2008年4月29日 星期二

随筆家の岡部伊都子さん死去

随筆家の岡部伊都子さん死去

2008年04月29日18時42分

 暮らしに息づく日本の伝統美をこまやかにつづった随筆家の岡部伊都子(おかべ・いつこ)さんが29日午前3時59分、肝臓がんによる呼吸不全で死去し た。85歳だった。葬儀は近親者のみで行う。「お別れ会」は5月31日午後2時から京都市上京区寺町通丸太町上ル松蔭町141の2の洛陽教会で。連絡先は ギャラリーヒルゲート(075・231・3702)。

写真

岡部伊都子さん

 大阪市の生まれ。婚約者を沖縄戦で失った後、1946年に結婚したが離婚。破産した実家に戻るなど苦労を重ねた。

 54年から放送された朝日放送のラジオエッセーをまとめた「おむすびの味」で随筆家として名を得た。独特のやわらかい筆づかいで美の世界を追求し、戦 争、差別などを鋭く批判。著書は「沖縄からの出発」など100冊を超える。96年の著作選集「岡部伊都子集」(岩波書店)は、愛読者でもある作家の落合恵 子さんと評論家の佐高信さんが企画・編集を担当した。

 「学歴はないけど病歴はある」と自らを評したほど、幼少時代から病気と闘いつづけた。療養生活を続ける中で、弱者や美しいものへのまな ざしを養った。01年に肝臓がんの宣告を受けた。05年2月、約30年住んだ京都・賀茂川べりの家からJR京都駅近くのマンションへ転居。蔵書は図書館に 寄贈し、思い出の品も整理した。「死に支度や」と話していた。

 06年、自伝「遺言のつもりで」を出版。この本で、自らの最期を見つめるこんな境地を表現した。「死ぬまで、自分を育て、解放されなければ。これで終わりということがない。毎日が始まりや。刻々の誕生や」


2008/04/29-19:24 岡部伊都子さん死去=随筆家、日本の伝統美とらえる   日常生活の機微や日本の伝統美をきめ細かくとらえたエッセーで知られた随筆家の岡部伊都子(おかべ・いつこ)さんが、29日午前3時59分、肝臓がんによ る呼吸器不全のため、京都市の病院で死去した。85歳だった。葬儀は近親者のみで行い、しのぶ会を5月31日午後2時から京都市上京区寺町通荒神口下ル松 蔭町141の2の洛陽教会で開く。
 大阪市出身。結婚・離婚を経て、1954年から執筆活動を開始。ラジオ番組のために書いたエッセーをまとめた 「おむすびの味」で認められ、随筆家としての地位を確立した。その後「女人歳時記」「おりおりの心」「二十七度線 沖縄に照らされて」「暮しの絵暦」「生 きるこだま」などの作品を発表。06年には語り下ろしの自伝「遺言のつもりで」を発表し、話題となった。



岡部伊都子さん=随筆家

 日常生活に息づく美意識をさりげない筆致でつづった随筆家の岡部伊都子(おかべ・いつこ)さんが29日午前3時59分、肝臓がんによる呼吸器不全 で亡くなった。85歳だった。告別式は親族だけで行い、5月31日午後2時から京都市上京区寺町通丸太町上る、洛陽教会でしのぶ会を開く。

 戦後、ラジオ番組のために書いた原稿が1956年に「おむすびの味」の名で刊行され随筆家として注目された。晩年は京 都に暮らし、紀行、エッセーで仏像や花などの風物と人間の営みを細やかに描き、それらを踏みにじる戦争や差別、環境汚染などを批判した。作品に「古都ひと り」「女人の京」「朱い文箱から」「朝鮮母像」など。

2008年4月29日21時58分 読売新聞)


断肠花

岡部伊都子 原作


今年的秋海棠又开放了。

自其纤纤细叶萌芽之际,其嫩芽那鲜红的曲线便很是美丽。当我还是个不谙世事的少妇时,就住在满院秋海棠盛开的宅子里。那是个战败后物质极度匮乏的年代,我亲手揉面做面条、烤面包;缝补汗衫、布袜,做得背部酸痛时,便躺着继续手中的针线活儿。

初秋时节多淫雨,仿佛梅雨一般,连绵不断。秋海棠被这持续不断的雨水淋得湿漉漉的,它的叶片色泽鲜明,深红的花茎和淡红的花朵楚楚动人。我曾悠闲地坐在走廊里,凝视着那小小的院落。

