Seymour Hersh のThe Dark Side of Camelotなどを読んでケネディには影の部分があることは理解しているつもりですが、展示会を見るとやはり、憧れのカッコイイ大統領でした。
歴史的評価はわかりませんが、ケネディ大統領が公民権について語ったスピーチが他の有名なスピーチとともに展示会で流されていました。時代的には、キング牧師のあの有名なI have a dream演説はケネディ政権下のものだったのですね。
この演説を訳してくださっているブログがあるので、全文を参照されたい方はそちらをアクセスいただくとして、Black Lives matterと言わなければいけない状況がなんとなくわかる部分がありました。this is a land of the free except for the Negroes, we have no second-class citizens except Negroes という部分です。Negroと呼んでいることに違和感を感じますが当時は別に差別的な含意はなかったということでしょう。
（5分 25秒） We preach freedom around the world, and we mean it, and we cherish our freedom here at home, but are we to say to the world, and much more importantly, to each other that this is a land of the free except for the Negroes; that we have no second-class citizens except Negroes; that we have no class or cast system, no ghettoes, no master race except with respect to Negroes?
最新号のTIMEは1968年のバルチモアの暴動を取り上げ、あれから変わったのかという問いかけのものでした。Tavis Smileyのエッセイも１９６７年のキング牧師のBeyond Vietnamというスピーチを取り上げていました。彼はキング牧師がスピーチで脅威だと語っていたRacism, poverty and militarismが2015年になっても脅威であり続けることに警鐘を鳴らしています。
On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. gave the most controversial speech of his life, “Beyond Vietnam.” A year later to the day, almost to the hour, he was assassinated. In that speech he had pointed out a triple threat facing America: racism, poverty and militarism. In 2015, what are the issues still threatening our democracy? Racism. Poverty. Militarism.
（オックスフォード） Richard Nixon (1913–94) the 37th US President (1969–74) and the only one to resign. He was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1946, where he was on the House Un-American Activities Committee, and then to the US Senate in 1950. He was Vice-President under President Eisenhower (1953–61) but was defeated by John F Kennedy in the 1960 election for President. As President, Nixon was successful in ending the Vietnam War and establishing a closer relationship between the US and China, but he is mainly remembered for having to leave office because of the Watergate scandal. He was given the nickname‘Tricky Dick’ because he was often not direct or honest in his dealings with people.
There can be no whitewash at the White House. Richard Nixon about Watergate, 1973
（オックスフォード） Nixon, Richard (1913-94) a US politician in the Republican Party who was President of the US from 1969 to 1974. He helped to end the Vietnam War and improved the US's political relationship with China. He is most famous for being involved in Watergate and for officially leaving his position as President before Congress could impeach him (=charge him with a serious crime). Many people thought he was dishonest, and because of this he was sometimes called 'Tricky Dicky'.
Essays in Idleness: Enjoying Classical Literature Through Art June 11th (Wed.) to July 21st (Mon.), 2014
Essays in Idleness (Tsurezuregusa), written by Yoshida Kenko; in the latter half of the Kamakura period, is regarded, with The Pillow Book (Makura no soshi) and An Account of My Hut (Hojoki), as one of the three great collections of essays in Japanese literature. Essays in Idleness, which begins with the phrase tsurezure naru mama ni, “with nothing better to do,” is one of the most familiar classics of Japanese literature. This exhibition presents famous scenes from those essays through the twenty Essays in Idleness Handscrolls by Kaiho Yusetsu, which were recently added to the museum’s collection, together with folding screens, illustrated books, and other depictions of them.
「つれづれなるままに」という書き出しはドナルドキーンさんは“with nothing better to do”と訳されているようで、サントリー美術館はキーンさんの英訳に従っているようです。Wikipediaには以下のようにSansomさんのものと比較していました。
(Wikipedia) The work takes its title from its prefatory passage:
つれづれなるまゝに、日暮らし、硯にむかひて、心にうつりゆくよしなし事を、そこはかとなく書きつくれば、あやしうこそものぐるほしけれ。 Tsurezurenaru mama ni, hikurashi, suzuri ni mukaite, kokoro ni utsuriyuku yoshinashigoto wo, sokowakatonaku kakitsukureba, ayashū koso monoguruoshikere.
In Keene's translation:
What a strange, demented feeling it gives me when I realise I have spent whole days before this inkstone, with nothing better to do, jotting down at random whatever nonsensical thoughts that have entered my head.
Here つれづれ (tsurezure) means “having nothing to do.”
