世界に届く「パロール」

「パロール」とは、哲学的用語で「話し言葉」を意味する。
2月のblogで、村上春樹氏のエルサレム賞受賞講演とその余波について触れた。
そのテクストの中で私は、国際的な文学賞受賞という場で、外交上の利害関係を余り持たない地域での紛争を踏まえて、国境を越えた人間性について文学者として思うことを、母国語ではない言語で訴えかけた、村上氏の「パロール」を支持した。
日本国内には、所謂知識人や文化人はあまた存在するはずなのに、世界に届く「パロール」(＝声)が殆ど聞こえてこないことに、私はガッカリさせられる。村上氏がその数少ないパロールの持ち主であったことを、私はあの講演で再認識したのだ。


あの歴史的と評すべき講演の原文を、今一度堪能してみたい。

★　“Jerusalem Prize” Remarks by Haruki Murakami

Good evening. I have come to Jerusalem today as a novelist, which is to say as a professional spinner of lies.
Of course, novelists are not the only ones who tell lies. Politicians do it, too, as we all know. Diplomats and generals tell their own kinds of lies on occasion, as do used car salesmen, butchers and builders. The lies of novelists differ from others, however, in that no one criticizes the novelist as immoral for telling lies. Indeed, the bigger and better his lies and the more ingeniously he creates them, the more he is likely to be praised by the public and the critics. Why should that be?

My answer would be this: namely, that by telling skilful lies--which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true--the novelist can bring a truth out to a new place and shine a new light on it. In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth-lies within us, within ourselves. This is an important qualification for making up good lies.

Today, however, I have no intention of lying. I will try to be as honest as I can. There are only a few days in the year when I do not engage in telling lies, and today happens to be one of them.
So let me tell you the truth. In Japan a fair number of people advised me not to come here to accept the Jerusalem Prize. Some even warned me they would instigate a boycott of my books if I came. The reason for this, of course, was the fierce fighting that was raging in Gaza. The U.N. reported that more than a thousand people had lost their lives in the blockaded city of Gaza, many of them unarmed citizens--children and old people.

Any number of times after receiving notice of the award, I asked myself whether traveling to Israel at a time like this and accepting a literary prize was the proper thing to do, whether this would create the impression that I supported one side in the conflict, that I endorsed the policies of a nation that chose to unleash its overwhelming military power. Neither, of course, do I wish to see my books subjected to a boycott.
Finally, however, after careful consideration, I made up my mind to come here. One reason for my decision was that all too many people advised me not to do it. Perhaps, like many other novelists, I tend to do the exact opposite of what I am told. If people are telling me-- and especially if they are warning me-- “Don’t go there,” “Don’t do that,” I tend to want to “go there” and “do that”. It’s in my nature, you might say, as a novelist. Novelists are a special breed. They cannot genuinely trust anything they have not seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands.
And that is why I am here. I chose to come here rather than stay away. I chose to see for myself rather than not to see. I chose to speak to you rather than to say nothing.

Please do allow me to deliver a message, one very personal message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:

“Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.”

Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will do it. But if there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?
What is the meaning of this metaphor? In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them. This is one meaning of the metaphor.

But this is not all. It carries a deeper meaning. Think of it this way. Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: it is “The System.” The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others--coldly, efficiently, systematically.

I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on the System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I truly believe it is the novelist’s job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories--stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.

My father passed away last year at the age of ninety. He was a retired teacher and a part-time Buddhist priest. When he was in graduate school in Kyoto, he was drafted into the army and sent to fight in China. As a child born after the war, I used to see him every morning before breakfast offering up long, deeply-felt prayers at the small Buddhist altar in our house. One time I asked him why he did this, and he told me he was praying for the people who had died in the battlefield. He was praying for all the people who died, he said, both ally and enemy alike. Staring at his back as he knelt at the altar, I seemed to feel the shadow of death hovering around him.
My father died, and with him he took his memories, memories that I can never know. But the presence of death that lurked about him remains in my own memory. It is one of the few things I carry on from him, and one of the most important.

I have only one thing I hope to convey to you today. We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, and we are all fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong--and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others’ souls and from our believing in the warmth we gain by joining souls together.
Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow the System to exploit us. We must not allow the System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: we made the System.
That is all I have to say to you.