那时的我到底是何许人?现在想来,不甚了了。从表面上看,我似乎是个新婚不久、一门心思料理家务、即便不是无微不至但仍尽心尽力服侍丈夫的妻子。事实上,我认为自己当时就是这样真心诚意地过日子的。

现在回想起来,自己当时活得是何等地天真无聊啊!在我虚岁十五那年,中国的卢沟桥爆发了战争。那以后,身边的年轻人纷纷应征入伍,战事不断扩大。我被发现 低烧不退,因此经常不去女子学校上课。那时,对结核病的治疗除了静养和空气疗法之外别无良策。于是,我远离位于大阪市中心的家,租借郊外的房屋,辗转易 地,进行疗养。

虽然最终没有拿到毕业证书,但换来的是大难不死,胖嘟嘟地从疗养院返回了家中,是年,我已十八岁。战争日益激化,我最尊敬的哥哥参加了空军,于1942年1月阵亡。他大我四岁。

当时,我是个狂热的军国主义者,我坚信:“战争是圣战,牺牲是荣耀”。哥哥死后,我的未婚夫竟出乎意料地说:“我厌恶战争。我不想为天皇而死。”对此,我 大为震惊,他在我们相会的短暂时光情不自禁地吐露自己的真实感受,我却不能充分理解。如今,我回忆起他当时所体味到的那份孤寂,为自己无法挽回的万分歉意 而感到无地自容。

他最终被派往冲绳,为自己所反对的战争而命赴黄泉。可我在1968年以前对他的死亡情形及其丧身之地——冲绳的历史均一无所知。战败后收到他的死亡通知。第二年,望着那栽满秋海棠的院子的人已是将他的死抛诸脑后的别人的妻子了。

我生活在一个多么严重的谬误之中?!我是个对此毫无察觉的自私女人。自由生存的机会因战败不期而遇,可我却仍然摆脱不了父母、社会舆论之类的顾忌,仍想扮演乖女贤妻的角色,只留意身边琐事,既无心关注时代变化,又无意放眼大千世界。

从满院的花朵中我剪下一枝插在壁龛里。凝神近观,其鲜红的花瓣中隐约可见的小黄花蕊甚是可爱。此花的别名叫断肠花,悲痛得令人肝肠寸断即断肠,断肠花亦即令人悲恸欲绝的花。

它给人的不是那种挺着胸膛肃然呼喊的感觉,而是带有一种柔弱虚幻的味道,令人觉得莫名的感伤。比起天气晴朗的日子,在阴郁或被雨水浸透的日子里它更能显出勃勃生机。

人,憧憬光明却又留恋阴影。那种只追求光明而对阴影部分不屑一顾的心灵是不懂得存在之悲哀的。依附于实在的生命体以及所有存在物的喜悦与不安、置身于包括死亡在内的生命的动荡——当你意识到这些时,生存的欢喜与绝望就会同时令你心灵震撼。

天生孱弱的我具备一种弱者的本能——处身于阴影之中,心境会更加平和。与其进行未来的自我设计,倒不如做好无论大限何时来临都要从容镇定的心理准备。这种习惯性想法自幼就占据了我的灵魂,因而觉得带着阴影的秋海棠犹如自己的同伴令我心生喜悦。

然而,和秋海棠一起相处的日子使我明白:她具有一种顽强的生命力。关于这点,从其外表得到的负面印象出发是很难想象的。秋海棠在经过淫雨季节之后,沐浴了 桂花芬芳四溢的深秋阳光,在被台风刮倒的板壁下仍然盛开不衰。它没完没了地开放,以致我想:“它难道能永远花开不败吗?”

