解説　場面 1「記録の価値」

"To the man who loves art for its own sake," remarked Sherlock Holmes, tossing aside the advertisement sheet of The Daily Telegraph, "it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived. It is pleasant to me to observe, Watson, that you have so far grasped this truth that in these little records of our cases which you have been good enough to draw up, and, I am bound to say, occasionally to embellish, you have given prominence not so much to the many causes célèbres and sensational trials in which I have figured but rather to those incidents which may have been trivial in themselves, but which have given room for those faculties of deduction and of logical synthesis which I have made my special province."

「芸術を芸術そのもののために愛する者にとっては」とシャーロック・ホームズは『デイリー・テレグラフ』紙の広告面を脇へ放りながら言った。「取るに足りない、最も卑近な現れのうちにこそ、しばしば最も鋭い喜びが見いだされるものだ。ワトソン、きみがこれまでにこの真理を理解し、親切にも書きまとめてくれた私たちの事件の小記録で――時折、脚色までしてくれたと言わざるをえないが――私が関わった数々の有名事件や世間を騒がせた裁判より、それ自体は些細でも、私が専門とする演繹と論理的統合の力を働かせる余地のあった出来事を重んじているのは、私にとって喜ばしいことだ」

"And yet," said I, smiling, "I cannot quite hold myself absolved from the charge of sensationalism which has been urged against my records."

「とはいえ」と私はほほ笑んで言った。「私の記録に向けられた、扇情的だという非難から、まったく身に覚えがないとは言えないよ」

"You have erred, perhaps," he observed, taking up a glowing cinder with the tongs and lighting with it the long cherry-wood pipe which was wont to replace his clay when he was in a disputatious rather than a meditative mood—"you have erred perhaps in attempting to put colour and life into each of your statements instead of confining yourself to the task of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really the only notable feature about the thing."

「きみはおそらく間違えたのだ」と彼は言い、火ばさみで赤く燃える炭をつまみ、思索より議論を好む気分のときに粘土のパイプに代えて使う長い桜材のパイプへ火をつけた。「この話で本当に注目すべき唯一のものは、原因から結果へ至る厳密な推理なのに、それを記録することだけに徹せず、どの記述にも色彩と生命を与えようとした点で、きみは間違えたのかもしれない」

"It seems to me that I have done you full justice in the matter," I remarked with some coldness, for I was repelled by the egotism which I had more than once observed to be a strong factor in my friend's singular character.

「その点では、きみを十分に正当に扱ってきたつもりだ」と私は少し冷ややかに答えた。友人の風変わりな性格には、これまで何度も目にした自己中心的な面が強く働いており、それに反発を覚えたからである。