The Picture of Dorian Gray — Page 2

部屋の中央には、直立したイーゼルに固定された、並外れた美貌を持つ青年の全身肖像画が立てかけられており、その前に少し離れて、画家本人のバジル・ホールワードが座っていた。彼が数年前に突然姿を消したことは、当時、世間に大きな興奮をもたらし、数多くの奇妙な憶測を呼び起こした。

In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement and gave rise to so many strange conjectures.

画家が自らの芸術によって巧みに描き出した、その優美でととのった姿を見つめていると、彼の顔に喜びの微笑みが浮かび、そのままそこにとどまりそうになった。しかし彼は突然立ち上がり、目を閉じて指をまぶたに当てた。まるで、目覚めてしまうことを恐れている不思議な夢を、脳の中に閉じ込めようとするかのように。

As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake.

「これはあなたの最高傑作だよ、バジル。君がこれまでに手がけた中で最も優れた作品だ」とヘンリー卿はものうげに言った。「来年は必ずグロブナーに出品しなければ。アカデミーは大きすぎるし、俗っぽすぎる。あそこへ行くといつも、人が多すぎて絵が見られないか、絵が多すぎて人が見られないかのどちらかだ。前者はひどいが、後者はもっとひどい。グロブナーこそが本当に唯一の場所だよ。」

"It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done," said Lord Henry languidly. "You must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse. The Grosvenor is really the only place."

「どこにも出品するつもりはありません」と彼は答え、オックスフォード時代に友人たちを笑わせたあの独特の仕草で、頭をぐいと後ろに傾けた。「いや、どこにも送らない。」

"I don't think I shall send it anywhere," he answered, tossing his head back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford. "No, I won't send it anywhere.