アドリエンヌ・リッチの詩 --広げよう 私たちの力を--

Abstract

Adrienne Rich attempts to reflect on the ability of language to change reality by boldly pronouncing that, 'what interests me in teaching is less the emergence of the occasional genius than the overall finding of language by those who did not have it and by those who have been used and abused to the extent that they lacked it'. She has been writing her poems and prose for 'the silent majority'. The title of The Dream Of A Common Language is simply the condensation of her vision that people, 'if released into language', would share it with each other and use it 'as a means of changing reality'. This report deals with two poems, 'Power' and 'Phantasia For Elvira Shatayev' in that volume. 'Power' is about Marie Curie, who discovered radium and devoted herself, body and soul, to studying radioactivity. For years she had suffered from radiation sickness, which she seems to have denied to the end. Rich proposes that we should consider what made Marie, a famous woman, deny her sufferings. She must have felt isolated. 'Phantasia For Elvira Shatayev' is also about distinguished women, the finest woman climbers in the Soviet Union, who died as they attempted to traverse the Lenin Peak. Rich's lamentation for them is as deep as that for Marie Curie, but Rich imagines that they would not have felt lonely. Rather, she envisions a bright future full of their power, created through their cooperation, which should be continued and taken over by women living now. Through these two poems, Rich encourages us to join and 'rise spiritually and in activism' toward a future full of our own power, not the old patriarchal power.