终于,萧瑟秋风四起,当其枯萎的叶茎呈现一副行将入土的模样时,我陷入了沮丧之中,似乎一场长剧在我眼前落下帷幕。

那时候,我自豪于自己看破了健康人所无法看到的人生的飘渺。因为人终归一死,所以我的感觉是从死亡的边缘回望人生,与此世交流直至与世长辞的那一刻来临。

或许这是个悲观的想法,但它却是一种相对豁达的心境。我一直以为最好在自己生命的每个瞬间都对自己周围有缘相识的人们珍而视之,我觉得这样准没错。所以心 情坦荡悠闲自得,从父母呵护的安乐窝中投身丈夫的保护伞下,新环境的一切的一切都弥足珍贵。秋海棠静静地、虚幻飘渺却次次绽放,其坚韧不拔便是阴影所蕴含 着的巨大能量。这是个很大的发现,我为之鼓舞。

后来据说,我丈夫因估计我活不过三年方与我结婚。但却事与愿违,我活了好久。这点便是生命的不可思议之处,谁都无法左右。最终,我离开婆家,回到我母亲独 居、家道中落的娘家。若是为了生活,我不会想要独身。靠年岁的增加,我一点点地醒悟到了一些“百思莫解”的事儿。当时我担心失去经济上的保障;并且在那以 前一直支配着我的审美观是:离婚是人一生中不能容忍的污点。

可是,我的美学观终于土崩瓦解了。我转而认为:与其呆在表面体面周全的位子上,倒不如贫困度日饱经风霜,纵然遗尸街头。作为人而言,这似乎是一种更为理想 的生存方式。我丈夫经济宽裕,又深受女性亲睐,他决意打发身心交瘁的我返回娘家。托他的福,我得以独身,真是令人庆幸。

作为女人、作为人、作为生存者,我都是个彻头彻尾的失败者。我一落千丈跌入谷底,不得不承认自己的一切都大错特错。我好象终于看到了自己一贫如洗、软弱无 能的真面目。后来,我逐渐可以将以前了然于心的真心话一一吐露。蓦然环顾四周,那种发现自己可以随心所欲无拘无束时的兴高采烈,那种明白自己不再是谁的妻 子、不靠丈夫供养、自谋生路简朴生活的充实感,使我两眼熠熠生辉,我感到了一个新生的自我。

我之所以能够将封闭的自我向外界敞开,完全得益于自己为了生计与社会产生联系、开始从事工作。无论我对人生怎样超脱,但对生存竞争的对手也不能善罢甘休。以往虽未想到过这点,但一旦自己意识到时才发现自己(竟然)是个歧视者。

我自以为毫无轻视他人的念头,但却无视那些苦于不平等、反抗歧视的人群。通过这点我明白了自己是个不可饶恕的歧视者,是个承认不平等的现实、对他人的痛苦不闻不问的加害者。

这就是我无休止的心灵自责的第一步。

通过解放封闭的自我发现了更糟糕更丑陋的自我。我陶醉于解放这个词汇所具有的甜蜜回味之中。也许所谓真正的解放就是从歧视与被歧视中解放出来。
  
荒畑寒村16岁时就立志社会改革、自食其力、专心致力于社会主义实践活动。他有个笔名叫竹内断肠花。竹内是慈母般支持他的夫人姓氏。这位硬骨铮铮的社会主义者说“断肠花有着令人难以舍弃的楚楚可怜之韵致,我喜爱有加。”因而,他将二者结合起来作为自己的笔名。

他在一篇短文中写道,他所景仰的堺利彦氏曾把秋海棠扭曲的心形叶子形容为“宛如武士礼服的一只袖子,耀武扬威。”而幸德秋水氏则说:自己曾偶得一句诗——“断肠人看断肠花”,然后凝视着院子里的秋海棠为诗的下句煞费苦心而不得。

断肠人看断肠花。

这些人就是一想到被政府蹂躏的国民、一想到他们的悲惨处境就感到柔肠寸断的人——断肠人。秋海棠在阳光照不到的地方静静地盛开,婀娜多姿;因之而生出心旌 摇曳的情愫情怀。正因为这种丰富的感受性,他们才会对谷中村因矿物公害事件所导致的毁灭而愤怒,才会反对战争,才能自觉不自觉地站在受歧视受虐待的民众一 边。

尽管我也为秋海棠花的美丽而动情,却没能在这种情绪的鼓动下去奋斗,而是立刻避而远之、逃之夭夭。这样的人能说是爱花之人吗?

不知为何,在春天这个风和日丽的季节里却有个词汇叫春愁;与春之愁绪相对,秋天则促人思索。清澈透明的空气诱人进入清晰思维之愉悦中。把朝外的心绪拉回内心,我思索何谓自我?何谓人?何谓生存?

