throughout life, had been calm in temperament, kindly, though not of warm affections, but ever, and in all his relations with the world, a pure and upright man. He had begun an investigation, as he imagined, with the severe and equal integrity of a judge, desirous only of truth, even as if the question involved no more than the air-drawn lines and figures of a geometrical problem, instead of human passions, and wrongs inflicted on himself. But, as he proceeded, a terrible fascination, a kind of fierce, though still calm, necessity seized the old man within its gripe, and never set him free again, until he had done all its bidding. He now dug into the poor clergyman's heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather, like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man's bosom, but likely to find nothing save mortality and corruption. Alas for his own soul, if these were what he sought!
事件から七年の歳月がながれ、あるとき偶然ディムズデールの姿を目にしたヘスタは、彼のあまりのやつれようにショックを受ける。ヘスタはもちろんチリングワースの正体を知っていた、しかしディムズデールの方は自分が起居を共にしている相手が誰だか知らなかったのだ。それでヘスタは何とか彼を救おうと、折りをとらえてチリングワースに近づく。
・・・Hester had been looking steadily at the old man, and was shocked, as well as wonder-smitten, to discern what a change had been wrought upon him within the past seven years. ・・・the former aspect of an intellectual and studious man, calm and quiet, which was what she best remembered in him, had altogether vanished, and been succeeded by an eager, searching, almost fierce, yet carefully guarded look. ・・・
In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will・・・Undertake a devil's office. This unhappy person had effected such a transformation by devoting himself, for seven years, to the constant analysis of a heart full of torture, and deriving his enjoyment thence, and adding fuel to those fiery tortures which he analyzed and gloated over.
ヘスタは、彼がディムズデールに対してしてきた酷い仕打ちを責める。
"Better he had died at once!" said Tester Prynne.
"Yea, woman, thou sayest truly!・・・Better had he died at once! Never did mortal suffer what this man has suffered. And all, all, in the sight of his worst enemy! He has been conscious of me. He has felt an influence dwelling always upon him like a curse. He knew ・・・that no friendly hand was pulling at his heart-strings, and that an eye was looking curiously into him, which sought only evil, and found it.・・・"
ヘスタは彼の自己認識に気づくと、彼にディムズデールのことを許すよう懇願する。しかし老人はそれを拒むのである。
"And I(pity)thee," answered Hester Prynne, "for the hatred that has transformed a wise and just man to a fiend! Wilt thou yet purge it out of thee, and be once more human? ・・・Forgive, and leave his further retribution to the Power that claims it! I said,・・・that there could be no good event for him, or thee, or me, who are here wandering together in this gloomy maze of evil, and stumbling, at every step, over the guilt wherewith we have strewn our path. It is not so! There might be good for thee, and thee alone, since thou hast been deeply wronged, and hast it at thy will to pardon. Wilt thou give up that only privilege? Wilt thou reject that priceless benefit?"
