Upcoming Event

1884年、ジョン・ラスキンはロンドンで「十九世紀の嵐雲」と題する二回の講演をおこない、長年にわたり自ら観察してきた空の異変を報告した。かつてなかったような暗い雲と「疫病の風」が空を覆い、太陽の光が力を失っていくというのである。ラスキンはこの現象を、気象の記録にとどめず、産業社会の営みや人間の道徳的な荒廃と結びつけて論じた。ラスキンの精神の不調と重ねて奇矯な講演とみなされることも多かったが、大気汚染や気候変動が現実の問題となった今日読み返すと、先駆的な環境認識が見えてくる。本発表では、講演の内容と時代背景を確認したうえで、自然の観察と人間の価値・責任への問いを切り離さないラスキンのまなざしが、環境人文学に示唆するものを考えたい。

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In 1884, John Ruskin delivered two lectures in London under the title “The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century,” reporting on a disturbance in the sky that he had observed for many years. A dark cloud unlike anything seen before, together with a “plague-wind,” was, he claimed, spreading across the heavens and draining the sun of its light. Ruskin did not confine this phenomenon to meteorological record-keeping; he linked it to the workings of industrial society and to humanity’s moral degradation. The lectures have often been dismissed as eccentric and read against the background of Ruskin’s declining mental health. Yet, reread today, when air pollution and climate change have become pressing realities, they reveal a strikingly prescient environmental awareness. After reviewing the content and historical context of the lectures, this talk considers what Ruskin’s vision, which refuses to separate the observation of nature from questions of human values and responsibility, can offer to the environmental humanities.