영어로 읽는 고전 _ 리지웰 칼럼의 어두운 황야 속에서
리지웰 컬럼의 『어두운 황야 속에서』는 20세기 초에 쓰인 소설이다. 이야기는 북부 로키산맥의 거칠고 고립된 황야에서 덫 사냥꾼으로 살아가는 두 형제, 랄프와 니콜 웨슬리를 따라간다. 그들은 광활하고 종종 위험천만한 대지 속에서 자연과 생존의 도전에 맞서며, 현지 원주민 문화와 얽힌 신비로운 인물인 '백인 스쿼'의 전설로 인해 삶이 더욱 복잡해진다. 책의 서두는 황야에서의 삶이 지닌 혹독한 현실을 생생하게 그려내며, 흥미와 모험의 요소를 곳곳에 배치한다. 맹렬한 눈보라가 움막 밖에서 휘몰아치는 가운데, 웨슬리 형제는 폭풍 속에서 울려 퍼지는 사람의 외침을 듣고, 혼돈의 자연 속으로 뛰어들어 빅터 가뇽이라는 조난당한 교역상을 구출한다. 이 만남 이후 형제는 가뇽이 들려주는 수수께끼의 백인 스쿼 이야기에 매료되어 다양한 감정에 휩싸이고, 예기치 못한 탐험의 길에 오르게 된다. 생존, 로맨스의 매력, 그리고 황야의 풍요로움이 어우러져 이야기를 이끌어가는 초반의 긴장감을 형성한다.
Classics Read in English _ In the Brooding Wild by Ridgwell Cullum
Set against the unforgiving expanse of the northern Rockies, Ridgwell Cullum's early 20th-century novel In the Brooding Wild tells the story of Ralph and Nicol Westley?two brothers carving out an existence as trappers in a land where nature shows no mercy. Their solitary world, already shaped by the brutal rhythms of survival, becomes entangled with something far more elusive: the legend of the White Squaw, a spectral figure woven into the fabric of Indigenous lore.
The novel opens with elemental fury. A blizzard tears across the frozen landscape, and from within its howling chaos comes a desperate human cry. The brothers plunge into the storm and drag a half-dead trader named Victor Gagnon back to safety. What Gagnon carries with him, however, is more than frostbite and exhaustion?it is a story. His account of the mysterious White Squaw seizes the brothers' imaginations, awakening desires and curiosities that will pull them far beyond the familiar dangers of the wild.
From its first pages, the novel interweaves primal struggle with whispered mystery, setting the stage for a journey where survival, obsession, and romance collide beneath vast and indifferent skies.
Among the contents
To the spirit which broods over the stupendous solitudes of the northern Rockies, the soul of man, with all its complex impulses, is but so much plastic material which it shapes to its own inscrutable ends. For the man whose lot is cast in the heart of these wilds, the drama of life usually moves with a tremendous simplicity toward the sudden and sombre tragedy of the last act. The titanic world in which he lives closes in upon him and makes him its own. For him, among the ancient watch. towers of the earth, the innumerable interests and activities of swarming cities, the restless tides and currents of an eager civilization, take on the remoteness of a dream. The peace or war of nations is less to him than the battles of Wing and Fur. His interests are all in that world over which he seeks to rule by the law of trap and gun, and in the war of defence which he wages against the aggression of the elements. He returns insensibly to the type of the primitive man, strong, patient, and enduring.
High up on the mountainside, overlooking a valley so deep and wide as to daze the brain of the gazing human, stands a squat building.