"Peace, Hester, peace!" replied the old man, with gloomy sternness."It is not granted me to pardon. I have no such power as thou tellest me of. ・・・By thy first step awry, thou didst plant the germ of evil; but, since that moment, it has all been a dark necessity. Yet that have wronged me are not sinful,・・・neither am I friend-like, who have snatched a friend's office from his hands. It is our fate. Let the black flower blossom as it may! ・・・"
＊ ＊
今までの我々の考察からすれば、もちろんチリングワースの道徳的敗北は、彼自身の責任である、ということになろう。－－－宿命に屈し、己れが憎しみの形づくるままになることを許した弱さ。人間には、安易な運命論に逃げ込むことなく、己れの被った害や投げ込まれた逆境ゆえに己れの人格が醜く歪んでしまうことのないように戦う責任がある。
しかしその責任を放棄するのはいかに容易なことだっただろう。彼は始めから悪魔だったわけではない－－－憎しみが彼を悪魔にしたのだ。そしてそれは全く自然なことで、たやすく理解できることである－－－自分の妻を寝取った男を、誰が憎まないだろうか、ことにその妻が、老いの身にとってかけがえのない慰めだったときには？
この気の毒なチリングワースの例が示しているのは、これまたのっぴきならない大問題である。それは、悪に対して悪を返すのを諦めることが人を歪めるということが実際にあり得るとしても、それ以上に、悪に対して悪を返すこともまた人を歪めるのだという事実なのである。
それでは一体、我々はどうしたらいいのか？
今、問題となってくるのは実にこの点なのである。
それは結局、次の問題に帰着するのではないだろうか、すなわち、そもそも悪というものはなぜ存在するようになったのか、いつかあらゆる悪が正しく裁かれるということは一体あり得るのか、という問いである。
ここで我々は＜アンナ・カレーニナ＞のエピグラフを－－－「復讐するは我にあり」－－－思い出すのである。パウロは書いている、「惡をもて惡に報いず、凡ての人のまへに善からんことを圖り、汝らの爲し得るかぎり力めて凡ての人と相和らげ。愛する者よ、自ら復讐すな、ただ神の怒りに任せまつれ。録して『主いひ給ふ、復讐するは我にあり、我これを報いん』とあり。『もし汝の仇飢えなば之に食はせ、渇かば之に飲ませよ、なんぢ斯するは熱き火を彼の頭に積むなり』惡に勝たるることなく、善をもて惡に勝て」－－－Ｒｏｍ１２：１７－２１
それゆえ我々は知るのである、確かに、悪に対して悪が返されることは道徳的要請である、しかし、それを我々が返してはいけないのだ。
だが、それはなぜか？ どうして我々でなくて、神でなくてはならないのか？ それは正義の問題である。さらに後の部分で、この問題が再び取り上げられることになるだろう。
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下の広告はブログ運営サイドによるもので、中島迂生とは関係ありません
この作品について 目次
－９－ ＜アメリカ文学とキリスト教＞、その３、ドライサー＜アメリカの悲劇＞その他
＜アメリカ文学とキリスト教＞第五章で取り上げられるのは、外的環境と決定論の問題である。決定論的人間観のもたらす有害な結果が的確に説明されている。そして、なぜ人間はありのままであってはならないのかについても。
"Naturalism" in the modern novel is based upon "scientific determinism."Man, according to this view, is a product of forces over which he has no control. The forces may be biological or social; they may belong to one's heredity or one's environment. In any case, they reduce man to the status of a puppet. If man is a puppet, he is clearly not a moral agent, he is relieved of moral responsibility, he deserves neither blame nor praise, he is always doing the best---or the worst---he can. Amoralism is an inevitable corollary of naturalism.
・・・
Modern scientific determinism becomes more insidious all the while. Poverty breeds crime, say some. But how many of us have sprung from "poor but honest parents"? ・・・A glandular determinism is popular with many."If the thyroid doesn't get you, "they say," then the pituitary must. "The psychiatric patient feels that his emotional disturbance has got him licked, and it becomes the job of the psychiatrist to convince him that it hasn't. This is, or has been in time past, the office of religion. St. Paul said, "I can do all things through Christ, "which is a little different from our modern naturalistic version," I can do only those things which my psychological profile shows that I have an aptitude for, and I should be silly to try anything else."
それから彼は「自然主義作家」とされるゾラ、クレイン、ノリスを取り上げる。
Naturalism in literature began with the powerful novels of Emile Zola. Consider "Germinal", for example. Here we the story of the coal miners in northern France.・・・The author piles up such a tremendous mass of facts(or "documentation"),that the reader becomes thoroughly acquainted with the subject, and feels as if he had actually shared the life described. There is, one is almost constrained to feel after having read "Germinal", a connection between poverty and crime.
・・・Given certain people, living under certain conditions, how will they act? Zola thought of the craft of the novel as a controlled experiment, and of people as elements in a chemical reaction.
