エジプトやギリシア、そしてイタリア等の古代遺跡跡に今も立つ円柱を思ふと巨大な石造りの建造物が権力や富の象徴として君臨してゐたことが窺ひ知れるが、さて、其処でその巨大な石造物を支へてゐた円柱群の林立する写真等を目にすると、其処に人間の浅墓さと共に何やら構築せずにはゐられない人間の性のやうなものが去来する。

地に屹立する円柱群。そして、その上にあったであらう石造りの豪奢な天井若しくは人工天上。それら円柱群が時空間を人間の思ひのままにぶった切り人造の絢爛豪華な時空間を支へる円柱は、その淵源を辿ると母胎を支へる子宮に通ずるやうに思へるのだ。つまり、地に屹立する円柱の長さ分、神の坐す天上界を人間界にずり下げ、母胎内で無意識に思ひ描いてゐたであらう理想郷を人間は築かずにはゐられないのだ。それは正に泡沫の夢である。何故ならば円柱が地に屹立する遺跡の写真は建築物が永遠のものではなく《崩壊》した事を如実に示してゐる。それはまるで、人間もまた何時までも子宮内に留まれずに此の世に出生させられるのと同じやうに……。それは何とも儚く諸行無常といふ言葉を思ひ起こさせるのである。

――さて、自然もまた自己崩壊する運命にあるのであらうか……。

ところで、建造物は何時の世も人間が思ひ描く《宇宙》の縮図である。私にとって今のところ最高の《宇宙》の縮図は私の幼少時の私の祖父母の家である。それは茅葺屋根の家であったが其処にゐる心地良さは今もって味はったことのない至福の時間であった。そして、もう一つ《宇宙》の縮図を挙げればそれは法隆寺の五重塔である。カフカが生きてゐた迷宮のやうなプラハやブダペストなどオーストリア・ハンガリー帝国の都市を除くと石造りの西洋の街はどうも私の性に合はないが、木造建築で現存する最古の法隆寺の五重塔は諸行無常にあって何やら微かではあるが恒常不変にも通じる深遠なる何かを指示してゐるやうで、私は五重塔を見る度に感慨に耽るのである。

さて、法隆寺の五重塔や建築については後の機会に譲るとして、しかし、塔と言へば私は即座にノーベル文学賞受賞者でアイルランドの詩人兼劇作家のイェーツの「塔」といふ作品が思ひ起こされるのである。それは螺旋にも通じるものでそれはまた後の機会で改めて取り上げるとしてイェーツの「塔」はかうである。

W.B.Yeats作

「The Tower」

I

WHAT shall I do with this absurdity -

O heart, O troubled heart - this caricature,

Decrepit age that has been tied to me

As to a dog's tail?

Never had I more

Excited, passionate, fantastical

Imagination, nor an ear and eye

That more expected the impossible -

No, not in boyhood when with rod and fly,

Or the humbler worm, I climbed Ben Bulben's back

And had the livelong summer day to spend.

It seems that I must bid the Muse go pack,

Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend

Until imagination, ear and eye,

Can be content with argument and deal

In abstract things; or be derided by

A sort of battered kettle at the heel.

II

I pace upon the battlements and stare

On the foundations of a house, or where

Tree, like a sooty finger, starts from the earth;

And send imagination forth

Under the day's declining beam, and call

Images and memories

From ruin or from ancient trees,

For I would ask a question of them all.

Beyond that ridge lived Mrs. French, and once

When every silver candlestick or sconce

Lit up the dark mahogany and the wine.

A serving-man, that could divine

That most respected lady's every wish,

Ran and with the garden shears

Clipped an insolent farmer's ears

And brought them in a little covered dish.

Some few remembered still when I was young

A peasant girl commended by a Song,

Who'd lived somewhere upon that rocky place,

And praised the colour of her face,

And had the greater joy in praising her,

Remembering that, if walked she there,

Farmers jostled at the fair

So great a glory did the song confer.

And certain men, being maddened by those rhymes,

Or else by toasting her a score of times,

Rose from the table and declared it right

To test their fancy by their sight;

But they mistook the brightness of the moon

For the prosaic light of day -

Music had driven their wits astray -

And one was drowned in the great bog of Cloone.

Strange, but the man who made the song was blind;

Yet, now I have considered it, I find

That nothing strange; the tragedy began

With Homer that was a blind man,

And Helen has all living hearts betrayed.