秋思。

我真想和这误入眼帘的蜻蜓一起追溯那曾遗忘了的、抛弃了的、忽略了的一切。说真的,我一直在为丑陋的自我而常感悲哀,但终因能正视自己而又感欣慰。

(原文有时间再另附 )pupupu訳




A Conversation With Arno Motulsky: A Genetics Pioneer Sees a Bright Future, Cautiously

A Conversation With Arno Motulsky

A Genetics Pioneer Sees a Bright Future, Cautiously


Published: April 29, 2008

Among scientists, 84-year-old Arno Motulsky is known as the “father of pharmacogenomics.” In 1957, Dr. Motulsky, a medical doctor and researcher at the University of Washington, published an article reporting that two drugs had negative interactions with enzymes produced by certain human genes. Might this be true of other pharmaceuticals, Dr. Motulsky wondered? His question set off a revolution in research. Dr. Motulsky, who grew up Jewish in Nazi Germany, barely made his way out of wartime Europe and to safety in America.

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Stuart Isett for The New York Times

“What we know about the genome today is not enough for all the miracles many expect from this field.”

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Q. IN 1939 YOU BOARDED AN OCEAN LINER FROM HAMBURG TO CUBA WITH YOUR MOTHER, BROTHER AND SISTER. DID YOU EVER GET THERE?

A. We got as far as Havana harbor. Our ship was the S. S. St. Louis. The Cuban government had canceled the transit permits of most of the passengers — nearly a thousand refugees. We could not disembark.

Q. YOU MUST HAVE BEEN TERRIFIED.

A. I was 15. At that age, one tends to be optimistic. Many of the older men, they’d been in concentration camps and they had a better sense of what could happen. For days, appeals went out to the U.S. government to take us in. Then the Cubans ordered the St. Louis out of Havana harbor. The captain — who was a decent sort — sailed the ship up the Florida coast, hoping something would change. You could see Miami. Eventually, the St. Louis turned around for Europe. Our family was given asylum by Belgium. After a year in Brussels, we got our visas for America, but before we could leave, the country was overrun by the German Army.

Q. WERE YOU THEN INTERNED?

intern (PUNISH) PhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhonetic Phonetic PhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhoneticPhonetic Hide phonetics
verb [T often passive]
to put someone in prison for political or military reasons, especially during a war:
Many foreigners were interned for the duration of the war.

A. Yes, I was sent to a succession of camps in France. Though conditions were bad — hunger, typhoid — I always tried to know what was going on. I always tried to get a hold of newspapers, which was very difficult.

After many months, the Vichy French moved those internees with the possibility to emigrate to a special camp near Marseilles. We were allowed to visit consulates in the city. I spent much time at the American consulate, pleading for a renewal of my now-expired visa.

That came through right before my 18th birthday. So 10 days before I turned 18, I crossed into Spain. From there I went to Lisbon and eventually Chicago, where my father was. If my visa had taken any longer, I wouldn’t be here today because Franco had barred males over 18 from transiting through Spain; I would have ended up in Auschwitz, like most of the people I left behind.

Q. WHAT BECAME OF YOUR MOTHER AND SIBLINGS?

A. For two years, there was no news. In Brussels, they’d gotten orders to be “resettled in the East.” With the help of Belgian friends, they illegally crossed into Switzerland. We didn’t see them until 1946.

Q. HOW DID YOU BECOME A DOCTOR? THAT COULDN’T HAVE BEEN EASY FOR A PENNILESS REFUGEE KID.

A. I had a great piece of luck. When I was 20, I was drafted! The Army needed doctors for the war. They put me into a special program, where they sent me to Yale and later to medical school.

Q. HOW DID GENETICS BECOME YOUR SPECIALTY?

A. While at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, I met the hematologist Dr. Karl Singer, and he had all these modern ways of studying blood. That interested me. Because there are hereditary blood diseases, I soon became interested the genetic aspect of hematology.

Q. YOUR OBSERVATION IN 1957 ABOUT THE INTERACTIONS BETWEEN THE ENZYMES PRODUCED BY GENES AND SOME DRUGS — DOES IT PLEASE YOU TO SEE HOW IMPORTANT IT HAS BECOME?

A. Yes, because at first the idea was not well accepted. I remember going to an important pharmaceutical executive and I said, “I found a new way to find out about drug reactions.” And he kissed me off: “Drug reactions?”

Things also moved slowly for a long time because it was hard to test for this. But now, with the new DNA testing, you can do many things faster and better. And with the modern computerized genomics, you can even test for reactions to many different enzymes, all at the same time.

