ファンタシー文学における妖精の存在の秘める意味
ジョージ・マクドナルドの「フェアリーランド」とフェアリー
ジェイムズ・バリの「ピーター・パン」とフェアリー
古くからの民間伝承における妖精（ fairy ）とは、様々な妖怪や魑魅魍魎の類いであった。
「妖精」とは、かつてはキリスト教信仰によって統合される以前に人々によって信仰の対象とされていた土着の神々が姿を変えて生き残ったものであると考えられてきた。
「妖精」とは、世界の構成要素である地・水・火・風の４つのエレメントの具現化である精霊として、外的宇宙の実体をなすものとして捉えられる存在であった。
近代において「妖精」とは、世界の本質である自然そのものを指すあらたな言葉となったが、この場合の自然とは身の回りを取り巻く外界のことではなく、むしろ自身の精神の内奥に潜む、無意識と先験的叡知を意識したものであり、この内的宇宙への回帰の必要性という自覚が文学的表象の手段の過程として「妖精」という存在を生み出したのであった。
「妖精」とは、ファンタシー文学の指標的特質として捉えるならば、世界の中に実存的生を送る主体とその世界の原理を保証すべく意義づけられている神的存在の中間に位置する異教の神であるとも、あるいは世界構築の原理に無関心な異世界的原理に基づく、コスモスとカオスの中間的存在としての属性を秘めた生物であるとも理解し得るものである。
「ファンタステス（夢見る人）」は副題として「フェアリー・ロマンス」と名付けられている。文字通りこの長編ファンタシー作品は、「フェアリー」（妖精）という言葉をより新しい、より深い意味から世界の本質を理解するためのキーワードとして読み解こうとすることを目指して書かれたものである。「ファンタステス」においては人間と妖精は互いに補完し合う存在として描かれる。人は妖精の世界に旅立つことにあこがれ、妖精達はいつの日か人となることを夢見ているのである。
主人公アノドスは妖精の国へと旅立つ。
Yet somehow the whole environment seemed only asleep, and to wear even in sleep an air of expectation. The trees seemed all to have an expression of conscious mystery, as if they said to themselves, "we could, an' if we would." They had all a meaning look about them. Then I remembered that night is the fairies' day, and the moon their sun; and I thought ― Everything sleeps and dreams now: when the night comes, 'twill be different.(2) At the same time I, being a man and a child of the day, felt some anxiety as to how I should fare among the elves and other children of the night who wake when mortals dream, and find their common life in those wondrous hours that flow noiselessly over the moveless death-like forms of men and women and children, lying strewn and parted beneath the weight of the heavy waves of night, which flow on and beat them down, and hold them drowned and senseless, until the ebbtide comes, and the waves sink away, back into the ocean of the dark.
夜がくると昼の世界の者たちは意識を失い、海の底に沈んだかのように横たわる。そんな時に現れ来る妖精の世界は、現実の世界と対をなす、反転的な影の世界のようなものらしい。
森の入り口のところで出会った女はアノドスに語りかけて言う。
"You have fairy blood in you,"(3) said she, looking hard at me.
"How do you know that?"
"You could not have got so far into this wood if it were not so; and I am trying to find out some trace of it in your countenance. I think I see it."
"What do you see?"
"Oh, never mind: I may be mistaken in that."
"But how then do you come to live here?"
"Because I too have fairy blood in me."(4)
Here I, in my turn, looked hard at her, and thought I could perceive, notwithstanding the coarseness of her features, and especially the heaviness of her eyebrows, a something unusual ― I could hardly call it grace, and yet it was an expression that strangely contrasted with the form of her features. I noticed too that her hands were delicately formed, though brown with work and exposure.
"I should be ill," she continued, "if I did not live on the borders of the fairies' country, and now and then eat of their food. And I see by your eyes that you are not quite free of the same need; though, from your education and the activity of your mind, you have felt it less than I. You may be further removed too from the fairy race.(5) "
アノドスも女も不思議な直感のおかげでお互いが妖精の血をひいていることを確信する。本質的な理解とは意識の奥底に他者から教わる以前から備わっているものらしい。
妖精の世界についてアノドスよりも詳しい女は様々な事実を教えてくれる。
But we shall soon see whether you can discern the fairies in my little garden, and that will be some guide to us."
"Are the trees fairies too, as well as the flowers?" I asked.
"They are of the same race," she replied; "though those you call fairies in your country are chiefly the young children of the flower fairies. They are very fond of having fun with the thick people, as they call you; for, like most children, they like fun better than anything else."
"Why do you have flowers so near you then? Do they not annoy you?"
"Oh, no, they are very amusing, with their mimicries of grown people, and mock solemnities. Sometimes they will act a whole play through before my eyes, with perfect composure and assurance, for they are not afraid of me. Only, as soon as they have done, they burst into peals of tiny laughter, as if it was such a joke to have been serious over anything. These I speak of, however, are the fairies of the garden. They are more staid and educated than those of the fields and woods. Of course they have near relations amongst the wild flowers, but they patronise them, and treat them as country cousins, who know nothing of life, and very little of manners. Now and then, however, they are compelled to envy the grace and simplicity of the natural flowers."
