다니자키 준이치로의 ｢아내 살해(妻殺し) 소설｣이 갖는 의미

On the Meaning of “Wife-killing Novels” by Junichiro Tanizaki: Focussing on the Image of Married Couple Represented in the Cursed Drama

谷崎にとって｢妻殺し小説｣はいろんな面で重要な意味を持つといえる。まず様々な形で作品を構想したという点である。日常生活で起こった妻との葛藤を文学の素材にしたのは興味深い事実である。特に｢妻殺し｣というテーマは大正期の作品の重要な題材となり、対話劇、戯曲、犯罪推理小説などの多様な試みは谷崎の文学世界をさらに発展させるきっかけになったと言える。谷崎は大正期に妻との不和をモチーフでスリラーあるいはミステリー形式の作品を集中的に発表し、創作上の多様なテクニックを試みた。夫の気に入らない可憐な妻が夫の謀略で殺される｢呪われた戯曲(1919)｣をはじめ、 ｢或る少年の怯れ(1919)｣は、医師の兄は妻の従妹を愛人に持っているが、病気がちな妻を注射で殺害するという内容である。また、若い女性と結婚するために病弱な妻を偶然の事故を装って殺害する『途上(1920)』などの ｢妻殺し小説｣系列の作品を相次いで発表する。妻との日常をありのままに表現せず、意識的に多くの探偵風の方法を用いることで、自然主義小説になり得る部分を克服しようとした。これは谷崎の反自然主義文学のもう一つの表現であるもので谷崎が追求した文学の本質である。

For Tanizaki, the wife-killing novels have an important meaning in several ways. First, he shapes the work in several forms. It is an interesting fact that he addressed his conflict with his wife in his daily life and reflected it into his literary work. In particular, the theme of wife-killing became an important topic in works during the Taisho era, and his several attempts concerning a dialogic play, a drama, a crime novel, and a detective novel further developed his literary world. For a long time, he continued to encounter several forms of challenges, and it is an important fact that this led him to grow as a novelist even more. From 1917 to 1922, Tanizaki applied several creative techniques to his work, publishing novels, especially horror and mystery ones. His works project his in-depth understanding of daily lives by means of his particular structuring method and techniques. The sequence of wife-killing novels was written during this period of time. They represent a dialogic play, a drama, and so forth, but most of them are classified as a detective novel or a mystery novel. Taniazaki loathed the Naturalism novels, and he wrote his novels in various forms in order to prevent his wife-killing novels from being considered those depicting his own life. He did not describe his daily life as it was, and consciously applied the methods of detective stories so that his works were not regarded as the Naturalism novels. This is a proposition in his Anti-Naturalism literature, the essence of his sought-for literature.