癒しと救いとしての詩作 : イギリス詩人ウィリアム・クーパーの心の深淵
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概要
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The present paper aims to investigate into the psychological process of poetic creativity with reference to the English poet William Cowper (1731-1800) who suffered from chronic melancholy and underwent at least five mental breakdowns in 1753, 1763, 1773, 1787 and 1794. It is in a way a modest attempt at pathography. The paper consists of three sections: (1) an analysis of the poet's own Memoir (unpublished during his lifetime) in which he traces the history of his first and, with greater emphasis, his second and more serious breakdown of 1763 leading to his attempted suicide, and shows how he recovered from it after having experienced an Evangelical conversion ; (2) an account of his secluded life from 1764 to 1780, which was built on a perilous balance between multifarious elements such as his faith in Evangelicalism as inculcated by his rigorous mentor Rev. John Newton, his spiritual and asexual relationship with Mrs. Mary Unwin, and his short-lived friendship with Lady Austen who inspired him with a motive for writing poetry ; and (3) a discussion of some important aspects of his masterpiece The Task, e. g., the ways in which he observed Nature in the countryside and rendered into poetry what he observed. From these analyses and discussions will emerge a thesis that Cowper composed his poetry in the middle of his chronic melancholy or despite it, that he needed to do so to relieve it, that his act of writing poetry, in fact, proved to be conducive to this purpose, and that melancholy, agonising though it was to him, in a sense contributed to making him a poet.
- 2007-03-31