芥川龍之介におけるヨハネと漱石のイメージ

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to study a writer’s notion about John the Baptist who appears inRyunosuke Akutagawa’s work, “The Man of the West”. Although Akutagawa reflected his own thoughtsabout Jesus’ life in this work, John the Baptist, who had a close relationship with Jesus, also appears init. The reason Akutagawa had a special attention on John the Baptist is because, by giving baptism toJesus, Jesus began His official missionary activities after that. In other words, Akutagawa regards Johnthe Baptist as a benefactor who opened Jesus’ natural gifts, and this is because, from John the Baptist,he felt similar image of his teacher, Soseki Natsume, who encouraged him to make a debut as a writer. In short, for Akutagawa, both John the Baptist and Soseki Natsume seemed to be benefactors and solidguardians. However, Akutagawa realized that there were ugly true natures of human hidden behind both. Although Akutagawa was Soseki’s disciple, only short after he became such, he discovered Soseki’sanother aspect as a “lunatic genius”. It turned out that was an emotion feeling superiority by comparingoneself with others, and an emotion that one hates losing to others by always thinking about them,which was a jealousy, a natural character of humans. Akutagawa described John the Baptist withdistortion from the Bible by saying that such jealousy also exists in John the Baptist, and this was dueto a reflection of a notion about Soseki to John the Baptist. In the end, through this work that studiedJohn the Baptist, Akutagawa’s human view could be grasped.