영어로 읽는 고전 _ 로버트 히첸스의 황야에서
로버트 히첸스의 『황야에서(In the Wilderness)』는 19세기 후반을 배경으로 한 소설이다. 이야기는 밀라노에서 시작되며, 그리스와 콘스탄티노플 여행에서 돌아오는 젊은 영국인 디온 레이스의 경험을 중심으로 여러 인물을 소개한다. 그가 새로운 만남과 자아 발견의 흐릿한 세계를 헤쳐나가는 동안, 특히 깊은 사색과 포부를 지닌 여성 로저먼드 에버라드와의 교류를 통해 사랑, 고독, 그리고 문화적 경험 사이의 대비라는 주제가 펼쳐진다. 소설의 서두에서 호텔 카부르의 홀 포터인 아메데오 도리니는 여행자들을 기다리며, 도착하는 손님들의 관대함의 가능성을 가늠하는 인간 본성에 대한 통찰력을 보여준다. 디온은 합승 마차에서 내리며, 최근 여행으로 활력을 느끼고 있으며, 특히 그리스에 대한 깊은 애정은 콘스탄티노플에 대한 혐오와 극명한 대조를 이룬다. 그의 성격은 젊고 낙관적이며, 기쁨에 찬 발견의 감각을 체현하는 것으로 그려진다. 한편 서사는 고독을 추구하면서 개인적 독립과 사회적 기대 사이에서 자신만의 열망과 씨름하는 로저먼드를 소개한다. 두 사람의 이야기는 동반자 관계와 고독, 열망과 현실 사이의 섬세한 균형에 대한 깊은 탐구를 암시하며, 그들의 여정을 형성할 관계의 복잡한 상호작용을 예고한다.
Classics Read in English _ In the Wilderness by Robert Hichens
Robert Hichens's In the Wilderness, set in the fading light of the nineteenth century, opens not with drama but with arrival — and in that arrival, Hichens plants everything the novel will become.
Milan. The Hotel Cavour. A hall porter named Amedeo Dorini stands at his post like a sentry of human nature, reading each incoming guest the way a jeweler reads a stone — appraising not character but generosity, not soul but wallet. It is a small, sardonic detail, but it establishes the novel's governing principle from the first page: in Hichens's world, everyone is being watched, and everyone is performing.
Into this theater of assessment steps Dion Leith — young, English, radiating the particular euphoria of a man who has just fallen in love with a country rather than a woman. Greece has undone him. Its light, its ruins, its capacity to make the present feel ancient and the ancient feel alive — all of it has left Dion intoxicated with a joy he cannot yet name. Constantinople, by contrast, repelled him, and the intensity of both reactions reveals a man whose emotional thermostat is set dangerously high, a man for whom experience is never moderate but always total.
Then there is Rosamund Everard — introduced not through action but through atmosphere. She is a woman who seeks solitude the way others seek company: deliberately, almost hungrily. Her mind is vast and restless, caught between the desire for self-determination and the gravitational pull of a society that has already written her script. Hichens does not bring Dion and Rosamund together immediately. Instead, he lets their parallel solitudes run side by side, two rivers moving through the same landscape but not yet converging — one bright with the recklessness of discovery, the other deep with the patience of someone who has learned that what the world offers and what the soul requires are rarely the same thing. The opening chapters hum with the quiet tension of inevitability: these two will meet, and when they do, the collision between his openness and her depth will generate a story that neither could have written alone.
Among the contents
Amedeo Dorini, the hall porter of the Hotel Cavour in Milan, stood on the pavement before the hotel one autumn afternoon in the year 1894, waiting for the omnibus, which had gone to the station, and which was now due to return, bearing—Amedeo hoped—a load of generously inclined travelers. During the years of his not unpleasant servitude Amedeo had become a student of human nature. He had learnt to judge shrewdly and soundly, to sum up quickly, to deliver verdicts which were not unjust. And now, as he saw the omnibus, with its two fat brown horses, coming slowly along by the cab rank, and turning into the Piazza that is presided over by Cavour’s statue, he prepared almost mechanically to measure and weigh evidence, to criticize and come to a conclusion.
He glanced first at the roof of the omnibus to take stock of the luggage pile there. There was plenty of it, and a good deal of it was leather and reassuring. Amedeo had a horror of tin trunks—they usually gave such small tips. Having examined the luggage he sent a searching glance to two rows of heads which were visible inside the vehicle.