For comparison, Sansom's translation:
To while away the idle hours, seated the livelong day before the inkslab, by jotting down without order or purpose whatever trifling thoughts pass through my mind, truly this is a queer and crazy thing to do!
Leisurely I face my inkstone all day long, and without any particular object jot down the odds and ends that pass through my mind, with a curious feeling that I am not sane.
（ドナルドキーン訳） Is it because the truth is so boring that most stories one hears are false? People tend to exaggerate even when relating things they have actually witnessed, but when months or years have intervened, and the place is remote, they are all the more prone to invent whatever tales suit their fancies, and, when these have been written down, fictions are accepted as fact. This holds true of skill in the various arts; ignorant men who know nothing about these arts praise the masters indiscriminately, as if they were gods, but the expert gives no credence to such tales. Things known by report ah ways prove quite different when one has actually seen them.
When a man spews forth whatever nonsense comes to his mind, not caring that he may be exposed on the spot, people soon realize that he is lying. Again, if a man, though himself doubting the truth of a story, tells it exactly as it was related to him, with a self-satisfied twitching1 of the nose, the lie is not his. But it is frightening when a man tells a lie convincingly, deliberately blurring the details in places and pretending not to remember exactly what happened, but carefully leaving no loose ends. Nobody protests very energetically at a lie which redounds to his own prestige.
If, when everyone else is listening with pleasure to some lie, you decide that it would be pointless to be the only one to protest, "That wasn't what happened," and listen in silence, you may even be cited as a witness, and the story will seem all the more authentic.
There's no escaping it - the world is full of lies. It is safest always to accept what one hears as if it were utterly common place and devoid of interest.
Stories told by the lower classes are full of startling incidents. The well-bred man does not tell stories about prodigies. I do not mean to suggest, however, that one should not believe wholeheartedly in the miracles of the gods and buddhas, or in the lives of the incarnations. It is foolish to accept Popular superstitions uncritically, but to dismiss them as being "most improbable" serves no purpose. In general, the best course is to treat such matters as if they were true, neither giving one's unqualified belief nor doubting or mocking them.
35秒あたりから And Shakespeare described the place where that happens and he described the flowers and the willow tree. And Millais picks up on that with interest in the Botanical setting and expands on it. The botanical specificity, this is an artist who is really taking Ruskin seriously. Ruskin advised artists to‘go to Nature in all singleness of heart, rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing.’ That is that nature itself has a kind of spiritual power and who are artists to mess with god's work. That's right. But that was the academic tradition to take from nature and improve on it and to idealize it. That was what in fact Leonardo had advised. That’s the foundation of the academic tradition. And so Millais is completely rejecting that. He's going into nature and he's trying to be as true to what he sees as possible. It's interesting because when we think of painting in plein air. That’s when we think painting outside we often think of the late 19th century French painting. We think of the Impressionists but of course the Pre-Raphaelites in England were taking this seriously mid-century.
当時は、自然を目に映るままに捉えることは規範に外れていたもので、理想化して描かなくてはいけないというのがアカデミックな伝統だったのですね。動画でも触れていた、戸外で描くことの大変さについてはテート美術館のPainting in the landscapeでも触れています。
Ophelia learning resource Ophelia was part of the original Henry Tate Gift in 1894 and remains one of the most popular Pre-Raphaelite works in the Tate’s collection. Shakespeare was a frequent source of inspiration for Victorian painters. Millais’s image of the tragic death of Ophelia, as she falls into the stream and drowns, is one of the best-known illustrations from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.
John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti were the founding members of a group of artists called the Pre-Raphaelites formed in 1848. They rejected the art of the Renaissance in favour of art before Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo (15th -16th centuries). The Pre-Raphaelites focused on serious and significant subjects and were best known for painting subjects from modern life and literature often using historical costumes. They painted directly from nature itself, as truthfully as possible and with incredible attention to detail. They were inspired by the advice of John Ruskin, the English critic and art theorist in Modern Painters (1843-60). He encouraged artists to ‘go to Nature in all singleness of heart.rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing.’
The Pre-Raphaelites developed techniques to exploit the luminosity of pure colour and define forms in their quest for achieving ‘truth to nature’. They strongly believed that respectable divine art could only be achieved if the artist focused on the truth and what was real in the natural world.
Under the paving-stones, the beach! Graffito, Paris, May 1968
Soul les paves, la plage.というフレーズに持ち出してしまったのは、過去のブログで取り上げたEconomistの記事でこのフレーズをもじってSous la plage, les pavesと使っていたからです。こちらは人の手が入っていない自然がないことを揶揄して使っています。こういう有名なフレーズを押さえることはEconomistやTimeの理解の助けになっていきますね。
