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オリンピックのオフィシャル(?)狂詩
以前、オリンピックのための開発で、スキー場の景観が損なわれるのを目の当たりにしたことのある筆者は、長野オリンピックの開催にあたって、そのような開発に対する思いを詩にしている。
Official Olympics Doggerel (?)
By DOUGLAS LUMMIS
Skiing is my favorite sport. In fact it is one of my favorite activities. I was raised partly in the mountains of California, where there was a ski slope right outside our back door. Having skis attached to my feet came to seem as natural as wearing shoes.
I also love competitive skiing. Actually I used to be pretty good at it. I skied on the University of California, Berkeley, team for three years in the late 1950s.
The intercollegiate races were marvelous fun, and we got to be good friends with the racers on the other teams. But nobody ever came to watch: Skiing was not a spectator sport. We were our own audience; that is, we would watch each other. After all, the person best qualified to appreciate the spectacle of someone dancing through the gates of a slalom course is the person who has just been through that course, or who is just about to go. We didn't care much about the opinion of anyone else.
Since then competitive skiing has become a big-money spectator sport, largely as a result of the big-money promotion of the Winter Olympics. I remember when, in 1960, the Winter Olympics came to California, to a resort where we used to ski all the time called Squaw Valley. This was my first opportunity to see the dreary ugliness of Olympic development. Squaw Valley, once a lovely mountain valley, had already been partly uglified by the resort. But it still had a certain tastefulness and local flavor. With the coming of the Olympics, mountain meadows were turned into parking lots and all sorts of tawdry, modern, concrete buildings were built hastily. I haven't been back there since.
The Olympics has come to be less a competition between athletes than a competition between developers. Sponsoring the Olympics amounts to inviting the big-money developers to your town. When they arrive they do what developers always do: destroy what is there and build something else, changing "someplace" into "anyplace."
Have you seen what they did to Nagano Station?
In 1993 I wrote a poem in this column to celebrate the decision to bring the Olympics to Nagano. I offer it again here as a candidate for the Official Nagano Olympics Doggerel (There is an Official Beer, so why not an Official Doggerel?).
HARK, HARK
Hark, hark,
The dogs do bark:
Olympics are coming to town,
With flags and tags and money bags
And rivers turning brown.
They'll build a thousand parking lots
And shiny white hotels,
And carve the mountains down to size,
And sell whatever sells.
And for one great glorious moment
All the world will know
That up there in the mountains is
A place called Nagano.
And when that moment's over
The tourists will come back,
With lots of foreign currency
Hidden in their packs,
And stay in shabby grey hotels
With dripping rusty cracks.
They'll speak in leaking lobbies
Of the region's former fame:
"I hear this place was lovely once,
Before the Olympics came."
Skiing is my favorite sport. In fact it is one of my favorite activities. I was raised partly in the mountains of California, where there was a ski slope right outside our back door. Having skis attached to my feet came to seem as natural as wearing shoes.
I also love competitive skiing. Actually I used to be pretty good at it. I skied on the University of California, Berkeley, team for three years in the late 1950s.
The intercollegiate races were marvelous fun, and we got to be good friends with the racers on the other teams. But nobody ever came to watch: Skiing was not a spectator sport. We were our own audience; that is, we would watch each other. After all, the person best qualified to appreciate the spectacle of someone dancing through the gates of a slalom course is the person who has just been through that course, or who is just about to go. We didn't care much about the opinion of anyone else.
Since then competitive skiing has become a big-money spectator sport, largely as a result of the big-money promotion of the Winter Olympics. I remember when, in 1960, the Winter Olympics came to California, to a resort where we used to ski all the time called Squaw Valley. This was my first opportunity to see the dreary ugliness of Olympic development. Squaw Valley, once a lovely mountain valley, had already been partly uglified by the resort. But it still had a certain tastefulness and local flavor. With the coming of the Olympics, mountain meadows were turned into parking lots and all sorts of tawdry, modern, concrete buildings were built hastily. I haven't been back there since.
The Olympics has come to be less a competition between athletes than a competition between developers. Sponsoring the Olympics amounts to inviting the big-money developers to your town. When they arrive they do what developers always do: destroy what is there and build something else, changing "someplace" into "anyplace."
Have you seen what they did to Nagano Station?
In 1993 I wrote a poem in this column to celebrate the decision to bring the Olympics to Nagano. I offer it again here as a candidate for the Official Nagano Olympics Doggerel (There is an Official Beer, so why not an Official Doggerel?).
HARK, HARK
Hark, hark,
The dogs do bark:
Olympics are coming to town,
With flags and tags and money bags
And rivers turning brown.
They'll build a thousand parking lots
And shiny white hotels,
And carve the mountains down to size,
And sell whatever sells.
And for one great glorious moment
All the world will know
That up there in the mountains is
A place called Nagano.
And when that moment's over
The tourists will come back,
With lots of foreign currency
Hidden in their packs,
And stay in shabby grey hotels
With dripping rusty cracks.
They'll speak in leaking lobbies
Of the region's former fame:
"I hear this place was lovely once,
Before the Olympics came."
Shukan ST: Feb. 6, 1998
(C) All rights reserved
- favorite
- 得意な
- was raised partly in 〜
- ある期間、 〜 で育った
- Having skis attached to 〜
- スキーを 〜 に付けていること
- came to seem as natural as 〜
- 〜 と同様、自然なことに思えるようになった
- competitive skiing
- スキー競技
- intercollegiate races
- 大学間対抗レース
- marvelous fun
- 最高に楽しい
- spectator sport
- 観戦するスポーツ
- audience
- 観客
- that is
- つまり
- After all
- 何といっても
- 〜 best qualified to 〜
- 〜 するのに最適な 〜
- appreciate
- うまさがわかる
- spectacle
- すばらしい光景
- dancing through 〜
- 〜 の間を軽やかに滑る
- gates of a slalom course
- 回転の旗門
- Squaw Valley
- カリフォルニア州東北部シエラネバダ山脈にある谷で、1960年冬季オリンピック大会の会場
- dreary ugliness
- 悲しくなるような醜さ
- Olympic development
- オリンピックのための開発
- mountain valley
- 山間の谷
- (had)been partly uglified by 〜
- 〜 によって部分的に醜くされた
- tastefulness
- 趣
- local flavor
- その土地の独特な雰囲気
- meadows
- 草地
- were turned into 〜
- 〜 に変えられた
- parking lots
- 駐車所
- all sorts of 〜
- あらゆる種類の
- tawdry
- けばけばしい
- hastily
- 急いで
- haven't been back there since
- それ以来、一度もそこに戻ったことがない。
- has come to be less 〜 than 〜
- 〜 よりもむしろ 〜 になってきた
- developers
- 開発業者
- Sponsoring 〜
- 〜 の開催地となること
- amounts to 〜
- 〜 に等しい
- big-money 〜
- 大手の 〜
- changing "someplace"into"anyplace"
- 「特別な場所」を「どこにでもあるような場所」に変える
- candidate
- 候補
- why not 〜
- 〜 があってもよいのではないか
- HARK
- 聴け
- bark
- 吠える
- tags
- ふさ飾り
- carve 〜 down to size
- 条件に合うまで削り取る
- whatever sells
- 売れる物はなんでも
- glorious moment
- 栄光の瞬間
- foreign currency
- 外貨
- packs
- 荷物
- shabby
- みすぼらしい
- dripping rusty cracks
- 水の漏れるさびた割れ目
- leaking 〜
- 水漏れする 〜
- region's former fame
- その地域の昔の名声