I am grateful to have been awarded the Jerusalem Prize. I am grateful that my books are being read by people in many parts of the world. And I would like to express my gratitude to the readers in Israel. You are the biggest reason why I am here. And I hope we are sharing something, something very meaningful. And I am glad to have had the opportunity to speak to you here today. Thank you very much.

やはり、“We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, and we are all fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong--and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others’ souls and from our believing in the warmth we gain by joining souls together.
Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow the System to exploit us. We must not allow the System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: we made the System.”の一節は何度読んでも秀逸である。これこそ、村上氏が一番世界に届けたかった「言葉」、いや、「声」なのだろう。

来て、見て、語ることの選択

私はこのブログを始めて随分時間が経つが、小説家・村上春樹について語ったことがあまりない。
私は彼がまだ文芸誌・群像に処女作「風の歌を聴け」を連載していた当初から、彼の熱き読者であった。
当時私は中学2年生。まだ、文学の何たるかも理解していない、青臭いガキであったにもかかわらず、知り合いのおじさんが持ってきた文芸誌を手に取り、ちょっと背伸びしたくて1人の作家の文章に目を留めた。
それが「風の歌を聴け」で、ちょっとスノビッシュで、都会的なテクストの私は虜になってしまった。
その衝撃的な出会いから今年で30年、私は今も尚作家・村上春樹のテクストから逃れることができないでいる。

私に影響を与え続けるその作家が、「エルサレム賞」を受賞した。この賞は、イスラエル最高の文学賞で、「社会における個人の自由」を巡る優れた執筆活動に対して与えられ、これまでに英国の哲学者でノーベル文学賞受賞者のバートランド・ラッセル、仏人著述家シモーヌ・ド・ボーヴォワール、アルゼンチンの作家ホルヘ・ルイス・ボルヘス、チェコの作家ミラン・クンデラなどが受賞者として名を連ねる。

村上春樹は昨日エルサレム賞受賞スピーチを昨日行い、その内容が世界を駆け巡った。その演説は実に素晴らしく、私の心に響く内容であった。どこかの財務大臣のように醜態を晒さず、明快で、クリティックに満ちたものであった。
当初、暴力によって反対者を抑圧する国が主催者の授賞式に村上氏が出席することへの反対意見も多くあったが、これに対しても「作家は自分の目で見たことしか信じない。私は非関与やだんまりを決め込むより、ここに来て、見て、語ることを選んだ」という内容で見事に看破した。

秀逸だったのは、イスラエルのガザ攻撃などに対する批判を、「壁」と「卵」というキーワードによって、小説家らしく比喩的に、そしてシニカルに述べた部分であろう。
曰く、「私が小説を書くとき常に心に留めているのは、高くて固い壁と、それにぶつかって壊れる卵のことだ。どちらが正しいか歴史が決めるにしても、わたしは常に卵の側に立つ。壁の側に立つ小説家に何の価値があるだろうか」。
曰く、「壁はあまりに高く、強大に見えて私達は希望を失いがちだ。しかし、私達一人ひとりは、システムにはない、生きた精神を持っている。システムが私達を利用し、増殖するのを許してはならない。システムが私達を作ったのでなく、私達がシステムを作った主人なのだ」。

村上春樹　「エルサレム賞」受賞スピーチ


「壁」は戦争などを生み出す社会システム、「卵」をその壁にぶつかって壊れていく人間の隠喩として、村上氏が用いているのは明らかである。村上氏は、どんなに「壁」が正しくて、どんなに「卵」が間違っていても、村上春樹という小説家は「卵」の側に立つと宣言したことに、私は敬意を表したいと思うのだ。
この「壁」が、村上作品の「世界の終わりとハードボイルド・ワンダーランド」の「世界の終わり」パートに表現される、周りをぐるりと高い壁で囲まれたエリア＝ガザ地区が妙にシンクロしていることもここで述べておきたい。


いずれにしても、村上春樹的隠喩としてのスピーチは、何の変哲もない普遍的な言葉で語られてはいるが、今の世界の状況を見事に言い当てている。大転換の時代にあって、今年はオバマ米国大統領の就任スピーチと今回の村上スピーチという秀逸な2つのスピーチを体感した。我々はこれらスピーチから、何を考え、何を実行するかを、1人ひとりが考えていかねばならない。