O may the moon and sunlight seem

One inextricable beam,

For if I triumph I must make men mad.

And I myself created Hanrahan

And drove him drunk or sober through the dawn

From somewhere in the neighbouring cottages.

Caught by an old man's juggleries

He stumbled, tumbled, fumbled to and fro

And had but broken knees for hire

And horrible splendour of desire;

I thought it all out twenty years ago:

Good fellows shuffled cards in an old bawn;

And when that ancient ruffian's turn was on

He so bewitched the cards under his thumb

That all but the one card became

A pack of hounds and not a pack of cards,

And that he changed into a hare.

Hanrahan rose in frenzy there

And followed up those baying creatures towards -

O towards I have forgotten what - enough!

I must recall a man that neither love

Nor music nor an enemy's clipped ear

Could, he was so harried, cheer;

A figure that has grown so fabulous

There's not a neighbour left to say

When he finished his dog's day:

An ancient bankrupt master of this house.

Before that ruin came, for centuries,

Rough men-at-arms, cross-gartered to the knees

Or shod in iron, climbed the narrow stairs,

And certain men-at-arms there were

Whose images, in the Great Memory stored,

Come with loud cry and panting breast

To break upon a sleeper's rest

While their great wooden dice beat on the board.

As I would question all, come all who can;

Come old, necessitous. half-mounted man;

And bring beauty's blind rambling celebrant;

The red man the juggler sent

Through God-forsaken meadows; Mrs. French,

Gifted with so fine an ear;

The man drowned in a bog's mire,

When mocking Muses chose the country wench.

Did all old men and women, rich and poor,

Who trod upon these rocks or passed this door,

Whether in public or in secret rage

As I do now against old age?

But I have found an answer in those eyes

That are impatient to be gone;

Go therefore; but leave Hanrahan,

For I need all his mighty memories.

Old lecher with a love on every wind,

Bring up out of that deep considering mind

All that you have discovered in the grave,

For it is certain that you have

Reckoned up every unforeknown, unseeing

plunge, lured by a softening eye,

Or by a touch or a sigh,

Into the labyrinth of another's being;

Does the imagination dwell the most

Upon a woman won or woman lost?

If on the lost, admit you turned aside

From a great labyrinth out of pride,

Cowardice, some silly over-subtle thought

Or anything called conscience once;

And that if memory recur, the sun's

Under eclipse and the day blotted out.

III

It is time that I wrote my will;

I choose upstanding men

That climb the streams until

The fountain leap, and at dawn

Drop their cast at the side

Of dripping stone; I declare

They shall inherit my pride,

The pride of people that were

Bound neither to Cause nor to State.

Neither to slaves that were spat on,

Nor to the tyrants that spat,

The people of Burke and of Grattan

That gave, though free to refuse -

pride, like that of the morn,

When the headlong light is loose,

Or that of the fabulous horn,

Or that of the sudden shower

When all streams are dry,

Or that of the hour

When the swan must fix his eye

Upon a fading gleam,

Float out upon a long

Last reach of glittering stream

And there sing his last song.

And I declare my faith:

I mock plotinus' thought

And cry in plato's teeth,

Death and life were not

Till man made up the whole,

Made lock, stock and barrel

Out of his bitter soul,

Aye, sun and moon and star, all,

And further add to that

That, being dead, we rise,

Dream and so create

Translunar paradise.

I have prepared my peace

With learned Italian things

And the proud stones of <country-region wt="on">t="on">

Greece

Poet's imaginings

And memories of love,

Memories of the words of women,

All those things whereof

Man makes a superhuman,

Mirror-resembling dream.

As at the loophole there

The daws chatter and scream,

And drop twigs layer upon layer.

When they have mounted up,

The mother bird will rest

On their hollow top,

And so warm her wild nest.

I leave both faith and pride

To young upstanding men

Climbing the mountain-side,

That under bursting dawn

They may drop a fly;

Being of that metal made

Till it was broken by

This sedentary trade.

Now shall I make my soul,

Compelling it to study

In a learned school

Till the wreck of body,

Slow decay of blood,

Testy delirium

Or dull decrepitude,

Or what worse evil come -

The death of friends, or death

Of every brilliant eye

That made a catch in the breath - .

Seem but the clouds of the sky

When the horizon fades;

Or a bird's sleepy cry

Among the deepening shades.

何とも味はひ深い作品であるがイェーツについても何れかの機会に改めて書かうと思う。