横臥読書の日

昨夜は外の雨風がかなり激しく、疲労困憊しているのに二時近くまでなんとなく寝つけなかった。遅い時刻に旧知の友人からかかってきた長電話のせいもあったかもしれない。

朝七時過ぎに起き出すと、家人が「台風はもう通り過ぎた」という。夜半過ぎに関東の沖合を通過して、いまは房総半島の南東にいるのだという。すでに空模様は穏やかで台風一過のそれ。

予定では朝から東京・上野に出向く心づもりでいたのだが、体中がだるくて痛い。やはり二日間のバス旅行が堪えたのだ。参加者四十名のなかで小生は最年少のひとりだったので、いかにも若者然（？）と振る舞ったのだが、実際は初老間近の身ゆえ、全身に疲労が蓄積していたらしく、立ち上がるのも難儀なほどだ。とても上京できるような状況でない。

不在中に小包がふたつ。ひとつはカナダの古本屋、もうひとつはアマゾンからだ。

Brigitte Masson
Les Joachim: Une Famille de musiciens
Fayard
1999

先日ネット・サーフィンしていて偶然こんな本が仏国で出ていたのに気づいた。
タイトルを目にした途端、これは読むべきだと直覚した。"Les Joachim" と複数形になっているところがミソ。これは不世出のヴァイオリニスト、ヨーゼフ・ヨアヒムと、その孫娘で、これまた不世出の「メリザンド歌い」であるイレーヌ・ジョアキム（ジョアシャン？）を、一繋がりに叙述した評伝に違いない。そこで中古本を安価で出品していたケベックの古書肆に注文しておいたものだ。

ドビュッシー好きで Irène Joachim (1913-2001) の名を知らぬ者はまさかおるまい。
念のためエリック・エリクソンの記す略伝を引いておく。

Granddaughter of the great violinist Joseph Joachim, soprano Irène Joachim was a magnificent artist in her own right, beautiful in voice, visage, figure, and musicianship. Although she came to be identified most closely with the role of Mélisande, she was fluent in the German language and mastered not only French mélodie, but also German Lieder. Indeed, Joachim had learned German, while French was but a second language. The care she brought to her enunciation worked in all of her repertory, bringing poignancy and specificity to the operas she essayed and the songs she sang. The daughter of Herman Joachim and Suzanne Chaigneau, a violinist, Joachim was given lessons in the basic elements of music as soon as she was able to grasp the concepts. Violin studies followed at home, as did piano lessons, and the keyboard instrument became her favorite means for music-making until her voice was discovered. By the time she entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1935, Joachim had acquired sufficient musical understanding to provide an advantage in the demanding regimen there. By July 1938, Joachim's end-of-term recital at the Conservatoire attracted the attention of Georges Auric (whose works the singer would come to espouse so eloquently). "Recall with me," Auric wrote in a July 1938 edition of Paris Soir, "the name of Mademoiselle Joachim...She impressed us with her enchanting voice, the quality of her style, of her enunciation, her honest and simple expressivity. In future days, Mademoiselle Joachim will be a cherished collaborator of our Opéra-Comique and no musician exists who will decline the pleasure of being in a position to collaborate with her." On Joachim's application to the Conservatoire, she had described herself as neither soprano, nor mezzo soprano, foretelling the middle ground she trod with such truth and lack of artifice. Gradually, a subtle tawniness began to inform the radiant color so clearly defined at the time of her first recording, the immortal Mélisande she contributed to the Pelléas et Mélisande recorded with conductor Roger Désormière and tenor Jacques Jansen. The glory of the Joachim instrument was her full and easily produced middle register, a characteristic that led the singer to describe herself as a "second soprano." Auric had correctly predicted Joachim's involvement with the Opéra-Comique: The singer appeared there between 1939 and 1956. During this time, she gained a reputation as a conscientious and expressive interpreter of the music of her time. Not only Auric, but also songs by Berg, Poulenc, Honegger, Satie, Milhaud, Dallapiccola, and Boulez. Her collaborator after the end of WWII was often Jane Bathori, the former singer who had premiered many French works and now served as coach and accompanist. During their first concert together in 1947, the soprano and accompanist performed works by the entire Les Six membership. Nor was Joachim a stranger to the premiere: In 1948, she was the first to perform Charles Koechlin's Le livre de la jungle, whose texts were drawn from Kipling's Jungle Book. Her conductor was Désormière. Joachim's initiative led her to perform the low-lying Vier Lieder, Op. 2, of Berg for the cycle's first French performance in 1947. Subsequently, she recorded the work in an orchestration by René Leibowitz. From 1963 to 1983, Joachim taught at the Conservatoire. Before her death in April 2001, the singer had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

もうひとつの荷物は『ネバーランド』という児童文学研究誌の第八号と第十号。
最近になって知ったのだが、ここにヴィタリー・ビアンキのテクストに基づく絵本『くちばし』の新旧ふたつの版・ふたつの翻訳をめぐって、息詰まるような論戦が闘わされている。ロシア絵本はわが関心領域でもあるので、読んでおこうと思ったのだ。

絵本『くちばし』なら知っている。田中かな子訳・薮内正幸絵で1965年10月、月刊『こどものとも』の一冊で出たそのときすでに手に取った。幼稚園に通っていた妹が園から持ち帰ってきたからだ。後年、動物絵本の名手と謳われる薮内のデビュー作として名高い絵本である（→これ）。

世事に疎い小生は最近まで知らなかったのだが、この絵本は2006年、福音館書店によって絶版にされた。より正確にいうなら、廃されたのは田中かな子の訳文のみであり、薮内の絵は少々の改変を施されたうえで、田中友子の新訳と組み合わされ、同じ版元から絵本『くちばし　どれが一番りっぱ？』として、装いも新たに「生まれ変わった」（→これ）。

ところが、である。

この項については改めて書くことにしよう。何しろ問題が錯綜しているのだ。