近代日本における、ある異邦人の宿命 - subsite

120
the poem while also wanting to show the greatness of living in two languages
and cultures as a poet. However, Sakutaro Hagiwara (Japanese poet) read this
poetry very literally and thus only received the surface level meaning and
unfortunately, following this, many other Japanese poets and literary critics
followed. The prelude poetry turned out to be self-destruction. Since then,
almost none of Noguchi’s actual poems have been criticized or discussed; only
the prelude poem of Niju Kokusekisha No Shi. It seems as if Noguchi determined
his own fate. In this sense, the poem has been a very significant fact in his life as
a poet.
Since he started writing poems with poet Joaquin Miller in California’s Bay
Area where the Bohemian Club was very active, he became friends and
exchanged influences with those that have solid and highly reputable positions
in today’s history of both American and English literature, such as W.B.Yeats,
William Michael Rossetti, and Arthur Ransome. While the English literary world
were known to cling strongly to their long history and profound traditions, they
still graciously accepted this Japanese young man, Noguchi, who had neither
status nor reputation, but merely wrote poetry in their language. The English
literary world generously said that their concern was not regarding Noguchi’s
nationality, but his conception of the poet. His achievement is simply
extraordinary; therefore, Noguchi never deserves the level of ignorance
currently existing within the Japanese literary world.
Japan, while on one hand very rapidly after the Meiji restoration tried to
become westernized, at the same time has always maintained the phenomenon
of clinging to “Japaneseness”. Therefore, Japan as a whole was not ready to
accept or evaluate Japanese people who had international careers. As Isamu
later admitted, Noguchi was too ahead of his time. Even though he lived in his
own country, he was always isolated and existed as “L’Etranger.”