ルイス・キャロルの詩『セイウチと大工』とビートルズの『I Am The Walrus』
先日地元の人気オイスター・バー『The Walrus and the Carpenter』に行ってきました。
【シアトル】店名が意味深な人気オイスター・バー『The Walrus and the Carpenter』 | ツカウエイゴ
この店名は、『不思議の国のアリス』の著者ルイス・キャロルさんの詩のタイトルから来ています。
ビートルズの曲にも影響
“Worlus” といえば、ビートルズの『I Am The Walrus』を思い出しますが、やはりこの小話に影響を受けているそうです。なんと、『セイウチと大工』は「資本主義者」と「社会制度」を描いた風刺物語だったんですね〜
The idea for the Walrus came from the poem The Walrus and The Carpenter, which is from the sequel to Alice in Wonderland called Through the Looking-Glass. In his 1980 Playboy interview, Lennon said: “It never dawned on me that Lewis Carroll was commenting on the capitalist and social system. I never went into that bit about what he really meant, like people are doing with the Beatles’ work. Later, I went back and looked at it and realized that the walrus was the bad guy in the story and the carpenter was the good guy. I thought, Oh, s–t, I picked the wrong guy. I should have said, ‘I am the carpenter.’ But that wouldn’t have been the same, would it?”
影響を与えたのは一曲だけではなかった
さらに『I Am The Walrus』は、ビートルズの別の曲『Glass Onion』にも登場します。”The Walrus is Paul.（セイウチはポール）” という歌詞のあたりです。
Lennon explained to Rolling Stone in a 1971 interview why he said “The Walrus is Paul.” Said Lennon: “‘I Am The Walrus’ was originally the B side of ‘Hello Goodbye.’ I was still in my love cloud with Yoko and I thought, well, I’ll just say something nice to Paul: ‘It’s all right, you did a good job over these few years, holding us together.’ He was trying to organize the group, and organize the music, and be an individual and all that, so I wanted to thank him. I said ‘the Walrus is Paul’ for that reason. I felt, ‘Well, he can have it. I’ve got Yoko, and thank you, you can have the credit.'”
ルイス・キャロルさんも、ビートルズも、皮肉がうまいです！
Glass Onion 以外入ってます