There is, then, a naturalistic theme in Crane. Man is overwhelmed, or in danger of being overwhelmed, by the forces: the mass movements of war, the immoral life of the slums, the elemental forces of the universe itself. Frank Noris also gave a large emphasis to the importance of external forces in determining man's life on this planet.・・・
それから彼はここで多くのページを割いてセオドア・ライサーの「アメリカの悲劇」を取り上げている。
・・・because I think "An American Tragedy" is an impressive book, and・・・it is probably the most completely naturalistic of all American novels. ・・・
This is the story of Clyde Griffith. It begins when he is twelve, and ends ten years later, when Clyde, at the age of twenty-two, is sent to the electric chair for the murder of Roberta Alden. It is told in three parts.
The story begins with a Salvation Army meeting conducted by Clyde's parents on a street corner in Kansas City. Clyde views the proceedings with distaste. His father is the weak, ineffectual sort; his mother, though resolute, has a mediocre mind. The older daughter, who plays the organ, later runs away with an actor, and still later, returns pregnant and unmarried. Clyde, when he is seventeen, gets a job in a big downtown hotel, where he is initiated into the life of the bellhop world. The bellhops have money to spend・・・Clyde goes with the others on a drinking party, and afterwards to a whore house.・・・The bellhops take their girl friends out into the country one afternoon in a borrowed car. On the way back, the car strikes a child, and the panicky driver speeds the car into the suburbs, and wrecks it in an open field. At the end of Part 1 Clyde is crawling on all fours across a snow-covered field in the semidarkness.
それからここで著者はクライドとその立場をざっと総括する。
He was underprivileged. He had almost no schooling, though he was bright enough. He adopted the mores of his set, the bellhop set. He was very adaptable, quick to learn; he quickly took on the coloration of the group in which he found himself. He was in no way to blame for the accident, and he did not run away from the scene of the accident---the driver did that. But he run away from the crack-up in the field, and was never seen again in those parts. He was weak. His early religious training is not supposed to have been of any particular use to him. "Successful" people look down on street preachers. Clyde wanted to be a "success" like the rich people he saw at the big hotel. He was ambitious; he wanted to rise in the scale. He aspired to the "higher things" of his materialistic environment: money, cloths, good times, sexual excitement. Is a young man very much to blame, Dreiser asks in effect, for embracing the "ideals" of his surroundings, the "ideals" which on all sides stare him brazenly in the face?
第二部はライカーガスの社交界の描写から始まる。クライドの叔父はここで「成功」した人物として登場する。
・・・What a rich luxurious picture, what an impressive picture, the author paints of life on fashionable Wykeagy Avenue! ・・・the parties, the gaiety, the snobbery---how different all this from Clyde's world!
クライドは叔父のつてでこの地に仕事を得る。そこで彼は田舎娘のロバータ・オルデンに興味を持つようになる。
・・・After he had become involved with Roberta, he was taken up by the Wykeagy set, and found that he could not resist the attractions of high society. And so, Clyde faced a great problem. Roberta was with child, but Clyde aspired to Sondra, the rich society belle. Roberta would not release him, and Clyde was unwilling to give up Sondra. What a quandary for a young man to find himself in, who is, so far as the reader can discover, utterly without character!
Dreiser's portrait is sympathetically drawn, nevertheless, and reader is perforce sympathetically disposed, too, so compelling, are the forces, and so ill-prepared is Clyde to cope with them. Dreiser's depiction of Clyde's quandary is surely a masterpiece of American realism: the talk with the druggist, the visit to the country doctor,・・・Roberta's ignorance of sex, Clyde's ignorance too, the whole social attitude toward the unmarried mother, Clyde's shallow infatuation with a girl of much less real worth than Roberta---all this adds up to what is perhaps the most convincing "slice of life" to be found anywhere in the American novel.