On the other hand, I think the promise of pharmacogenetics is sometimes overhyped. There are people who think we’ll be able to solve almost everything with an individualized prescription. We need more research, which will be expensive.

Q. WILL HEALTH INSURANCE PAY FOR DNA TESTING AND CUSTOM PHARMACEUTICALS?

A. That’s a problem. On the hopeful side, people say it may soon be possible to sequence a person’s genome for $1,000. Once they figure out low-cost ways to sequence the genome, the price of personalized medicine will come down.

Still, one shouldn’t be misled. What we know about the genome today is not enough for all the miracles many expect from this field. There’s a lot about what regulates the genes and how they interact that we still need to understand. We won’t have the answers by tomorrow.

Q. AT 84, YOU’RE STILL WORKING. WHAT ARE YOU TACKLING IN YOUR LABORATORY?

A. One project I’m very excited about relates to human color vision. About 8 percent of males have inherited red-green color blindness. This is caused by hereditary abnormalities in color sensitive pigments of the retinal cones in the back of the eyes, which are actually part of the brain. Our laboratory found that one-half of males with normal color vision had the amino acid alanine in their red pigment, while the other half all carried the amino acid serine, at the same site. This finding means that the same exact red color is perceived as a different type of red, depending on a person’s genetic makeup.

Q. WHAT’S THE POINT OF KNOWING THIS?

A. It’s exciting to learn that because of heredity, different people can see the same thing differently. I think this may prove useful in studying more complex brain functions. If this were 20 years ago, I’d focus on neurogenetics. What’s going on in the brain, that’s the last frontier.

Q. DO THE EXPERIENCES OF YOUR CHILDHOOD HAVE AN IMPACT ON YOUR LIFE AND WORK TODAY?

A. I often think about it. Whenever something good happens, I say to myself, “Look, you almost didn’t live to experience this.” When I see pictures from Africa, I think: “That could be me. I was once a refugee.”

2008年4月26日 星期六

Franz Kafka

卡夫卡預言了 人在現代社會中的處境

"卡夫卡生前的作品都未能發表,不聲不響,卻深刻把握了二十世紀現代工業社會中人的處境。卡夫卡把現代社會中人的真實處境做了一個恰如其分的描述。在種種社 會關係中,乃至於家人之中,人不過如同一個蟲子,這麼渺小可憐,別說主宰世界,連自己的命運都把握不了,莫名其妙,毫無緣由,卻受到審判。卡夫卡清醒認識 到那莫須有的烏托邦就像他小說中的城堡,是進不去的。

上個世紀之初,卡夫卡就預言了人在現代社會中的處境。現時代,這同樣處境中的人,只越來越脆弱,越來越喪失自主,人消失在各種各樣的認同中。在龐大的社會 機制裡,面臨鋪天蓋地的市場,文化也充分商品化,媒體並沒有不受政治牽制而真正的獨立。一個人如果企圖發出個人的聲音,僅僅是個人的聲音而不同某種政治聯 繫在一起的話,這聲音是很難發得出來的。這種個人的聲音只有在超越現實功利、超越政治又不追隨時尚也不依賴市場這種嚴肅的文學創作中,才有可能,才可能保 持個人的獨立不移。這種個人的聲音當然非常微弱,然而卻擺脫了炒作,是人真實的聲音。"╱高行健

Wikipedia article "Franz Kafka".

簡明大英

Franz Kafka
Kafka
(click to enlarge)
Kafka (credit: Archiv fur Kunst und Geschichte, Berlin)
(born July 3, 1883, Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary — died June 3, 1924, Kierling, near Vienna, Austria) Czech writer who wrote in German. Born into a middle-class Jewish family, he earned a doctorate and then worked successfully but unhappily at a government insurance office from 1907 until he was forced by a case of tuberculosis to retire in 1922. The disease caused his death two years later.

Hypersensitive and neurotic, he reluctantly published only a few works in his lifetime, including the symbolic story The Metamorphosis (1915), the allegorical fantasy In the Penal Colony (1919), and the story collection A Country Doctor (1919). His unfinished novels The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926), and Amerika (1927), published posthumously against Kafka's wishes, express the anxieties and alienation of 20th-century humanity.

