同時代人の見た楊貴妃 : 李白・杜甫の詩歌における比擬表現を中心にして

Abstract

Since the Heian period, Yang Gui-fei has been regarded by the Japanese people with considerable favor as a woman of peerless beauty and a heroine of the tragic romance with Xuan-zong Huang-di 玄宗皇帝. This tendency goes beyond the fields of literature and entertainment. In its extreme, the admiration for beautiful Yang Gui-fei has even made her an object of worship as a Bosatsu or Kan-non. In China, however, Yang Gui-fei generally does not seem to have been very popular with the public. This was certainly true in the Tang 唐 dynasty when she lived. The purpose of this paper is to examine, through the study of the poems of Li Bai and Du Fu, what kind of figure Yang Gui-fei cut among her contemporaries. The most noticeable aspect of the poems on Yang Gui-fei is that both of these poets compare her to Zhao Fei-yan 趙飛燕 and Xi Wang-mu 西王母, celebrated beauties who enthralled their emperors. Yet there have been many other women figures, both historical and mythic, who were beautiful and famous for their romance with emperors; why did the poets choose these two specific women as the historical

mythic counterparts of Yang Gui-fei? The answer lies in the duplicity of their characters. Both of these women were physically beautiful, but spiritually they were ugly and corrupt. By likening Yang Gui-fei to these two women, therefore, Li Bai and Du Fu intended implicitly to criticize her ugly mind, while on the surface they admired her beauty. What struck the poets as ugly in these women was, in short, their seductive and lewd character. By their ingenious comparisons, the poems of Li Bai and Du Fu hint and satirize that Yang Gui-fei, utilizing this unsavory character, captivated the emperor, gained control of political power, and thus exerted a destructive influence on government administration. Such a satiric approach began with Li Bai, and was taken over by Du Fu. Li Bai's view of Yang Gui-fei was based on his own experiences in the Court. So it may be safe to believe that, in his association with Li Bai, Du Fu learned not only the poetics, but also the court experiences, of Li Bai.