THE SHADOW OF THE WIND
スペインの作家カルロス・ルイス・サフォン の世界的なベストセラー『風の影』を読む。たぶん探せば日本語訳もあるとは思ったが(集英社文庫の上下巻があるのを読後に知った)どうせ同じ翻訳なら英語で読むほうがいいやと、ペンギンのペーパーバックで読んだ。訳者は Lucia Graves となっている。さすがに英語圏の翻訳家にまではなじみがないが、たいへん読みやすく、また美しい文体に感動した。たぶん翻訳の技量ももちろんすぐれているのだろうけれど、この場合、おそらくはスペイン語の原文がいいのだろうと想像がつく。
ペーパーバックだから、いろんな作家や新聞書評などの推薦文が見返しに並んでいるが、いちばん頭にでんと載っているのが、スティーヴン・キングであります。いわく——
もしあなたが本物のゴシックノベルは19世紀とともに死んだと思っているなら、どっこいその考えは捨てたほうがいい。『風の影』は、まことに半端ではない傑作、豪華絢爛で、派手な仕掛けに満ちあふれた小説、どんな小さなサブプロットにさえ、さらにそのサブプロットが組み込まれているような小説・・・これぞ素晴らしき読書体験。
いやはや、これはまさに私好みの小説で、いまのところ、わたしの本年度ベストですね。スペイン内戦終結後のバルセロナが舞台の、少年が大人になっていく物語ですが、ミステリーの要素、幽霊屋敷物語の要素、ユーモア小説の要素、悲恋物語の要素、父と息子の愛憎ドラマの要素、いろんなものが渦を巻くように読者に襲いかかるが、見事にすべてがおさまるべきところにおさまる超人技巧的なオハナシ。ま、登場人物やあらすじなど、話し出したらきりがないので省略。
ただ、これだけ派手な仕掛けにもかかわらず、読者をしらけさせないのは、あちらこちらにちりばめられた気の利いた文章にあると見ました。通勤電車の中で、iPhone でメモをした抜粋を以下、ならべて御覧にいれます。
With women the best part is the discovery. There's nothing like the first time, nothing. You don't know what life is until you undress a woman the first time. A button at a time, like peeling a hot sweet potato on a winter's night.
In this world the only opinion that holds court is prejudice.
People talk too much. Humans aren't descended from monkeys. They come from parrots.
He would stare at you without saying a word, and you wouldn't know what he was thinking, and so, like an idiot, you'd tell him things it would have been better to keep to yourself…
Someone once said that the moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you've already stopped loving that person forever.
"Don't be offended, but sometimes one feels freer speaking to a stranger than to people one knows. Why is that?” I shrugged. “Probably because a stranger sees us the way we are, not as he wishes to think we are."
You cannot understand such things right now, because you're young. But in good time you'll see that sometimes what matters isn't what one gives but what one gives up.
As I was saying. Love is a lot like pork: there's loin stake and there's bologna. Each has its own place and function.
There are few reason for telling truth, but for lying the number is infinite.
You' re shown a pair of nice boobs and you think you've seen Saint Teresa - which at your age can be excused but not cured. Just leave her to me, Daniel. The fragrance of the eternal feminine no longer overpowers me the way it mesmerizes you. At my age the flow of blood to the brain has precedence over that which flows to the loin.
People who have no life always have to stick their noses in the life of others.
Nobody had noticed, nobody had paid attention, but, as usual, the essential part of the matter had been settled before the story had begun, and by then it was too late.
Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen.
Three heads think better than two, especially if the third one is mine.
Statistics prove it: more people die in bed than in the trenches.
Once she told me she was sorry she'd been a disappointment to me. I asked her where she'd got that ridiculous idea. "From your eyes, Father, from your eyes," she said. Not once did it occur to me that perhaps I'd been an even greater disappointment to her. Sometimes we think people are like lottery tickets, that they're there to make our most absurd dreams come true.
"Making money isn't hard in itself,” he complained. “What's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one's life to."
Lives with no meaning go straight past you, like trains that don't stop at your station.
Time has taught me not to lose hope, yet not to trust too much in hope either. Hope is cruel, and has no conscience.
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