鸚鵡にご用心

ANTHONY GOTTLIEB “My Parrot, My Self” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/books/review/Gottlieb-t.html


プリニウスから現代に至る西洋文学に現れた鸚鵡を巡る博覧強記なエッセイ。証言者としての鸚鵡、偽証者としての鸚鵡、予言者としての鸚鵡等々。また、20世紀文学において鸚鵡は屡々「死」と結びついている(例えばガルシア=マルケス)。最後はレーモン・クノーの『地下鉄のザジ』で締め括られる。

地下鉄のザジ (中公文庫)

地下鉄のザジ (中公文庫)

「証言者としての鸚鵡」だが、屡々浮気に結び付けられている;

In 2006, newspapers reveled in the tale of Ziggy, an 8-year-old parrot in Britain who exposed the secret affair that his owner’s girlfriend was conducting with a man called Gary. Ziggy made kissing sounds when the name Gary was spoken on TV and said, “Hiya, Gary,” when the girlfriend’s cellphone rang. She broke down and confessed after Ziggy said, “I love you, Gary,” in an imitation of her voice. The revelation of female infidelity is in fact an ancient staple of parrot literature. In a 13th-century Spanish folk tale, which derives from an earlier Arabic one, a suspicious husband buys a parrot in order to keep an eye on his wife while he is away. Upon returning from his travels, he questions the bird, who reports that the wife was indeed visited by a lover. But she triumphs by tricking the husband into believing that the parrot is a liar, and he has it killed.

In a medieval French version of the tale, there are three parrot-spies, only one of which survives, by prudently assuring the wife that he has the wisdom to know when to remain silent. A modern variation on this theme — in a story by Robert Olen Butler, published in The New Yorker in 1995 — has a husband climb a tree to observe his wife in an act of infidelity. He falls to his death and is reincarnated as a parrot, which the wife then purchases from a pet store.

日本では機械的な反応としての〈鸚鵡返し〉という言い方があるが、どうも鸚鵡の象徴的な地位は低いような気もする。
ところで、舛添要一がTVでオウム真理教について話していたのだが、アクセントの関係で鸚鵡真理教に聞こえてしまったということがあった。方言なのか舛添の個人的癖なのかは知らない。