研究発表(1)　源氏物語における虚構の方法

In an article entitled "Travelers through the Ages: the Japanese as Seen in Their Diaries"， which appeared in the evening Asahi of August 1, 1983, Professor Donald Keene discusses the Murasaki Shikibu nikki and notes that since readers often approach this work in hopes of learning something of how Murasaki went about writing her masterpiece, Genji monogatari, the expectations brought to this diary exceed those entertained vis-a-vis other such works. However, he continues, at no point in the Diary is Murasaki\u27s genius as a writer given full rein. Professor Keene\u27s remarks set me to thinking about the genre in which the full range of Lady Murasaki\u27s talent does come into play, namely narrative fiction, specifically Genji monogatari. So I should like to look into the ways in which she set about constructing her fictional world in the Genji. Rather than pursue questions of the existence or non-existence of a model or models for the world constructed in Genji, my study approaches the problem in terms of the operation (bunshin 分身) whereby an author endows characters in a piece of fiction with aspects of his/her own life and experience. Bunshin is a psychological concept, but one that applies well to literary creation in the author act of expressing his/her views of experience through the medium of the characters that are, so to speak，"broken off"． Bunshin is thus the process whereby the writer breathes the very life of humanity into the characters that people a work of fiction, and the primary means by which a successful piece of writing takes on that variety of abstraction and reality peculiar to literature.A little reflection on the fictional world of the Genji suggests that bunshin is at work in both the production and development of the characters, and, as an emphasis on the quality of empathy (nasake), in the depiction of the beauties of love between the sexes. In this sense, the process of bunshin is at the heart of the presentation of the work\u27s major theme, the various kinds and phases of human love.The relationships between women as well--for example, Murasaki and the Akashi Princess--are depicted in terms of empathy and sympathetic understanding. The eternally appealing beauty of human compassion, of entering into another\u27s feelings, constitutes the tone underlying Genji monogatari, and it is realized only by excluding that portion of humanity that does not conform to these canons.Viewed in this light, one understands why Professor Keene should write (in his third article on the Diary: 3 August) that of all the depictions of courtly life to be found in the world\u27s literature, he is moved only by the one presented in the Genji