[記事リスト] [新着記事] [ワード検索] [過去ログ] [管理用]
| タイトル | ： 第八回 |
| 投稿日 | ： 2003/11/08(Sat) 10:29 |
| 投稿者 | ： 惣田正明 <vem13077@> |
第八回テキスト
---はじめ---
Too much, however, has been made of this question both in
ancient and in modern times. There is a stage of criticism in
which all works, whether of nature or of art, are referred to
design. Now in ancient writings, and indeed in literature
generally, there remains often a large element which was not
comprehended in the original design. For the plan grows under
the author's hand; new thoughts occur to him in the act of
writing; he has not worked out the argument to the end before
he begins. The reader who seeks to find some one idea under
which the whole may be conceived, must necessarily seize on
the vaguest and most general. Thus Stallbaum, who is
dissatisfied with the ordinary explanations of the argument
of the Republic, imagines himself to have found the true
argument "in the representation of human life in a State
perfected by justice and governed according to the idea of
good." There may be some use in such general descriptions,
but they can hardly be said to express the design of the
writer. The truth is, that we may as well speak of many
designs as of one; nor need anything be excluded from the
plan of a great work to which the mind is naturally led by
the association of ideas, and which does not interfere with
the general purpose. What kind or degree of unity is to be
sought after in a building, in the plastic arts, in poetry,
in prose, is a problem which has to be determined relatively
to the subject-matter. To Plato himself, the inquiry "what
was the intention of the writer," or "what was the principal
argument of the Republic" would have been hardly
intelligible, and therefore had better be at once dismissed.
---終わり---