それで結局クライドがどうしたかと言うと、彼はロバータの殺害を企てるのである。彼はロバータと二人でボート遊びに出掛け、取り乱しながらも事を成し遂げる。彼はボートを転覆させ、泳げないロバータを見殺しにして一人岸へ泳ぎ帰るのである。
At the end of Part 2 we see Clyde hurrying away from the lake through the darkening forest in the direction of the Finchley's summer lodge. We remember that at end of Part 1 the young man was running away, or crawling away, in the semidarkness. At that time, he was not to blame for what had happened, and the reader suspects that the author would like to imply that Clyde is again an unfortunate victim of circumstances.
最後の第三部は裁判の模様である。情状酌量の余地はほとんどなさそうだ。
Toward the end of the trial, Clyde's mother comes to the prison to pray with Clyde. After the verdict of guilty in the first degree, she writes pieces for the paper and gives public lectures on Clyde's history, to get money to pay for a new trial---which is never granted. A young minister, the Reverend Mr. McMillan, takes a great interest in Clyde. He writes a statement, and persuades him to sign it, in which Clyde warns young men against sinful ways, and professes to have found the peace of God. Part 3 ends with Clyde's death in the electric chair. In an epilogue, the book ends as it began: Clyde's parents, older and feebler, are conducting a Salvation Army meeting on a street corner in San Francisco.
Malcom Cowley has made the observation that the American naturalists believed that "Christianity was a shame." The statement seems to fit Dreiser pretty well.
I imagine Dreiser thought he was giving Christianity a thorough and fair trial in "An American Tragedy", that he was weighing it in the balance and finding it wanting. However underprivileged Clyde may have been, he at least had a Christian upbringing. This, however, did not save him from crime. Nor did Christianity bring him comfort in his last days. He had not found peace, as his ghostwriter said he had. He ended wretchedly. McMillan himself, moreover, was a phony. He knew that the statement was untrue. He wanted to use Clyde to advance his own professional interests, he wanted to be known as a great soul-saver.
That leaves Clyde's mother to be accounted for. Dreiser could hardly denigrate her Christian character. He may not have known it, but she was a saint, and the Christian reader knows she was a saint. The Christian reader knows also that her great strength and endurance came from her religious faith. Well, even if Dreiser will allow this, his attitude toward her is still one, not of admiration, but pity; and pity not so much because of the unhappiness inflicted upon her by a wayward son, as because of her failure to follow a more "profitable" course in life. She as not brilliant, to be sure, but she had a certain practical talent. Her lecturing and work for the newspaper showed she could make money---she made over a thousand dollars, in a fairly short time. Why did she keep on with her street preaching and mission work? What did she get out of it? The author seems to ask, incredulous, bewildered. She was---Dreiser believes, and would have us believe---a poor, misguided creature.
Our author is, I fear, spiritually benighted. He is addicted to the same materialism of which poor Clyde is the bounden slave. One has only to compare Dreiser's treatment of Clyde's mother with Faulkner's treatment of Dilsey・・・to see the difference---and it is an abysmal one---between the naturalistic and the religious attitude.
"An American Tragedy" illustrates perfectly the complete amoralism of the naturalistic philosophy. Clyde Griffiths was not responsible, he was not to blame. Before you judge Clyde, Dreiser says in effect, don't forget the child's uneasiness at those sidewalk meetings; the accident on the way back from the bellhop party; the shabby treatment he received the Lycuergus Griffiths; his excitable sexual nature; his dreams of wealth and position; his innate weakness. One of Clyde's lawyers, in a speech before the court, called his client "a mental and moral coward," and added, "You didn't make yourself, did you, Clyde?" Clyde is not responsible, in the last analysis, because he didn't make himself. And this, I fear, is the gospel according to Theodore Dreiser.
・・・Dreiser, when confronted by human troubles, is overwhelmed by pity and perplexity. He doesn't know what to do with life. The tears run down his cheeks, and he folds and refolds his pocket handkerchief, and shakes his head.
Compassion is a great virtue, but it is not necessary to surrender individual responsibility is order to be compassionate. There is such a thing as Christian forgiveness and Christian pity. Jesus was compassionate toward the thief on the cross, and the woman taken in adultery."The Scarlet letter" is compassionate, without surrendering the responsible individual."There but for the grace of God go I" is a better basis for compassion than the general denial of responsibility.
