영어로 읽는 고전 _ 로버트 히첸스의 유스터스 그레인의 임무
로버트 히첸스의 《유스터스 그레인의 임무》는 20세기 초에 쓰인 소설이다. 이야기는 저명한 소설가 유스터스 그레인 부인과 그녀의 남편 유스터스 그레인 씨를 중심으로 전개된다. 남편은 아내로부터 알제리로 향하는 기이한 임무를 부여받는다. 인간의 나약함을 탐구하는 새 소설의 자료를 수집하는 것이 그의 임무였고, 그레인 씨는 타락의 심연을 들여다보는 여정에 오르게 된다. 이를 통해 소설은 순수와 경험이라는 주제를 탐구한다. 이야기의 서두에서 독자들은 화려한 명성의 유스터스 그레인 부인을 만난다. 성공한 작가인 그녀의 삶은 온실 속에서 자란 남편의 sheltered한 성장 배경과 극명한 대비를 이룬다. 남편의 임무에 관한 불안한 소식을 접한 그레인 부인은 죄악과 혼란의 깊은 탐구를 필요로 한다는 자신의 소설을 위해 그를 알제리로 보내기로 결심한다. 한편 그레인 씨는 이 모험을 앞두고 불안과 낯섦에 시달리며, 그 과정은 익살스러운 오해들과 일상성과 이국성의 기묘한 혼합으로 점철된다. 이 도입부는 사회적 기대와 예술적 진정성을 향한 탐구 사이의 충돌을 희극적으로 조명하며, 그레인 씨가 임무의 도덕적 복잡함을 헤쳐 나가는 파란만장한 여정을 위한 무대를 마련한다.
Classics Read in English _ The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne by Robert Hichens
There is something uniquely comic about a man sent into sin as an act of domestic duty.
Mr. Eustace Greyne is precisely such a man. Mild, sheltered, and constitutionally unsuited to depravity in any of its more interesting forms, he has spent the majority of his married life in the considerable shadow cast by his wife — the celebrated, formidably productive novelist Mrs. Eustace Greyne, whose literary reputation towers over their household like a particularly well-reviewed monument. She writes about human frailty with the authority of someone who has studied it exhaustively. The inconvenient truth is that she requires fresh material.
And so Mr. Greyne is dispatched to Algeria.
The mission, as Mrs. Greyne conceives it, is straightforward enough: travel to North Africa, immerse himself in sin and tumult, observe the full catastrophe of human weakness at close range, and return with enough raw material to furnish her next masterpiece. That her husband has never previously encountered sin at close range — has in fact organized his entire existence around its comfortable avoidance — strikes her as a minor logistical detail rather than a fundamental obstacle.
Mr. Greyne views it somewhat differently.
Hichens orchestrates the resulting collision between domestic propriety and Algerian exoticism with the precision of a very amused conductor. The humour is gentle but persistent, the satire aimed with equal affection at literary pretension and masculine helplessness. The Mission of Mr. Eustace Greyne is ultimately a comedy about the gap between the lives we write about and the lives we are actually equipped to live — and the hapless, endearing souls caught somewhere in between.
Among the contents
Mrs. Eustace Greyne (pronounced Green) wrinkled her forehead—that noble, that startling forehead which had been written about in the newspapers of two hemispheres—laid down her American Squeezer pen, and sighed. It was an autumn day, nipping and melancholy, full of the rustle of dying leaves and the faint sound of muffin bells, and Belgrave Square looked sad even to the great female novelist who had written her way into a mansion there. Fog hung about with the policeman on the pavement. The passing motor cars were like shadows. Their stertorous pantings sounded to Mrs. Greyne’s ears like the asthma of dying monsters. She sighed again, and murmured in a deep contralto voice: “It must be so.” Then she got up, crossed the heavy Persian carpet which had been bought with the proceeds of a short story in her earlier days, and placed her forefinger upon an electric bell.
Like lightning a powdered giant came.
