What is Kasuga reading from in chapter 34?

Question

In chapter 34, Kasuga was asked to read aloud a page from a book in class. The translation I'm reading gives the lines as:

The sun climbed above the abyss and Urehi walked crouched under the bridge. Beyond the railroad fence, that endlessly extended into the vast horizon...

Later, on the same page:

Believing nothing. Getting angry over one's own belief. Never knowing how to reject the lust. Accusing one's own lust...

(This might not be a very good translation of the original Japanese, since there are other quality issues with the translation I'm reading. I'm also not sure if the two parts go together.)

In case I'm not parsing the text correctly, here's an image of the page:

Is this from an actual book or poem, and if so, what is this text? I've tried searching the content in the first two bubbles, but Google hasn't given me anything useful.

Answer 1

In the top panel, Kasuga is reading lines 1-4 of 『漂泊者の歌』 Hyōhakusha no Uta "The Wanderer's Song", a poem in the collection 『氷島』 Hyōtō "The Iceland" by HAGIWARA Sakutarō. In the bottom panel, he's reading lines 16-19 of the same poem.

日は断崖の上に登り
憂ひは陸橋の下を低く歩めり。
無限に遠き空の彼方
続ける鉄路の柵の背後に

[...]

かつて何物をも信ずることなく
汝の信ずるところに憤怒を知れり。
かつて欲情の否定を知らず
汝の欲情するものを弾劾せり。

There exist English translations of Hagiwara's poetry (though I'm not sure whether this specific poem has been translated), but none of them are available online, as far as I can tell. An enterprising person with access to a good dead-tree library might like to search for a printed translation of this poem (perhaps this one). The scanlation you have is definitely botched (e.g. "Urehi" is not a name but rather 憂い "sorrow"), but I don't feel competent enough to offer an alternate translation.

I don't have the knowledge of Japanese literature to contextualize this appropriately, but my reading of the poem (which could be wrong) is that it is basically in praise of those who wander and aren't tied down by nostalgia / attachment to places they have left behind. Donald Keene writes a bit about this poem and its collection in Dawn to the West (an excellent read on modern Japanese literature, by the way).

In the context of Aku no Hana, this probably has some thematic relevance or ironic value or something - but I haven't actually read that far into the manga, so I wouldn't know.