それゆえ彼は主張するのである－－人間は責任を負っていると、いかに生まれや環境などの外的状況に形造られまた翻弄されようと、人間は自分の行動に関して責任を負っているのだと。
＊ ＊
追補。
"Portage" におけるヒトラーの自己弁護の、第四ポイントのテーマ－－－苦しめられた者に苦しめる権利はあるか。
あるいは外的状況と精神の自由をめぐる更なる考察。
・・・Examine the question fairly. Would Palestine have become Israel, would the Jews have come to that barren patch in the Levant, would the United States and the Soviet Union, Stalin's Soviet Union have given you recognition and guaranteed your survival, had it not been for the Holocaust? It was the Holocaust that gave you the courage of injustice, that made you drive the Arab out of his home, out of his friend, because he was lice-eaten and without resource, because he was in your divinely ordered way. That made you endure knowing that those whom you had driven out were rotting in refugee camps, not ten miles away, buried alive in despair and lunatic dreams of vengeance. Perhaps I am the Messiah, the true Messiah, the new Sabbatai, ・・・
ユダヤ人はナチの迫害を耐え忍ぶことによって、その後自分たちの国家を回復するために、自ら他者を踏みつけにする権利を得た。ナチは彼らに、そのための口実を与えたのだ。そうした見方は正しいのか？ そうした見方が正しいとすれば、彼らは自分たちが被った悪を、何がしかの補償が可能であるもの、何かしらによって埋め合わせのつくものであると見做していた、ということになるのか？ 実際にはどうだったのか？
Amsel: I want vengeance, just the same as you.
Gideon: Vengeance? There can be no vengeance. Why should history apologize to the Jews? Don't stare at me, Amsel, as if you knew what I was trying to say. You don't. You think the dead will sit up just because we've got Hitler? They won't. You can dip him in boiling oil six million times. What's that going to mean to a man who's seen his six-years-old daughter so terrified she dirtied herself before they killed her? You think that can be made good?
・・・
(continuing Gideon) That's why I don't want any of us to touch him. If we hang him, we'll be pretending what he did can be made good. History will draw a line and forget even faster. That's exactly what they want. They want us to do the job for them. Let the Jews hang him. We nailed up Christ, now they want us to finish Hitler.・・・
実際には、復讐なんてことはできはしない。そんなことは不可能なのだ。それゆえ彼は復讐しようとしなかったのである。
それでは、もしそれが本当に可能だとしたら－－－実際に復讐することができたとしたら－－－彼らにその権利はあったのか？
ここで我々が思い出すのは、＜夜と霧＞終章における、収容所からの解放のすぐあとでの心を打つ一挿話である。
