영어로 읽는 고전 _ 로버트 히첸스의 벨라 도나
로버트 히첸스의 『벨라 도나(Bella Donna)』는 20세기 초에 쓰인 소설이다. 이야기는 런던의 사교계에서 빠르게 성공을 거머쥔 유대인 의사 마이어 아이작슨 박사를 중심으로 전개된다. 그의 삶에 대한 첫인상은 예리한 관찰력과 다양한 환자들과의 교류를 통해 드러나며, 특히 한때 절세의 미인이었으나 노화와 씨름하고 있는 매혹적인 여인 체프스토 부인이 서사가 펼쳐지면서 아이작슨의 관심을 끌게 된다. 소설의 도입부는 아이작슨 박사가 환자들의 삶을 되돌아보며 경탄과 피로가 뒤섞인 감정을 느끼는 장면으로, 하루의 진료를 준비하는 모습을 보여준다. 그는 특히 마지막 예약 환자인 체프스토 부인의 이름에 끌리게 되는데, 그녀는 아름다움이 퇴색했음에도 여전히 매혹적인 존재감을 유지하고 있으며, 그 안에는 복잡함과 절박함의 기미가 서려 있다. 두 사람의 대화를 통해 신체적 건강과 정서적 혼란 사이의 주제가 떠오르기 시작하며, 노화에 맞서 싸우고 활력을 갈망하는 체프스토 부인의 모습이 그녀의 캐릭터와 전개되는 서사에 깊이를 더한다. 의사와 환자 사이의 미묘한 역학 관계는 사회적 기대, 개인의 정체성, 그리고 충족을 향한 탐색이라는 더 깊은 탐구의 무대를 마련한다.
Classics Read in English _ Bella Donna: A Novel by Robert Hichens
Robert Hichens's Bella Donna, a novel born in the drawing rooms and consulting offices of Edwardian London, opens not with spectacle but with scrutiny. At its center stands Doctor Meyer Isaacson — a Jewish physician whose sharp intellect and social agility have carried him swiftly into the upper reaches of London society. Yet for all his success, there is a weariness beneath the polish, a quiet fatigue that comes from spending one's days deciphering the ailments people confess and the ones they conceal.
It is into this carefully ordered world that Mrs. Chepstow arrives — not as a patient, exactly, but as a provocation. Once celebrated for her extraordinary beauty, she now inhabits the uneasy territory between allure and decay. Her looks have dimmed, but something far more dangerous has taken their place: a desperate magnetism, sharpened by loss and laced with unspoken need. From the moment her name appears on Isaacson's appointment ledger, the novel tightens its grip.
Their initial encounter is deceptively clinical. A doctor asks questions; a woman answers. But beneath the surface, Hichens stages a subtle collision between two forms of survival — his rational composure and her instinctive seduction. What emerges is not a love story, at least not yet, but something more unsettling: a study of how the body's decline can ignite the soul's most reckless ambitions. In this charged first chapter, Hichens lays the groundwork for a narrative that will probe the tangled borders between desire and dignity, between the self the world sees and the self that refuses to surrender.
Among the contents
Doctor Meyer Isaacson had got on as only a modern Jew whose home is London can get on, with a rapidity that was alarming. He seemed to have arrived as a bullet arrives in a body. He was not in the heart of success, and lo! he was in the heart of success. And no one had marked his journey. Suddenly every one was speaking of him—was talking of the cures he had made, was advising every one else to go to him. For some mysterious reason his name—a name not easily to be forgotten once it had been heard—began to pervade the conversations that were held in the smart drawing-rooms of London. Women who were well, but had not seen him, abruptly became sufficiently unwell to need a consultation. "Where does he live? In Harley Street, I suppose?" was a constant question.
But he did not live in Harley Street. He was not the man to lose himself in an avenue of brass plates of fellow practitioners. "Cleveland Square, St. James's," was the startling reply; and his house was detached, if you please, and marvellously furnished.
