Posted at 2020.12.14 Category : 未分類
日本人だと「関ヶ原の戦い」と言われれば、比喩的に使われたとしても重要な局面を指しているとすぐに理解しますよね。このブログでは何度も書いていますが、こういう知識って山ほどあるんですよね。「資格試験は役立つ」なんていつまでもいっていないで、学ぶ領域を広げていかないといつまで経ってもニュアンスが読み取れないレベルで止まってしまいます。ブログで見かけるようになったTOEIC学習の人たちももうすぐ10年経つんですよね。。。
まあそんなことを書きたくなったのは、大統領選挙前の以下の記事を見たから。Gettysburg momentというタイトルがピンと来なくても、記事冒頭で説明してくれているので意味は後で取れるようになります。でもタイトルで使われているってことは、すぐに意味を読み取ってくれることを期待しているってことですよね。
The toxic Trump era is unfortunately not an aberration and is all too well rooted in American history
Patrick Cockburn Friday 30 October 2020 18:21
Pundits and polls are at one in predicting a victory for Joe Biden over Donald Trump in the presidential election, portraying the vote as a non-military rerun of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, when the north defeated the south in what is regarded as a turning point in the civil war. The violence will be less this time round, but the hatred between the antagonists is at a similar level.
A comparison with the civil war is appropriate because the confrontation between Trump and Biden echoes the armed conflict a century and a half earlier. White America had broken up into two nations then and, to a significant degree, it is two nations now. Trump’s core support is in the south and rural areas; Biden’s is in the north and metropolitan cities.
*****
It was a strange alliance of billionaires and the left-behind that propelled Trump into the White House in 2016, and it would be good to believe that it will face its Gettysburg moment on Tuesday. Battered by almost four years of Trump’s megalomaniac rule, a majority of Americans from Black Lives Matter supporters to long-standing members of the establishment cannot wait for this to happen. Conservative columnist George Will wrote confidently this week that we were seeing the moment when “the Donald Trump parenthesis in American history closes”, while the Republican Party that enabled his rise was facing a political massacre.
日本だとリンカーンの演説だけが飛び抜けて有名ですが、南北戦争の激戦地でturning pointとされることが多いとWikipediaではいっています。そうするとどこまでニュアンス的に近いのかはわかりませんが「関ヶ原の戦い」的なものとみなせそうです。
(Wikipedia)
The Battle of Gettysburg (locally /ˈɡɛtɪsbɜːrɡ/ (About this soundlisten))[11] was fought July 1–3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, by Union and Confederate forces during the American Civil War. The battle involved the largest number of casualties of the entire war and is often described as the war's turning point.[12][13] Union Maj. Gen. George Meade's Army of the Potomac defeated attacks by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, halting Lee's invasion of the North.
このブログを読んでくださっている方は、Yutaの立場が背景知識派であることはお分かりでしょうが、やはり圧倒的な知識不足で英文が読めないことが大きいと思うんです。TOEFL120だって知識量で言えば大学入学レベルなんでしょうから本当にたかが知れています。
導入部として１ヶ月遅れのネタを使ったのは、今日「レディマクベス」という映画をみて、上記のネタを思い出したからです。シェイクスピアの戯曲マクベスのマクベス夫人と聞いて人物像が浮かべば、この映画で描こうとしているものを想像できます。
Rural England, 1865. Katherine (Florence Pugh) is stifled by her loveless marriage to a bitter man twice her age, and his cold, unforgiving family. When she embarks on a passionate affair with a young worker on her husband’s estate, a force is unleashed inside her so powerful that she will stop at nothing to get what she wants.
Wikipediaで調べられるようになった今も大辞典の的を得た簡潔な説明はありがたいです。こういう映画の場合リーダーズのような解説があるとイメージしやすいです。
リーダーズ英和辞典 第3版
Lády Macbéth
マクベス夫人｟Shakespeare, Macbeth の女性主人公；気弱な夫を容赦なく引っ張る女の典型｠．
研究社新英和大辞典 第6版
Macbeth, Lady
n. マクベス夫人《Shakespeare の悲劇 Macbeth (1606) の主人公 Macbeth の妻; 夫をそそのかしてスコットランド王 Duncan を殺害させる》.
（オックスフォード）
Macbeth
a play (1606) by William Shakespeare telling the story of Macbeth, a figure from Scottish history. At the start he meets three witches (= women with magic powers) who predict that he will one day become king. Lady Macbeth, Macbeth’s ambitious wife, encourages him to murder the existing king, Duncan. He does so and takes Duncan’s place, but finds he has to murder several more people to remain in power. Lady Macbeth loses her mind, imagining that her hands are covered with blood that cannot be washed off, and kills herself. Finally Macbeth is also killed. The play is one of Shakespeare’s most popular works, and contains many famous lines. Actors traditionally consider it an unlucky play, and avoid mentioning it by name, calling it instead ’the Scottish play’.
(Wikipedia)
Lady Macbeth is a leading character in William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth (c.1603–1607). The wife of the play's tragic hero, Macbeth (a Scottish nobleman), Lady Macbeth goads her husband into committing regicide, after which she becomes queen of Scotland. She dies off-stage in the last act, an apparent suicide.
Lady Macbeth is a powerful presence in the play, most notably in the first two acts. Following the murder of King Duncan, however, her role in the plot diminishes. She becomes an uninvolved spectator to Macbeth's plotting and a nervous hostess at a banquet dominated by her husband's hallucinations. Her sleepwalking scene in the fifth act is a turning point in the play, and her line "Out, damned spot!" has become a phrase familiar to many speakers of the English language. The report of her death late in the fifth act provides the inspiration for Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech.
マクベスの演劇について過去に取り上げた時のこちらの予告編はマクベス夫人らしさが出たセリフを選んでいます。
（1幕5場）
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty.
（No Fear Shakespeare）
Come, you spirits that assist murderous thoughts, make me less like a woman and more like a man, and fill me from head to toe with deadly cruelty!
（松岡和子さん訳）
さあ、殺意に仕える悪霊たち、
いますぐ私を女でなくし、
頭のてっぺんから爪先まで
どす黒い残忍さでいっぱいにして！
こういう有名どころは絵画とかでも有名な作品がありますよね。ルーブル美術館にあるFussliの作品。
Yutaは知りませんでしたが、Ellen Terryというビクトリア時代の女優の絵も有名みたいです。
Wikipediaで以下のようにあります。
The report of her death late in the fifth act provides the inspiration for Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech.
マクベス夫人が亡くなったという知らせを聞いて、あの有名なTomorrowスピーチが登場するわけです。興味ある方は過去のリンクをどうぞ。
New York Timesの今年の１０冊にシェイクスピア関連が小説とノンフィクションで各一冊選ばれました。シェイクスピア関連の知識は仕入れておきたいものです。
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