「特にいくらか原始的な性質の人間においてはこの解放後の時期に、彼等が依然としてその倫理的態度において権力と暴力とのカテゴリーに固執しているのが認められることがあった。そして彼等は解放された者として、今度は自分がその力と自由を恣意的に抑制なく利用できる人間だと思いこむことがあった。彼等は権力や暴力、恣意、不正の客体からその主体になったのである。さらに彼等はまた彼等が経験したことになお固執しているのである。このことはしばしばとるにたらない些細なことの中に現れるのであった。たとえば、一人の仲間と私とは、われわれが少し前に解放された収容所に向って、野原を横切って行った。すると突然われわれの前に麦の芽の出たばかりの畑があった。無意識的に私はそれを避けた。しかし彼は私の腕を捉え、自分と一緒にその真中を突切った。私は口ごもりながら若い芽を踏みにじるべきではないと彼に言った。すると彼は気を悪くした。彼の眼からは怒りのまなざしが燃え上った。そして私にどなりつけた。『何を言うのだ！ われわれの奪われたものは僅かなものだったのか？ 他人はともかく・・・俺の妻も子供もガスで殺されたのだ！ それなのにお前は俺がほんの少し麦藁を踏みつけるのを禁ずるのか！・・・』何人も不正をする権利はないということ、たとえ不正に苦しんだ者でも不正をする権利はないということ、かかる平凡な真理をこういう人間に再発見させるには長い時間がかかったのである。そしてまたわれわれはこの人間をこの真理へ立ち帰らせるよう努めねばならないのである。なぜならばこの真理の取り違えは、ある未知の百姓が幾粒かの穀物を失うのよりは遙かに悪い結果になりかねないからである。なぜならば私はシャツの袖をまくり上げ、私の鼻先にむきだしの右手をつき出して『もし俺が家に帰ったその日に、この手が血で染まらないならば俺の手を切り落としてもいいぞ。』と叫んだ収容所の一人の囚人を思い出すのである。そして私はこう言った男は元来少しも悪い男ではなくて、収容所でもその後においても常に最もよい仲間であったことを強調したいと思う。」
そう、我々は彼の危惧がまさに現実になったのを、ヒトラ－の論説の中に見たのではないだろうか？
しかし、フランクルの信念によれば、誰にも悪に悪を返す権利はないのである。その代わりに我々は、我々に対してなされた悪を試練として受けとめ、これを人間の尊厳を表明する機会と見做し、それによって一層成長してゆかなければならない。彼はこれをもまた内的自由の一要素として考えたことであろう。悪に対して悪を返すのは容易なことであり、最も自然な道である。しかし、その最も自然な道に従うとき、人は悪という外的状況の奴隷であり、それに対して何の力も持たない操り人形、非人格的なチェスの駒の一つに過ぎないのである。人が意志能力を持った主体として現れることができるのは、ただ悪の循環をどこかで断ち切ろうとする人間的な努力によってのみである。
そしてまた、さらに我々は、悪に悪を返すことが間違っているだけでなく、無駄であることをも知るのである。というのは、どんなにそうしても地上から悪を一掃することはできず、却ってますますひどくそれをはびこらせることになるばかりだからだ。"Portage" のヒトラーが指摘するとおり－－－
・・・In a world that tortures prisoners and pours napalm on naked villagers. That continues to do these things quite without my help.
しかしながら、実際にはこれが精神衛生上の大問題であることは言うまでもない。我々はだれしも身に覚えがあるに違いない。
上司からいわれのない非難を受けたとき、我々は罪もない机を蹴っとばしてせいせいしたりするし、いやなことがあったときには海に向かって怒鳴ってすっきりしたりする。かくして代償がなされるのである。
悪の力に対して内的自由を保つのは難しい。それは何らの代償行為をも伴わずに悪を耐え忍ぶということであり、実質的に、押しつけられたストレスを捌け口なしにため込むことを意味するからである。それが人の精神を歪めないですむものだろうか？ そして、結局のところそれは我々の、正義の感覚と公正を求める本能－－－＜神の像＞を構成する要素の一つ－－－に反するのではないか？ ノアの日に神は宣言しなかっただろうか、「凡そ人の血を流す者は人其血を流さん其は神の像のごとくに人を造り給ひたればなり」（Ｇｅ９：６）それゆえ、悪に対して悪が返されることは、道徳的要請なのではないか？
＊ ＊
ホーソンの＜緋文字＞。
若く美しい娘と結婚した年配の医師チリングワース。
そのいきさつを振り返って彼は語る－－－
“It was my folly! I have said it. But, up to that epoch of my life, I have lived in vain. The world had been so cheerless! My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire. I longed to kindle one! It seemed not so wild a dream,---old as I was, and sombre as I was, and misshapen as I was,---that the simple bliss, which is scattered far and wide, for all mankind to gather up, might yet be mine. And so, Hester, I drew thee into my heart, into its innermost chamber, and sought to warm thee by the warmth which thy presence made there!"