His visionary tales, with their inscrutable mixture of the normal and the fantastic, have provoked a wealth of interpretations. Kafka's posthumous reputation and influence have been enormous, and he is regarded as one of the great European writers of the 20th century.




Humphrey Lyttelton

Obituary: Humphrey Lyttelton

Humphrey Lyttelton
Humphrey Lyttelton: Raconteur, wit and father of British jazz

Humphrey Lyttelton was perhaps the UK's most influential jazz performer.

Beyond this, he was a noted raconteur
and wit and chairman of BBC Radio 4's long-running I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue.

He was the unlikeliest of jazzmen. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he was schooled at Eton and commissioned in the Grenadier Guards.

Wikipedia article "Grenadier Guards".

Yet Humphrey Lyttelton - Humph to his many friends and fans - was also a life-long socialist and a performer and composer whose commitment to his music shone through for more than half a century.

And to the younger generation, he was the avuncular and razor-witted chairman of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, who more than held his own with comedians including Tim Brooke-Taylor, the late Willie Rushton and Barry Cryer.


Humphrey Lyttelton was born in 1921 and his father was a housemaster at Eton.

Both of his parents were amateur musicians and he began playing the trumpet in 1936, forming a school quartet later that year.

Humphrey Lyttelton
Lyttelton was a virtuoso, self-taught, trumpeter

On one occasion, when he should have been watching the school's annual cricket match against Harrow at Lord's, he was in London's Charing Cross Road, buying a trumpet.

His long-running love of making music had begun, although on leaving school he worked for a time in a steelworks in South Wales.

He was commissioned in the Grenadier Guards during World War II and saw action, most notably on the beach at Salerno.

But it was said that he arrived at the beach-head with a revolver in one hand and a trumpet in the other.

'Swings his ass off'

By 1948, he had formed a band with the clarinettist Wally Fawkes. That year he went to France's Nice Jazz Festival, where he met his idol, fellow musician Louis Armstrong.

Armstrong always spoke warmly of the man he called "that cat in England who swings his ass off."

Tim Brooke Taylor, Humphrey Lyttelton, Barry Cryer, Willie Rushton, Graeme Garden
Humphrey Lyttelton (bottom left) chaired I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue

In the early '50s, he opened the Humphrey Lyttelton Club in a basement in Oxford Street in London, and during the next 35 years or so he became the elder statesman of British jazz.

He composed more than 120 original works for his band, although some of his best-known numbers were When The Saints Go Marching In, Memphis Blues, High Society and the self-penned Bad Penny Blues.

His band has also backed several singers, ranging from New Orleans songstress Lillian Boutte to Helen Shapiro, and more recently, Stacey Kent.

In 2000 he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Post Office British Jazz Awards.

'A very heavy day'

The following year he joined rock band Radiohead for a seven-hour session during the recording of their new album, Amnesiac.

The legendary trumpeter went into the studio with the band after they wrote to him asking for help as they were "a bit stuck".

He said the session, for experimental track Living In A Glass House, left him exhausted.

"When we finally got a take that sounded good to me, they said: 'Good, we'll go and have some food, then we'll come back and do some more,'" he told Q magazine. "I said: 'Not me.' It was a very heavy day."

But playing was just part of Humph's life.

Radiohead
Lyttelton helped Radiohead with their album in 2001

He also presented and performed in many jazz radio programmes - Jazz Scene, Jazz Club and The Best of Jazz, which started in 1968 and only ended last month.

He was also chairman of BBC Radio 4's I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue, which billed itself as the antidote to panel games.

The show, which began in 1972, gained a huge and loyal following of listeners, delighted by games like One Song to the Tune of Another, Swanee Kazoo and the sublime, if unfathomable, Mornington Crescent.

Its spring series was cancelled in 2008 when its presenter had to undergo an operation to repair an aortic aneurysm in his heart.

Humphrey Lyttelton - who turned down a knighthood - had yet more talents, too.

He worked for the Daily Mail as a cartoonist, wrote for left-wing papers and for magazines and was the author of several books about music. He excelled at each of his contributions to British life.

