King Solomon’s Minesの引用まとめ。さぼっていたので、一気に入力。終わったらPeter Simpleを読む。頑張る。

The shift of narrative level

I took the pen, and it is before me as I write — sometimes I sign my name with it. (65)

急に語りの場面がシフトする。

Examples of conducts

But mindful of the results of over-feeding on starving stomachs, we were careful not to eat too much, stopping whilst we were still hungry. (67)

When they had given us this information our visitors bade us good night; and, having arranged to watch turn and turn about, three of us flung ourselves down and slept the sweet sleep of the weary, whilst the fourth sat up on the look-out for possible treachery. (84)

`Tell him,’ answered Sir Henry `that he mistakes an Englishman. Wealth is good, and if it comes in our way we will take it; but a gentleman does not sell himself for wealth. But speaking for myself. I say this. I have always liked Umbopa, and so far as lies in me will stand by him in this business. It will be very pleasant to me to try and square matters with that cruel devil, Twala. What do you say, Good, and you, Quatermain? (98)

Unreliability

`Thou hearest, Incubu,’ said Ignos; to Sir Henry, ‘He has not been here.’

‘Well, well,’ said Sir Henry, with a sigh; `There it is: I suppose he never got here. Poor fellow, poor fellow! So it has all been for nothing. God’s will be done.’

`Now for business,’ I put in, anxious to escape from a painful subject. (99)

旅の目的がすり替わり始めている。

The authority of gentleman

`It is strange,’ he answered, `and had ye not been Englishmen I would not have believed it; but English “gentlemen” tell no lies. If we live through the matter, be sure I will repay ye!” (110)

Superior position of Whites

`This: that if you ever come to be king of this people you will do away with the smelling out of witches such as we have seen last night; and that the killing of men without trial shall not take place in the land.’

Ignosi thought for a moment, after I had translated this, and the answered —

`The ways of black people are not as the ways of white men, Incubu, nor do we hold life so high as yet. Yet will I promise it. If it be my power to hold them back, the witch-finders shall hunt no more, nor shall any man die the death without judgment.’ (110)

白人の勧告が通る世界が描かれる

Examples of conducts / Didactic

This made me very angry, for if possible to avoid it. I hate to miss in public. When one can only do one thing well, one likes to keep up one’s reputation in that thing. Moved quite out of myself at my failure, I did a rash thing. Rapidly covering the general as he ran, I let drive with the second barrel. The poor

man threw up his arms, and fell forward on to his face. This time I had made no mistake; and — I say it as a proof of how little we think of others when our own pride or reputation are in question — I was brute enough to feel delighted at the sight. (128)

I looked down the long lines of waving black plumes and stern faces beneath them, and sighed to think that within one short hour most, if not at all, of those magnificent veteran warriors, not a man of whom was under forty years of age, would be laid dead or dying in the dust. It could not be otherwise; they were being condemned. with that wise recklessness of human life that marks the great general, and often saves his forces and attains his ends, to certain slaughter, in order to give the cause and the remainder of the army a chance of success. They were foredoomed to die, and they knew it. It was to be their task to engage regiment after regiment of Twala’s army on the narrow strip of green beneath us, till they were exterminated, or till the wings found a favourable opportunity for their onslaught. And yet they never hesitated, nor could I detect a sign of fear upon the face of a single warrior. There they were — going to certain death, about to quit the blessed light of day forever, and yet able to contemplate their doom without a tremor. I could not even at that moment help contrasting their state of mind with my own, which was far from comfortable, and breathing a sigh of every and admiration. Never before had I seen such an absolute devotion to the idea of duty, and such a complete indifference to its bitter fruits. (135-6)

But perfect discipline and steady and unchanging valour can do wonders, and one veteran soldier is worth two young one, as soon became apparent in the present case. (139)

Not a soldier of all his armies, not a courtier out of the hundreds who had cringed out of the hundreds who had cringed round him, not even a solitary wife, remained to share his fate or halve the bitterness of his fall. Poor savage! he was learning the lesson that Fate teaches to most who live long enough, that the eyes of mankind are blind to the discredited, and that he who is defenceless and fallen finds few friends and little mercy.

The local women

`Say to my lord. Bougwan [the narrator] that — I love him, and that I am glad to die because I know that he cannot cumber his life with such as me, for the sun cannot mate with the darkness, nor the white with the black.’ (174)

I am bound to say that, looking at the thing from the point of view of an oldish man of the world, I consider her removal was a fortunate occurrence, since, otherwise, complications would have been sure to ensue. The poor creature was no ordinary native girl, but a person of great, I had almost said stately, beauty, and of considerable refinement of mind. But no amount of beauty or refinement could have made an entanglement between Good and herself a desirable occurrence; for, as she herself put it. `Can the sun mate with the darkness, on the white with the black?’ (187)

Friendship

And yet it is a solemn fact that Good’s eye-glass was still fixed in Good’s eye. I doubt whether he had ever taken it out at all. Neither the darkness, nor the plunge in the subterranean river, nor the roll down the slope, had been able to separate Good and his eye-glass. (185)

Parting

`My heart is sore,’ he said at last; `your words split my heart in twain. What have I done to ye, Incubu, Macumazahn, and Bougwan, that ye should leave me desolate? Ye who stood by me in rebellion and in battle, will ye leave me in the day of peace and victory? What will ye — wives? Choose from out the land! A place to live in? Behold, the land is yours as far as ye can see. The white man’s house? Ye shall teach my people how to build them. Cattle for beef and milk? Every married man shall bring ye an ox or a cow. Wild game to hurt? Does not the elephant walk through my forests, and the river-horse sleep in the reeds? Would ye make war? My Impis (regiments) wait your word. If there is anything more that I can give, that will I give ye.’

`Nay, Ignosi, we want not these things,’ I answered; `We would seek out own place.’ (189-90)

I laid my hand upon his arm. `Ignosi,’ I said, `tell us, when thou didst wonder in Zululand, and among the white men in Natal, did not thine heart turn to the land thy mother told thee of, they native land, where thou didst see the light, and play when thou wast little, the land where thy place was?’

`It was even so, Macumazahn.’

`Then thus does our heart turn to our land and to our own place.’

Then came a pause. When Ignosi broke it, it was in a different voice.

`I do perceive that thy words are, now as ever, wise and full of reason, Macumazahn; that which flies in the air love not to run along the ground the white man loves not to run along the ground; the white man loves not to live on the level of the black. Well, ye must go, and leave my heart sore, because ye will be as dead to me, since from where ye will be no tiding can come to me. (190)

The tradition of genre

`And so,’ he ended, ` We have lived for nearly two years, like a second Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday, hoping against hope that some natives might come here and help us away, but none have come. (197)

King Solomon’s Mines (Oxford World’s Classics)

• 作者: H. Rider Haggard,Dennis Butts
• 出版社/メーカー: Oxford Univ Pr (T)
• 発売日: 1998/08/13
• メディア: ペーパーバック
• クリック: 1回
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