"Do they live IN the flowers?" I said.
"I cannot tell," she replied. "There is something in it I do not understand. Sometimes they disappear altogether, even from me, though I know they are near. They seem to die always with the flowers they resemble, and by whose names they are called; but whether they return to life with the fresh flowers, or, whether it be new flowers, new fairies, I cannot tell. They have as many sorts of dispositions as men and women, while their moods are yet more variable; twenty different expressions will cross their little faces in half a minute. I often amuse myself with watching them, but I have never been able to make personal acquaintance with any of them. If I speak to one, he or she looks up in my face, as if I were not worth heeding, gives a little laugh, and runs away." Here the woman started, as if suddenly recollecting herself, and said in a low voice to her daughter, "Make haste ― go and watch him, and see in what direction he goes."
I may as well mention here, that the conclusion I arrived at from the observations I was afterwards able to make, was, that the flowers die because the fairies go away; not that the fairies disappear because the flowers die. The flowers seem a sort of houses for them, or outer bodies, which they can put on or off when they please. Just as you could form some idea of the nature of a man from the kind of house he built, if he followed his own taste, so you could, without seeing the fairies, tell what any one of them is like, by looking at the flower till you feel that you understand it. For just what the flower says to you, would the face and form of the fairy say; only so much more plainly as a face and human figure can express more than a flower. For the house or the clothes, though like the inhabitant or the wearer, cannot be wrought into an equal power of utterance. Yet you would see a strange resemblance, almost oneness, between the flower and the fairy, which you could not describe, but which described itself to you. Whether all the flowers have fairies, I cannot determine, any more than I can be sure whether all men and women have souls.
女はアノドスとともに庭の妖精達の姿を見ながら、妖精について語る。ここで描かれるのは一般に良く知られた花の妖精だが、これらとアノドスのようにほとんど人間でありながら妖精の血を持つとされるものにいたるまで、人も花も含めてさまざまな意識と霊性の段階があるらしい。妖精と人間、そして生き物も無生物も、ありとあらゆる存在が一体をなして大きな連続性の中に含まれていることが暗示されている。
アノドスを救ってくれたビーチの木とアノドスとの会話である。
"Why do you call yourself a beech-tree?" I said.
"Because I am one," she replied, in the same low, musical, murmuring voice.
"You are a woman,"(6) I returned.
"Do you think so? Am I very like a woman then?"
"You are a very beautiful woman. Is it possible you should not know it?"
"I am very glad you think so. I fancy I feel like a woman sometimes. I do so to-night ― and always when the rain drips from my hair. For there is an old prophecy in our woods that one day we shall all be men and women like you.(7) Do you know anything about it in your region? Shall I be very happy when I am a woman? I fear not, for it is always in nights like these that I feel like one. But I long to be a woman for all that."
I had let her talk on, for her voice was like a solution of all musical sounds. I now told her that I could hardly say whether women were happy or not. I knew one who had not been happy; and for my part, I had often longed for Fairy Land, as she now longed for the world of men.(8) But then neither of us had lived long, and perhaps people grew happier as they grew older. Only I doubted it.
森の中で邪悪な妖精に襲われたアノドスを救ってくれたのはビーチの木の妖精であると思われる、女の姿をした妖精である。彼女もまた妖精の本質について主人公に教えてくれる。妖精ばかりに限らず、事物の存在の様態にはさまざまな段階がある。そのさまざまな意識あるいは霊性のレベルの重ね合わせで人の魂も、世界を満たしているそれぞれの事物も成り立っているらしい。
この世界に満たされない思いを抱く者は、夜の世界でもあり影の世界でもある妖精の世界に惹き付けられ、そこでこれまで思いもよらなかった自分自身の裏の姿である「影」を発見することになる。
(1)
「夢見る人」の意味だが、作者にとっては「幻想を通して真実を求める人」という気持ちが込められていたことだろう。
(2)
それから私は夜は妖精達にとって昼であり、月は彼らにとって太陽であることを思い出した。そして思った、だから今は全てが眠りにおちて夢を見ているけれども、夜になれば全てが変わる。
(3)
「あなたには妖精の血が流れている。」この作品においては人と妖精の区別は曖昧である。
(4)
「（森の近くに暮らしているのは）私にも妖精の血が流れているからです。」女は答える。
(5)
あなたは私よりも妖精の血が薄いのかもしれない。
(6)
「あなたは女だ。」とも訳せるが、ここでは "woman" は「人間」という意味で受け取られている。
(7)
fairy はいずれ人間になるべきもの、とされている。存在そのものに目指すべき目的があり、人となることそれ自体がその目的であるとされ、さらに fairy-- 人間という二つの次元の霊性にまたがってその目的が機能しているとされている。
(8)
fairy も人間も互いに他に魅かれるということから、どちらも存在としては不完全なものであり、霊的な進化の途上で他方の存在を知ることが義務づけられている。人間と fairy は相補うべきもの同士であるから、互いが他方の「影」 あるいは「分身」であると言えよう。