ジャズ奏者のH・リトルトン氏死去

 ハンフリー・リトルトン氏(英ジャズトランペット奏者)同氏の公式ホームページなどによると、25日にロンドンの病院での手術後に死去、86歳。死因は不明だが、16日から大動脈りゅうの手術のために入院していた。

 21年5月、ロンドン郊外ウィンザー生まれ。36年にトランペット演奏を始め、48年に自分のバンドを結成、英国を代表するジャズ奏者として活動。今回の入院まで、さまざまな音楽的試みを行いながら定期的にツアーを続けていた。

 BBCラジオの司会者としても長年、活躍してきた。

2008年4月2日 星期三

Arthur C. Clarke (ii)

Arthur C. Clarke

Mar 27th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, visionary, died on March 18th, aged 90


Rex Features

ALTHOUGH he dreamed and wrote about it constantly for 70 years, Arthur C. Clarke never voyaged into space. He came closest to visiting alien worlds through his love of deep-sea diving, its weightlessness and strange life forms. But he always looked upwards with a gleam in his eye, hoping for the real thing. “I can never look now at the Milky Way”, said the narrator in “The Sentinel”, “without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do but to wait. I do not think we will have to wait for long.”

Did Sir Arthur believe in extra-terrestrials? The answer was given with a smile. “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” And UFOs? A broader smile. “They tell us absolutely nothing about intelligence elsewhere in the universe, but they do prove how rare it is on Earth.” For all his star-gazing, Sir Arthur's feet were firmly on the ground.

He did not predict the future in his copious science fiction, he insisted. He simply extrapolated. After all, he had written six stories about the end of the Earth; they couldn't all be true. The point was never to say what would happen for certain, but to ask what might happen; to prepare people painlessly for the future and to encourage flexible thinking. Politicians, he thought, ought to read his books rather than westerns or detective stories, because imagination could pave the way for revolutionary practical ideas.

In 1945, a year before he began to read physics and mathematics at King's College, he set out in the British magazine Wireless World the principles of global communication using satellites. The idea was two decades ahead of its time, and helped to attach his name to the geostationary orbit above the equator. In 1962, at the chilliest part of the cold war and just after the launch of Sputnik had heralded the space age, he discussed in “Profiles of the Future” the implications of transatlantic satellite radio and television broadcasts, with information raining down on previously isolated parts of the world. “Men will become neighbours,” he wrote. “Whether they like it or not...The TV satellite is mightier than the ICBM.”

He also got things wrong, of course. He predicted that humans would land on Mars—by 1994, then by 2010. In the early days, he also believed that a human presence in space would be important for work such as servicing satellites. His cosmic visions left him with little patience for lowlier, grittier issues of politics and economics. Those, he wrote, were concerned with “power and wealth, neither of which should be the primary...concern of full-grown men”. To him, it seemed self-evident that humanity would welcome the technological path towards evolution, whatever the cost. “The dinosaurs disappeared because they could not adapt to their changing environment. We shall disappear if we cannot adapt to an environment that now contains spaceships, computers—and thermonuclear weapons.”

From ape to Star Child

Few could have foreseen the track of his career at the start. He was born poor, on a farm, near the small coastal town of Minehead in the west of England in 1917. Space, rockets and science sprang out of the pages of the pulp science-fiction magazines he bought in Woolworths for threepence each, and which he could not always afford. His brother Fred remembered him building telescopes and launching home-made rockets. Science fiction inspired him—though his first job after leaving school was in the down-to-earth British civil service, which gave him plenty of time to think and write. From there, imagining the possible and the probable gradually took over.

His notions of the future remained unswervingly radical. Sir Arthur knew that outlandish ideas often became reality. But they provoked, he wrote, three stages of reaction. First, “It's completely impossible.” Second, “It's possible but not worth doing.” Third, “I said it was a good idea all along.” He believed, for example, that humans would one day build lifts that could take them into space using only electrical power, and that men would be able to transfer their thoughts into machines. The space-lifts, he reckoned, would become reality a few decades after people stopped laughing at the idea. “Any sufficiently advanced technology”, he declared, “is indistinguishable from magic.”

By the 2020s he thought it likely that artificial intelligence would reach human level, dinosaurs would be cloned, and neurological research into the senses would mean that mankind could bypass information from the ears, eyes and skin. By 2050, he said, millions of bored human beings would freeze themselves in order to emigrate into the future to find adventure. He was not religious, and was no metaphysician; but he wanted and expected men to evolve until they became like gods. In “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968), which he co-wrote with Stanley Kubrick, ape-man evolved into Star Child.

His epitaph for himself would have well suited man as he wanted him to be. “He never grew up; but he never stopped growing.”

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