常時英心:言葉の森から 1.0

約10年間,はてなダイアリーで英語表現の落穂拾いを行ってきました。現在はAmeba Blogに2.0を開設し,継続中です。こちらはしばらくアーカイブとして維持します。

hagiography

ヒトラーを「ドイツの救世主」とした内容の伝記が自身の自作であった可能性がでてきました。

Adolf Hitler's first biography written by the Fuhrer himself, according to new evidence

For 70 years, historians studying the life of Adolf Hitler have worked on the basis that Mein Kampf was his only attempt at an autobiography. Written partly in his cell at Landsberg prison in Bavaria, his two-volume memoir is the prime source for understanding the roots of his warped ideology.

History may have to be revised, however, after a professor from the University of Aberdeen uncovered evidence that suggests an earlier work, Adolf Hitler: His Life and Speeches, was “almost certainly” written by the future Führer himself.

Published in 1923, two years before Mein Kampf, the book was purportedly authored by German serviceman Baron Adolf-Viktor von Koerber, and appeared to be no more than a hagiography by a loyal follower.
But according to historian Professor Thomas Weber, von Koerber was merely a front to disguise the fact that Hitler had likened himself to Jesus in an act of “shameless self-promotion”.

Prof Weber has unearthed evidence in von Koerber’s private papers in Johannesburg that the First World War pilot, who turned to journalism in the 1920s, had agreed to put his name to the book to make it appear to be an objective appraisal of Hitler.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/07/adolf-hitler-book-find-rewrites-history/

今回取り上げるのはhagiography /h`ægiάgrəfi/です。
biographyと似た綴りから、何か伝記に関連したものと予想しました。

ジーニアス英和辞典』(第五版、大修館書店)では「1.聖人伝 2.美化された伝記」とありました。
「神聖な」を表すhagio-はおそらく、旧約聖書文書のひとつである『ハガイ書』を書いた預言者とされる「ハガイ」からきているのではないかと思います。「ハガイ」とはヘブライ語で「祝祭」という意味を持つそうです。

ここでのhagiographyは後者の「美化された伝記」を指していることがわかります。(flyingbird)