ところが、妻に遅れること二年、大陸からマサチューセッツのボストンへやってきた彼の目に最初に映ったのは、処刑台の上の彼女、胸に燃えるＡの文字をつけ、公衆の前にさらしものになっている他ならぬ彼女の姿だった。姦婦－－－adulteress －－－のA。
その日の後刻、極度のストレスと緊張のあまり神経発作を起こしたヘスタのために、彼は薬を調合して与える。
“・・・Drink it! It may be less soothing than a sinless conscience. That I cannot give thee. But it will calm the swell and heaving of thy passion, like oil thrown on the waves of a tempestuous sea."
その口調から分かるように、この時点で彼はまだ、人間的な優しさと良心とを失っていない。
"Therefore, as a man who has not thought and philosophized in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot no evil against thee. Between thee and me, the scale hangs fairly balanced. But, Hester, the man lives who has wronged us both! Who is he?"
彼はさんざん問い詰めるが、ヘスタはとうとう最後まで口を割らない。
彼は名を変えて素性を隠し、この罪深い女との関係も伏せてその町に身を落ちつける。そうしてついに秘密を嗅ぎつけ、妻の姦淫の相手である若き牧師アーサー・ディムズデールに近づいて、彼と居を共にするようになるのである。ディムズデールは良心の呵責のために青白くやせ衰え、かといって罪を告白する勇気も持てぬまま、苦しみつづけて幽霊みたいになっている。そういう彼をチリングワースは親切を装って診察し、何とか命を支えてやろうとするのである。
・・・So Roger Chillingworth---the man of skill, the kind and friendly physician---strove to go deep into his patient's bosom, delving among his principles, prying into his recollections, and probing everything with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a dark cavern. Few secrets can escape an investigator, who has opportunity and license to undertake such a quest, and skill to follow it up.
しかし実際には、彼はその医学的哲学的知識を総動員してディムズデールの心の奥底までを掘り下げ、相手が最も触れられたくない部分をわざと突いてはサディスティックな喜びを味わうためだけに、彼を生かし続けていたのである。
しだいに悪の力に屈してゆくにつれ、それは彼の外見にはっきりと現れるようになる。
・・・At first, his expression had been calm, meditative, scholar-like. Now, there was something ugly evil in his face, which they had not previously noticed, and which grew still the more obvious to sight, the oftener they looked upon him.
・・・
Old Roger Chillingworth, throughout life, had been calm in temperament, kindly, though not of warm affections, but ever, and in all his relations with the world, a pure and upright man. He had begun an investigation, as he imagined, with the severe and equal integrity of a judge, desirous only of truth, even as if the question involved no more than the air-drawn lines and figures of a geometrical problem, instead of human passions, and wrongs inflicted on himself. But, as he proceeded, a terrible fascination, a kind of fierce, though still calm, necessity seized the old man within its gripe, and never set him free again, until he had done all its bidding. He now dug into the poor clergyman's heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather, like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man's bosom, but likely to find nothing save mortality and corruption. Alas for his own soul, if these were what he sought!
事件から七年の歳月がながれ、あるとき偶然ディムズデールの姿を目にしたヘスタは、彼のあまりのやつれようにショックを受ける。ヘスタはもちろんチリングワースの正体を知っていた、しかしディムズデールの方は自分が起居を共にしている相手が誰だか知らなかったのだ。それでヘスタは何とか彼を救おうと、折りをとらえてチリングワースに近づく。
・・・Hester had been looking steadily at the old man, and was shocked, as well as wonder-smitten, to discern what a change had been wrought upon him within the past seven years. ・・・the former aspect of an intellectual and studious man, calm and quiet, which was what she best remembered in him, had altogether vanished, and been succeeded by an eager, searching, almost fierce, yet carefully guarded look. ・・・
In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will・・・Undertake a devil's office. This unhappy person had effected such a transformation by devoting himself, for seven years, to the constant analysis of a heart full of torture, and deriving his enjoyment thence, and adding fuel to those fiery tortures which he analyzed and gloated over.
ヘスタは、彼がディムズデールに対してしてきた酷い仕打ちを責める。
"Better he had died at once!" said Tester Prynne.
