夏目漱石の文學に現われる暗い影

Abstract

A dark shadow in the literature of Soseki is the shadow of death. Soseki fell ill when he was writing Mon(Gate) and he experienced the fear of death. It seems that Soseki was afraid of death even after his recovery. So the dark shadows in his literatures are seen as the image of his anxiety and the fear of death. Soseki wrote his fear of death in Kokoro(Heart) and he let hero confess his sin and atone for his sin with death. After this writing Soseki was liberated from his fear of death and reflected upon his last life and exposed his hurt memory in his childhood in Michikusa(Loiter). He died writing his last literature, Meian(Light and Darkness). We can see that Soseki overcame his fear of death through the confession of sin and death of punishment in Kokoro. We can see that the fear of spiritual existence like ghost could be overcome by the thought of sin in western Christianity.