영어로 읽는 고전 _ 로버트 히첸스의 힐리마와 전갈들
로버트 히첸스의 『할리마와 전갈들(Halima And The Scorpions)』은 20세기 초에 쓰인 소설이다. 사하라 사막을 배경으로, 아름다운 무희 할리마의 여정을 통해 마법, 미신, 문화적 충돌이라는 주제를 탐구한다. 서사는 저명한 마라부(이슬람 성자)로부터 기적의 힘을 부여받았다고 전해지는 고슴도치 발을 할리마가 소유하게 되면서, 그녀가 사는 도시 투구르트에서 시기와 추문이 일어나는 과정을 파고든다. 이야기는 할리마가 마법의 고슴도치 발을 과시하면서 시기와 분노를 불러일으키는 모습을 따라가며, 특히 그녀의 무적 주장에 도전하는 가수 벤아비드와의 갈등이 부각된다. 극적인 대면에서 벤아비드는 고슴도치 발의 보호력에 대한 그녀의 믿음을 시험하기 위해 전갈들을 풀어놓고, 이는 결국 춤 공연 도중 할리마의 비극적 죽음으로 이어진다. 서사는 운명, 자만, 그리고 사막의 문화적 직물에 깊이 스며든 미신이라는 모티프를 정교하게 엮어내며, 믿음의 대가와 사회적 기대가 가져오는 결과에 대한 가슴 아픈 성찰로 귀결된다.
Classics Read in English _ Halima And The Scorpions by Robert Hichens
Robert Hichens's Halima and the Scorpions, written in the early twentieth century, is a tale that moves with the rhythm of a desert dance — hypnotic, precise, and leading, step by inevitable step, toward death.
At its center stands Halima, a dancing-girl of Touggourt whose beauty commands the room the way a flame commands the dark. She is not merely admired; she is feared, and for a reason that has nothing to do with her body. Halima possesses a hedgehog's foot — a talisman blessed, so she claims, by a marabout of legendary power — and with it, she declares herself untouchable. Invincible. Beyond the reach of harm. In the superstition-soaked world of the Saharan oasis town, such a claim is not merely bold; it is an act of war against every rival, every doubter, every man who cannot tolerate a woman who answers to no one.
Ben-Abid, a singer whose pride runs as deep as Halima's, refuses to let the challenge stand. His weapon is not a blade but a test: scorpions, released in the space where Halima dances, their venomous bodies crawling toward her bare feet as she spins. It is a scene Hichens constructs with agonizing deliberation — the music, the audience, the girl whirling in absolute faith, and the creatures advancing with absolute indifference to faith. What follows is not a surprise but a reckoning, the collision between a woman's belief in her own invulnerability and a universe that makes no such promises. Hichens transforms this small, brutal story into something far larger: a meditation on the seductive danger of certainty, the cruelty of spectacle, and the ancient human impulse to test the sacred until it shatters — and to stand watching, transfixed, as it does.
Among the contents
Mohammed El Aïd Ben Ali Tidjani, marabout of Tamacine, is a great man in the Sahara Desert. His reputation for piety reaches as far as Tunis and Algiers, to the north of Africa, and to the uttermost parts of the Southern Desert, even to the land of the Touaregs. He dwells in a sacred village of dried mud and brick, surrounded by a high wall, pierced with loopholes, and ornamented with gates made of palm wood, and covered with sheets of iron. In his mansion, above the entrance of which is written “L’Entrée de Sidi Laïd,” are clocks innumerable, musical boxes, tables, chairs, sofas, and even framed photographs. Negro servants bow before him, wives, brothers, children, and obsequious hangers-on of various nationalities, black, bronze, and café au lait in colour, offer him perpetual incense.