"Yea, woman, thou sayest truly!・・・Better had he died at once! Never did mortal suffer what this man has suffered. And all, all, in the sight of his worst enemy! He has been conscious of me. He has felt an influence dwelling always upon him like a curse. He knew ・・・that no friendly hand was pulling at his heart-strings, and that an eye was looking curiously into him, which sought only evil, and found it.・・・"
ヘスタは彼の自己認識に気づくと、彼にディムズデールのことを許すよう懇願する。しかし老人はそれを拒むのである。
"And I(pity)thee," answered Hester Prynne, "for the hatred that has transformed a wise and just man to a fiend! Wilt thou yet purge it out of thee, and be once more human? ・・・Forgive, and leave his further retribution to the Power that claims it! I said,・・・that there could be no good event for him, or thee, or me, who are here wandering together in this gloomy maze of evil, and stumbling, at every step, over the guilt wherewith we have strewn our path. It is not so! There might be good for thee, and thee alone, since thou hast been deeply wronged, and hast it at thy will to pardon. Wilt thou give up that only privilege? Wilt thou reject that priceless benefit?"
"Peace, Hester, peace!" replied the old man, with gloomy sternness."It is not granted me to pardon. I have no such power as thou tellest me of. ・・・By thy first step awry, thou didst plant the germ of evil; but, since that moment, it has all been a dark necessity. Yet that have wronged me are not sinful,・・・neither am I friend-like, who have snatched a friend's office from his hands. It is our fate. Let the black flower blossom as it may! ・・・"
＊ ＊
今までの我々の考察からすれば、もちろんチリングワースの道徳的敗北は、彼自身の責任である、ということになろう。－－－宿命に屈し、己れが憎しみの形づくるままになることを許した弱さ。人間には、安易な運命論に逃げ込むことなく、己れの被った害や投げ込まれた逆境ゆえに己れの人格が醜く歪んでしまうことのないように戦う責任がある。
しかしその責任を放棄するのはいかに容易なことだっただろう。彼は始めから悪魔だったわけではない－－－憎しみが彼を悪魔にしたのだ。そしてそれは全く自然なことで、たやすく理解できることである－－－自分の妻を寝取った男を、誰が憎まないだろうか、ことにその妻が、老いの身にとってかけがえのない慰めだったときには？
この気の毒なチリングワースの例が示しているのは、これまたのっぴきならない大問題である。それは、悪に対して悪を返すのを諦めることが人を歪めるということが実際にあり得るとしても、それ以上に、悪に対して悪を返すこともまた人を歪めるのだという事実なのである。
それでは一体、我々はどうしたらいいのか？
今、問題となってくるのは実にこの点なのである。
それは結局、次の問題に帰着するのではないだろうか、すなわち、そもそも悪というものはなぜ存在するようになったのか、いつかあらゆる悪が正しく裁かれるということは一体あり得るのか、という問いである。
ここで我々は＜アンナ・カレーニナ＞のエピグラフを－－－「復讐するは我にあり」－－－思い出すのである。パウロは書いている、「惡をもて惡に報いず、凡ての人のまへに善からんことを圖り、汝らの爲し得るかぎり力めて凡ての人と相和らげ。愛する者よ、自ら復讐すな、ただ神の怒りに任せまつれ。録して『主いひ給ふ、復讐するは我にあり、我これを報いん』とあり。『もし汝の仇飢えなば之に食はせ、渇かば之に飲ませよ、なんぢ斯するは熱き火を彼の頭に積むなり』惡に勝たるることなく、善をもて惡に勝て」－－－Ｒｏｍ１２：１７－２１
それゆえ我々は知るのである、確かに、悪に対して悪が返されることは道徳的要請である、しかし、それを我々が返してはいけないのだ。
だが、それはなぜか？ どうして我々でなくて、神でなくてはならないのか？ それは正義の問題である。さらに後の部分で、この問題が再び取り上げられることになるだろう。
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