ウイラ・キャザーの短編物語を読んで Impression on Willa Cather's short stories

EECCの関係でウイラ・キャザーの短編、「ポールの場合１，２」を読む機会を得た。２０世紀初めのアメリカを代表する女流作家が書いたものであることを初めて知った。文章がきびきびしていて力強く男性的だったのでまずそのことに驚いた。一つ一つのシーンの描写が刻銘で、色彩と手触りの感覚の表現が際立っていて映像を見る感じがした。ポールの夢が巧みに描かれ、それが最後にダイナミックに打ち砕かれていく時の表現は圧巻であった。
 I had a chance to read a short story entitled "Paul's Case, Part one and Part two"written by Willa Cather introduced in the mini class after my EECC. I got to know this writer for the first time and surprised to find out that the writer is an American woman representing the early 20th century of the States. Her style is rather masculine for its powerful expression. Each scene is so precisely described  by using lots of colors and keen senses that it becomes visual just like a movie. Paul's great dream is well expressed and its final stage is exquisitely described how it was broken in a dynamic way.


参考までに感想文を書いてみた。
This is my impression on the story.

                                     

 　   　The story consists of two parts. The first part describes the reasons why Paul was criticized or evaluated as a bad student. From all those estimations extended by his teachers I could imagine how bad he was in his school except for one thing. That is what his art teacher said. He said,

 “I don’t think he really means to be bad…….There’s just something wrong with that boy.”

The art teacher’s words induced me to expect eventually something unusual happen to him unlike just an ordinarily bad boy. Then this expectation encouraged me to read further to find out what would show out.

         Upon entering the second part to see Paul’s thrilling adventure with a big money he stole, I got excited and anxious to experience his trail which was so extraordinary. He had truly an enormous dream. He wanted to be in such a situation where human could think about, surrounded by the supreme richness and the most elites in the world. He wanted to see everything available in this world he lived in. He was the most avaricious man in a way. Even when he was about to lose his life, he had a moment to regret to have missed seeing what he had not seen yet before. And the story ended up with this sentence which has such deep implication.

       “Then everything turned black and Paul dropped back into the great design of things.” Could I say that Paul has gone back to the origin of the Creation?

        The intrigue moves on in a simple way but elaborated way to let the readers try to

 paint what we see from the lines with lots of colors weaved in such as red, yellow, blue,

gray, silver, gold, colors of thousand jewels, and so on. Also accurate adjectives are used

 to tell us the quality of the materials and Paul’s life itself. Those elements make me
 feel easy to grasp the scenes and situations which become even visible.
        I enjoyed this story  very much.  

                                                                                                                             Thank you