Decadence Mandchue - Living, Loving, Thinking, Again

承前*1

Charlotte Middlehurst “Sir Edmund Backhouse” TimeOut Shanghai May 2011, p.58

Edmund Backhouse*2が1943年*3に書いた未刊の回想録Decadence Mandchueが香港のEarnshaw Booksから刊行されたらしい。上の記事はEarnshaw Booksの編集者Derek Sandhausへのインタヴュー。
Decadence Mandchueは、その中でBackhouseが詩人のポール・ヴェルエレーヌ、作家のオスカー･ワイルド、そして西太后とセックスしたことを告白していることで知られているが、既に英国の歴史家Hugh Trever-Roperによって妄想的フィクション、つまりはトンデモ本であると認定されている。これについて*4、

Backhouse claims to have had sex with Oscar Wilde and the 69-year-old Empress Dowager Cixi. Is it true?
It's certainly possible on both counts, but impossible to prove.

また、Backhouseにとっての北京；

He was homosexual in a time when that was prosecutable in his own culture, and Backhouse appears to have been deeply affected by the conviction of Oscar Wilde[Backhouse was involved in raising funds for Wilde's defence]. In Peking, he found a community where he could be himself and love other men without the fear of reprisal.

ミッシェル･フーコーにとってのカリフォルニアは Backhouseにとっての北京だったというと、フーコー・ファンに怒られるか。それから、”Does the book contain any revelations?”という質問に対しては、

Yes. The details about the culture of Peking's homosexual literati around the turn of the 20th century are invaluable. It also makes the shocking, unique and possibly correct claim that Emperor Guangxu*5 was strangled on the orders of the Empress Dowager, and that the Empress Dowager was shot and killed by China's first president, Yuan Shikai*6. Official records say they died of natural causes.

初めてEdmund Backhouseのことを知ったSheridan PrassoのThe Asian Mystiqueを再びマークしておく。